Giving Back to Ourselves

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. And if the slightly different jingle, no pun intended, didn't clue you in, this is one of our special episodes. This is our getting into our Christmas special of episodes every year. I think every year that we've always had this, we've done a pair of them, usually one right before and right after or that week leading up to Christmas. This year, just because of the way things fall, we'll have like a pre and a post Christmas special. This one obviously would be the pre Christmas special, or at least it's obvious if you're listening to this about the time that it comes out and is released. If not, all right, well, you'll just have to like look back on the calendar. This special topic episode, this Christmas time of year, I want to talk about giving, but I want to discuss because for us, we are side hustlers, we are entrepreneurs, we are developers that work sometimes crazy long hours, at least crazy to the rest of the world. And it's about giving back to us. It's about thinking about ourselves a little bit. So instead of looking at how can we squeeze every bit of productivity out of this holiday season, instead, how can we actually embrace this time and slow down and rest and recharge? Now we have talked about the life balance at times, about living that balanced life and living a full life, but usually we talk about it with the idea that we're using whatever time we generate for ourselves to do more work, to build a side hustle out or to grow our career or advance on a roadmap. Those are all great. Obviously we've talked about them a lot, but there is also our health and our, the maintainability of what we want to do. We don't want to be in a situation like those that have this, the concept of a yo-yo diet where they just sort of like, they jump in, they do a diet, they lose whatever, you know, five, 10, 4,000 pounds, whatever their goal is, and then they stop. And then a week or two later, they're right back where they started. We don't want to, in our case, do something like that, which would instead of being an extreme weight loss and then gain, usually it shows up as burnout for us. That we just go, go, go, go, go, and then bam, we hit a wall. And sometimes it's physical. Sometimes it's like we get sick or something like that that takes us out. And usually for, you know, it's not for like a couple hours or a day. It can be for several days or even weeks at times because we are just not healthy enough to fight off whatever the sickness is. Or it's more that mental block where we're just sick of it. We're just tired of it. We're just worn out because we just went, went, went, went, went. And now whatever it is, whether it's physical or whether it's mental or emotional or whatever it is, our body says, no, can't do this anymore. I need to rest. I need to recharge. And so in this holiday season, if you're feeling that at all, one of the things to do is look at what do you do to rest and recharge? You may say, I don't have time to think about that. Well, it's a holiday season. It's time to think about that. Spend a little bit of time thinking about what recharges you, what constitutes rest for you, because it is a little different for everybody. It may be taking a nap and watching a, you know, watching the Sunday movie or whatever, you know, Sunday afternoon or Saturday afternoon movie or something like that. It may be going for a walk in a park or camping out for a weekend or playing a sport or playing video games or so many different things that are out there. We all have our different likes and dislikes and our hobbies. However, for us, our hobbies tend to get pushed back, particularly if we have a hobby that takes any amount of time. We usually say, no, I don't have the time for that hobby. During this season of giving and happiness and joy, look at giving back to yourself some of that time. And if you have to, schedule time for your hobby. You know, it doesn't have to be during the workday even. You can still have a full workday. Do your, you know, nine to five or whatever it is you do. Even have a few hours after work to have a couple hours that you're working on your side hustle. Somewhere in there, schedule some time for your hobby. Doesn't have to be every day, but I think it does need to be probably at least every week. You need to have a schedule for them where you have, quote, earned this time. And when you do it, go do it. Just like your job, you don't want distractions while you're working. Also, when you're doing your rest, your recharge, your fun times, make sure that you're not getting distracted there either. Make sure that you're spending that time wisely, that you're using it, that you are participating, that you are part of it, that you're not checking your phone, that you're not mentally checking out and thinking about that project that you're working on. Now, speaking as one who is very challenged by this at times, I get that it can be tough to work all week and then decide on Saturday if you're going to, I don't know, if you're going to be a golfer, decide on Saturday morning, all right, I'm going to golf from eight to noon. It can be difficult because you're going to get into that and you're going to go, I got too many other things on my mind. Or a lot of times what happens is we sort of pencil that in and then we get to that morning and we go, oh no, I got work to do. Sorry, I'm going to punt it till the next week or the next week or the next week. And that's sort of what happens. So like every other habit, we need to be intentional about making sure that we've got some time to recharge. And this looks different for everybody. The classic is the Sabbath that comes back from Jewish tradition where you have six days of work and a day off. That's like a pretty good rhythm. Okay, we're going to work our butts off for six days and then on a seventh day we're going to take our time off. We still sort of have that. That's part of why things used to shut down or even today, there's not as much going on on a Sunday as there is the rest of the week. It's because of how we do our, quote, Sabbath. That used to be one of those things because people tend to go to religious services on Sunday, take the day off, chill, stuff like that. We can do this differently. We can do this in ways that works for us. We don't have to make it a whole day. We can make it 15 or probably 15 minutes, probably a little too short. We could easily do maybe 30 minutes a day that we go for a walk if that's something that clears our head and helps us recharge. If we are a gamer, then maybe do something that just get in the habit of, let's just say Saturday night's my game night. I'm going to game from six to 10 Saturday night. That's just like schedule it. Put it on your calendar and don't let it move. When you get to that, say, I don't care. I'm going to take this time off and I'm going to go chill for a while. Or if you're going to go see a movie, then say Friday night is my movie night or whatever it is. And particularly the first couple of times you do it, really have to protect it. Because what will happen, like every other habit, is that if you start doing it on a regular basis, and it doesn't have to be daily. Even if you start doing it every week, it will get easier as you get into that rhythm. Because what's going to happen is you're going to start planning for that. You're going to start moving stuff around that block. Whether it's during, like I said, whether it's during the day or whether it's each week. Now sometimes the easiest way to do this is make it your lunch break. Is set your lunch break in a certain way so that maybe you're going to eat and chill during that time. If it's something you can do during that time. If you just like to read, just not like business reading, but reading fiction. Then maybe you want to, you know, for your lunch time you go grab a quick meal and you're going to sit there and just read for a half hour. That's something that I picked up back up several years ago that I said, all right, I'm going to read 15 minutes a day. Now times get busy and sometimes I don't get to that. I've had good stretches where that was part of my day. Where I would just like, and it was a lunch time thing. So I go eat lunch and read for 15 minutes to just unplug. It was fiction so it's just to get away from what I'm thinking about that day. It actually turned out to be very helpful because I would have a morning, get some stuff done. It would be split somewhat, depending on where I did my lunch. It would be split roughly midday. I'd have a little lunch break. I'd grab something to eat. I'd sit back. I'd read. I would chill. Then I'd be essentially refreshed to dive into that afternoon. Now that wasn't the only thing I did, but that alone was something that does, it helped keep me recharged, refreshed. You may try like, if you want to do a midday nap, that can work as well. That's actually one of the other things that we should do is find enough of a schedule for sleep. Get yourself into a habit of, you know, my bedtime is whatever it is. Most of us don't sleep so pick midnight and then I'll start back again at 5 a.m. or something like that. Just any kind of consistent rhythm is going to help us out. We've talked about that in so many other ways. We've talked about the momentum that we do these, you know, step after step after step and how we move forward and make progress towards whatever our goals are. We need to do that with our health and rest and recharging as well. Is set some habits up. Set up some scheduled things that will recharge you or cause you, allow you or force you even to rest. And there, like I said, there's so many ways we can do it. This is a good time of year while you're sort of in a, if you're going through the holidays and it's not a slam schedule because I know some people are. But if you're in your holiday, we'll call it your down times, there's going to be some things that you're going to gravitate towards that you want to do that refresh you, recharge you that you miss because you've been working all year. Those are the things to take note of and say, okay, why do I only do this once a year? Now if it's Christmas theme, okay, fine. Or, you know, pick your holiday or seasonal theme. That's probably, you know, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about where the only time you do this thing that you want to do is when you are on vacation. Maybe you can find some ways, and I say maybe, but I really mean probably you can find some ways to do that and mix that into your year more. Now there is some value, we'll say, in having something where you like just work, work, work, work, and then you get this reward at the end of, you know, taking two weeks off or something like that. That's cool. But getting through that work, work, work, work, work part is usually, it's not healthy to just work, work, work, work, work. We need some rest points along the way. We need some spots where we can recharge, where we can rest, where we can refocus, and it's just going to be a time investment that will pay off. Yes, you're going to spend some time resting, relaxing, recharging, whatever that is. But try it and you will find that that time will be regained and more than useful enough because of what will come after, that you will be more productive, you will be able to focus better, you will be able to sometimes solve that problem that was vexing you so much. I don't know how many times that just like gotten stuck, walked away for a little bit, took some time off, came back and it was like boom, right there, got the solution, now I'm ready to move forward again. So things like, you know, the equivalent of writer's block or we'll call it coder's block. If you get stuck, you're trying to work your way through a solution and trying to figure this problem out, how to solve it, don't be afraid to step away for a little bit or to, you know, just put it on the back burner and go chill, go relax, go recharge. Because as we've talked about before, we do not want to hit that burnout stage because then it is very difficult to get out of it. It's usually right at the worst possible time and it puts us in this bad downward spiral of we're worn out, we're not very productive, we're working our butts off which wears us out which makes us less productive and then the next thing we know, we're just lost. We are just spinning our wheels 180 miles an hour and we're getting nowhere. So we want to avoid that and one of the best ways to do so is to mix in some breaks, some rest, some recharging. And during this time of year when we tend to gravitate towards the things that do, you know, that positive work on us, that rest us, that recharge us, this time to take note, how long has it been since you last did X, whatever that is? It may be something like you just enjoy putting on some tunes and kicking back and just listening to music for a while. Okay, when was the last time you did that? Was it a year ago? If so, why haven't you done it recently? My reading example is perfect. I a couple of years ago realized I had books, I had purchased fiction books, I'd purchased literally decades before and I hadn't even, I think I'd read a little bit of them but that was it, like a couple of pages. And I said, you know what, this is ridiculous. I used to really like it. I think I'm going to like doing it again so why don't I dip a toe in and start back into it? And did. I did 15 minutes a day. It was literally on my schedule for weeks. It was on my to-do list. 15 minutes, I put a timer. I would time it and then when the alarm went off, I was like, okay, now I can go back to work but that was my thing is I wanted to sit there and read until my timer, my alarm went off. And I did that for a while and then built a habit and it actually grew into something different because it went from a daily habit to, oh, I really enjoy doing that so I would do it on the, I'd find some time at the end of the day or on a weekend. And so it grew beyond my just 15 minutes a day kind of thing. And now is back into a regular rhythm of what I do and it's not something that I schedule. It's not something I do every day but it is something that I come back to regularly enough and it does recharge me. It helps. It's restful. It's something I do a lot of times before I go to sleep. It helps me go to sleep. I sleep better. Those are all things that are huge positives for people like us that tend to push ourselves too much. We also want the most out of the time that we put into anything. So just like you need to be productive in your work, you want to set yourself up to be productive in your rest and in your recharging. So find ways to do the best you can to actually put work away for a little bit when you're doing that restful recharging thing. And yes, it will be very difficult at first but if you schedule it and you keep going, I think you will find that it will be the best gift that you can give yourself for the year ahead and years ahead as well. I have beaten this dead horse enough so it's time for you to go to rest, recharge, take some time off, however it is that allows you to reward yourself because you've been working your butt off and now it's time to like, you know, revel in that a little bit, enjoy that a little bit, rest in that a little bit. And as always, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week and we will talk to you, hopefully, a more, you know, a better rested, better feeling, recharged, rejuvenated self of you. We'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to Building Better Developers, the Develop-a-Nor Podcast. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon, anywhere that you can find podcasts. We are there. 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