Errors, Missteps, and Mistakes: Learning from Past Experiences

Welcome to building better developers, the developer podcast, where we work on getting better step by step professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season. We're talking about errors, missteps, mistakes, and things like that. Things that we have either paved the way to future success or learned from some past mistakes and allow ourselves to at least not repeat them. This episode, we're going to talk about health. In this particular case, you may think that this is one of the things because when I talk about time that I got ill, and you may say, well, you just got to avoid germs and stuff like that. But the buildup to it is something that's, I think, part of a lesson learned. That being said, let's dive right into it. This goes back a couple of years ago. This is back, if you know a little bit about your history of diseases and endemics, pandemics, things of that nature. This goes back to when swine flu was around. This is now, I want to say, 12, 13, 14 years ago, something like that. It's been a while. I was in a situation where I was traveling. I was a consultant, had a local gig, but we also had a boss in another town, another city, and would have to occasionally fly to go meet him. On this particular occasion, we had sort of a team gathering, an all hands kind of approach to it. What we had is, I don't know, maybe a half dozen of us came from where I was at, and then we had another half dozen that were there, and a couple that came from random places across the US, and came in and like, hey, let's get to know everybody, things like that. It ended up being a couple of days of pretty intense meetings and such, and not stressful type intents, but just we started at, I can't remember, like 8 or 8.30 in the morning, and we went until usually like 6.30 or 7 at night. We basically, I don't remember if we ate out, I think we always, except for maybe one day, had lunch in. It was pretty solid amount of work that we were going through. It was one of those where you take one room and you own that room for a couple of days as a group. That was what we did. I came in, flew in on a Monday morning, got up super early, flew in, and then flew back Wednesday night, Thursday night, something like that. The problem was, as far as I started making mistakes, the week before was a typical work week, pretty busy, and I got into the weekend and had a little bit of catch up to do from the week before, but then a lot to do to prep to be gone for the week ahead. It was one of these situations where there was a lot going on in life, work was very busy and I needed to get all of that stuff, all my ducks in a row for the trip so I didn't get absolutely hammered at some point during that week because there was just too many things that I was missing or that had fallen behind. Friday night, Saturday night before I left were late nights, 2 a.m., 3 a.m. kind of stuff. Getting things done, got to sleep late, it was up and moving by 7 a.m. both days. Maybe you have a harder schedule at that point. Going on four, maybe five hours of sleep for a couple nights in a row was exhausting. Then of course Sunday night, stayed up late, got up early so I could make the flight. I now had half a week of not a lot of sleep, not really generally taking care of myself. Some of those things where I just grab something quick to eat as far as food was concerned or sit down at dinner table if somebody made me dinner and sit down, eat real quick and then you're off and running again. A couple of days of that plus travel and then getting into actually being in another town. I don't usually sleep well the first night or two anyways and didn't. That all added up to just not feeling awesome, not feeling 100%. But I kept pushing through. I was like, you know what, forget it. I'm just going to suck it up, I'm going to gut it out and we'll be fine. Well that was all fine and dandy until on the flight back and it was probably while I was in the other town. But it definitely culminated in the flight back where I got absolutely crushed by what turned out to be swine flu. I was just exhausted. It was one of those, it just sapped all of my energy. It wasn't like body aches and stuff like that. It was just, I remember I was just totally, totally drained. So I dragged my stuff off the flight, drove home and just crashed. And of course all this time I'd been, all right, I got to make sure that I'm on schedule. I'm going to get stuff done, keep everything in line. Turns out that I ended up losing about a week, I think, for me to, where I just, I did not have the energy to get out of bed basically before I could finally get to the point where I was healthy enough that I could get back on track. So while, yeah, I may have gained, who knows, I may have gained a day of activity building up to this, it cost me a week. Now you could say, hey, if you hadn't gotten sick, it would have been that bad. But the fact that I was not at top health probably contributed to the fact that I got sick. And there are a few other similar kinds of stories that I've gone through over the years where there was a heavy push, sort of gave up on my health for a while. And then the next thing I know, I'm down and out for a while. And it's not the problem with this. You know, when you're sick like that, if you don't have the ability to say, okay, I'm going to pick and choose things, you're just out. You're just, you know, you're just sick in bed, lack the energy, whatever it is, so that you are not able to even prioritize. It's just everything goes to zero and you're not getting anything done until you get your strength back. And that was a pretty tough blow this time around. It actually ended up being something that I think contributed to, I was done with that engagement, I think within a few weeks or a month later. And it was one of those, it was like I was pushing, pushing, pushing, need to get some stuff done. The timing didn't work out. You know, now you're a contractor, you're running behind on a couple of things. And you could say, you know, you're sick or whatever, but it's sort of a point where they're like, okay, well, that just doesn't work for us. And so I ended up getting, you know, basically let go from that. And I think part of it was because I just was not anywhere near the top of my game. I was struggling to get to the bottom of my game during that time. It was just not, you know, it was not useful to them, was not productive as needs to be done. And of course, it was one of those that after a few days of that, you know, I was tired and then sick. And while I had energy back, the loss of that, the combination loss of that week, basically I was sick and then probably another week of trying to get back to a hundred percent because of just residual stuff. Oh man, I don't know how much I lost probably a month of good productivity because even while I was sick and doing some of those last little, you know, those last minute things, that was not, when you're that exhausted, you're not, you know, a hundred percent productive. You're spinning on wheels at some point. And we've talked about that before. There is a diminishing return on working longer hours because you're not as fresh, you're not as sharp as you would be, you know, when you start out. Early in the day, you're going to be more sharp. Late in the day, you're more likely to make mistakes. So, you know, the moral of this story, the lesson we learned here is that you can, and we do, you know, we have these situations where we push ourselves, but we have to remember there are limits. And when we sacrifice health type things, sleeping regularly, eating properly, you know, getting out, getting some exercise, some movement and things like that, then it can come back to bite us rather severely. And very simple things like, I don't know, like going out, spending 15, 20 minutes for a little walk, getting some fresh air can make a huge difference. And where you may think, well, hey, it's only, you know, it's 15 or 20 minutes. What's the big deal? I'd rather use that to be productive and to get some work done. Well, if you get sick, you could be down for a day or two. So that investment, even if it is, if you do that every day or every other day, that can add up. You know, it can be, that can take an hour or two out of your week. However, you know, that kind of thing also can cost you if you don't do it, can cost you days or more because there are other health things that can come up, not just. General illness, you know, getting a cold or something like that. There are things like you can have heart disease and all kinds of stress related issues and things like that. If you don't pay attention to your health, basically do some self care. And you can see this in a lot of situations where people are high need, where they're doing a lot of, you know, they need to be pushing themselves all the time. They're not taking care of themselves as much because they're too driven to do X, whatever X happens to be. And then the next thing you know, they're out and it's it's almost always going to be at a time that we really would prefer that doesn't happen. So take care of yourself, spend a little bit of time. I know we talk a lot about getting squeezing like every minute out of your day. But sometimes you can do simple things like park a little further when you get to work. I mean, some of these things I don't do, but I've heard of people do such things. And they make a lot of sense. And sometimes I've even taken advantage of them. You know, like maybe if you go to an office, take the stairs instead of an elevator. Take the long way around wherever you're, you know, if you're having to walk somewhere, take a little more of a scenic route. Don't be afraid to particularly if you're doing something like the like Pomodoros and things like that, where you're sort of focused for a while, like maybe a half hour, an hour, and then you're refreshing a little bit. During that time, get a little go for a walk, get some fresh air, get up, walk around, particularly most of us are sitting in a chair all day, just little tasks like that helps keep the blood flowing, helps keep you a little more alert. And then the other thing is diet. You know, it's really easy for us to to get into something like I'm just going to grab some crappy little thing, eat a candy bar or whatever it is so I can get through the day. But if you at some point that's going to add up, if you don't have healthy, balanced meals, you're going to see things like, you know, maybe high blood pressure or you have stomach issues or all kinds of other stuff. And those things just really drag you down. It's the kind of stuff where, you know, it's one thing to take, you know, if you take five or ten minutes and take a little break and a sort of like a health break. That's, you know, sometimes, yeah, that's time that you're not, quote, as productive. However, if you get sick, you can be down days or weeks or more. And then that becomes and of course, those things always feed on themselves. They build and snowball. So, you know, you're struggling and then you lose a day. And then, of course, now you're not as healthy because you lost a day. And you're recovering from whatever that sickness is. And then, of course, stuff's building up and you just don't want to get in that situation. So take a look at what you do during your day, how in general, you know, the health side of stuff as far as, you know, what do you eat? What kind of exercise do you have? What kind of sleep schedule do you have? You know, is it sporadic or is it, you know, a solid like you're always pretty much always in bed at a certain time and sort of get up at a certain time, things like that. And I'm no health expert by any stretch, but you can do some searches and you can find some things that are recommendations as always. Talk to your doctor, especially if you and you should have one and do your regular checkups and go see what they recommend, whether you're because you may be overweight or underweight or blood pressure issues or cholesterol issues or there's all these different things that can come up. And a lot of them are things that a lot of these are the kinds of things that if you change some of your habits, it will make those either less of an issue or less likely to become a major issue. I think that's a good place to run to stop this one is to wrap this up. It was really just one of those stuff and said, you know, here's a mistake that I know cost me. And I've had a couple of those and it may not be the most blatant and the best example, but it's a pretty good one because it did end up costing me a lot of time and a lot of headaches and stuff like that, that I probably would not have had if I had done a better job of just knowing my limits before I got into that and understanding what that may cost me when I push the limits too far and for too many days in a row. That being said, I'm going to let you get back to it. I don't want to push the limits of this episode too far. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. And remember, just a little bit of effort every day ends up adding into great momentum and great success. Hi, this is Rob from Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Noor podcast. We're excited to be on Alexa now. You can enable us by simply saying, Alexa, enable Building Better Developers, and we will be there ready for you every time you want to listen to your now favorite podcast. Whether we are your favorite podcast or not, we would love to hear from you. So please leave a review on Amazon.