Essential Habits for Software Developers - Boosting Productivity and Career Growth

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Noir podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back. We are continuing our season. We're talking about the developer journey this time around. We are Developer Noir. We are focused on building better developers. I just realized that my, you don't see this on the audio, but my background is totally flipped because that's one of those bonuses that you can do on your video. So I'm working on this while I introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead and I am a founder of Developer Noir and also a founder of RV Consulting. We do software development and solutions providing our focuses on automation, integration and simplification. We go out there and we find ways to basically make you get, help you get more out of your technology investment. You can also invest a little time here as my cohost, Michael, will introduce himself. Go for it. Hey everyone. My name is Mike Melosh. I'm one of the co-founders of Developer Noir and I am the founder of Envision QA. So if you need any custom software built, we're the people to come to, or if you need And one of our key features is we also spend a lot of time building quality tests, integration tests, system tests for environments that don't have those or for new systems. So this episode, we're going to look at habits, good and bad. This is like a good part, I think in the developer journey where we, we've talked about more focused on like getting started. So like early things and some of it is also side hustles and things where it's maybe where you're restarting or you're, you're stepping into a new phase, maybe not the beginning of your career, but it is a new step, you know, new phase in your career. So here's a point where I think it's not a bad idea to talk about and particularly because right now it's sort of mid-year and stuff like that, good and bad habits. So let's do a little bit of some of the things that we've done that have, have impacted us over, you know, over time. The first one I want to, the one I want to bring up first is status reporting effects, it's communication. When I started out, it was one of these things that was just a total pain. It was just every time I had to do any sort of status, it just drove me nuts. It was like, it took me out of my groove and all of that kind of good stuff. However, over time, I found that that is actually an incredibly good habit to have. If you look at the agile approach and you look at daily standups, even though standup isn't really a status report, just the practice of on a daily basis, at least actually, you know, definitely, although I know we may do weekly status, but on a daily basis, spend a lot of time looking at what did you do yesterday? What are you going to do today? And then maybe some blockers or anything like that, which is very much, I know that's very much the standup approach. What did you get done? What are you going to do? What's blocking you? But if you take that from a status point of view and you add a little context around that. So it's like, what did I work on yesterday? Oh yeah, I worked on writing this function that does this thing. And here's a couple of things that I went through. Here's some, this is why it took me all day to do it. Here's the good and the bad of what I did yesterday. Sort of like a mini retrospective on what you did. And then it's, okay, what am I going to do today? And this is excellent to do if you've got like a little daily planner, if you've got a blog, there's like all kinds of different ways to do it, whether you want to do old school pencil and paper, want to do something more modern and have like maybe Evernote or something like that, where you've got a digital record of what you're working on. I find it very, it's very useful, not only at the end of the week or the end of the month to go back and look at what did I get done? Or if you're one of these people that like, you know, maybe you've been working for a while, you know, year or two, and now you're looking at a different job, you need to do a resume update. You may want to go back and look at what are some of the things that I've done, but a more tactical type of approach, much like the getting things done GTD approach of knowing what is on my plate, what is it I'm going to tackle? It's that whole biblical idea of just like focus on the problems for today. That's what it is. What are my problems today? What is the problem I'm going to solve today? And it works very well. And there's a lot of people reference different ways to do it. I think the, I don't remember if it's Tim Ferriss start was one of the first ones, but I think he stole it from somebody else. I don't know how far it goes back, but it's the idea of like picking, you know, three, maybe five things you're going to get done today. And the one that you want to do the least, make that the first. Maybe that's like, I'm going to get this done before I go to lunch or something like that. Doing that process, doing that daily status kind of thing. And then particularly if you can communicate that either daily or weekly to your boss or your customers, it is amazing how much that helps keep you focused on what's in scope, what's a priority, what has changed maybe. And just generally keep yourself each day being productive as opposed to busy or spinning your wheels. There's my first one. How about you? What's why don't you throw something out there? So I actually, I kind of wanted to tack onto that a little bit and I'll kind of carry on with that. So that approach you just discussed is very useful. However, it can also be misused. So there are some, you have to kind of be a little restrictive with this process. So as you're doing it daily in that, and as you're writing down these tasks that you're going to be working on, you want to make sure that you don't have a page long list. You know, you don't want a list that's going to keep you working until 11 o'clock at night. You want to make sure that while you're working on the things that you need to do or the things you're working on, try to keep that list small and concise. That way you're not being busy like Rob mentioned. You're constantly moving that needle forward. You're constantly getting that work done. On top of that, I'd like to add onto that a little bit. So one of the habits that I struggled with years ago that I found very beneficial was partially what you talked about there with the lists, like taking the stand up and doing the weekly status. I actually take it back a little bit further and do daily status or daily checklist of things that I do. And it's actually funny, I take a sheet of paper and I fold it five or six times, basically to about the size of an index card if I don't have index cards handy. And I try to write down no more than four things that need to be done that day. Now, that doesn't include the meetings that you typically have to go to, but this is stuff that you actually work on that you have control over. Try to keep that list small, concise, and then you're going to find that if you do that, as you follow your daily statuses and your weekly statuses, those should line up. If they're not lining up, then why? So now you can kind of do a like Rob said, a retrospective of yourself as to, OK, why am I not getting what I say I need to get done, done? Be careful with this approach, because a lot of people, especially in today's world of apps, will like to get things like little to-do apps or task apps. Be careful with that. You don't want to scope creep yourself by adding more additional tasks. That's why I use a sheet of paper. It's fixed. I can only write so many things on it. And it keeps me focused. So that's kind of my first habit. What do you think of that, Rob? I think that it's a nice follow-up is that it is, and that goes back to like making it bite-sized chunks. So you know what you're doing today, but it does help you keep productive. And that's thinking about agile and the sprint approach. Let's say you've got a two or three-week sprint. You know that there's things that you want to get done during that sprint. Maybe you haven't pulled all of them out, but you want these items need to be worked on. And I know this is going to take a day. This is going to take three days, things like that. When you have that, which is sort of a bonus, is your tasks plus an estimate of what are those tasks going to take, then it really helps you be able to assess, okay, I thought it was going to take a day. Did I get it done in a day? If I didn't, why not? If I got it done faster, then why did I? And those things may all be, they may be very valid reasons for all of them. But I think taking those into account are going to help you estimate the future and also keep you on track. Because it's very easy if you get to the end of a day and you have, you know, whatever it is, three, five, even just one item. If that didn't get touched, then you know something went wrong. You know your day went off the rails. Now, you may know your day went off the rails anyways, but there is this, it's almost like it's just what I'm saying is it's almost like a fallacy that we have is that I know that I know it a lot. My wife talks about it. I know other people. I think this is everybody runs into it where you have a day that you felt like it went totally off the rails. But you realize you were productive. They say you can look at your list and you can say, well, crap, I got everything done on my list. It felt like the day got out of control, but obviously it didn't because I got things done. And so that's maybe to give yourself a little, you know, pat on the back to say, hey, I had a lot of interruptions or a lot of things went off out of, you know, out of order, but I still got it done. And I think that's a key. Another habit that you sort of touched on is when you're done, you're done is getting yourself in that basically set rhythm. It's like running a marathon. If you set a pace and you just like, you know, you can it's a little bit of a downhill slope. So you're just like, you're just cranking and cranking cranking. And then it's an uphill slope and you sort of walk in and slogging your way through it and you don't have a steady pace, then the rise and fall is going to blow you up. When you're going to get to the end, you're going to be tired. What you want to be able to do is run solidly all the way through. And this is how you're going to avoid burnout. This is how you're going to avoid just not getting, you know, not getting enough done is make sure that you look at your schedule. Think about what are the hours you're going to work in a day and try to work towards that. Don't try to work towards, you know, if it's a this is it was easier when you went into an office. But even if you're in a remote situation is have office hours and your goal should be that if you start your day at eight and you have an hour long lunch break and you end your day at five, then you should start your day at eight every day and you should try to end your day at five every day. If you get done at four forty five. OK, if you get done at three, then OK, you can like pull something in. But getting yourself that this is particularly in a in the remote world or when you're you know, when you've got flex schedules and stuff like that is still find a schedule that works for you and stick to that and get yourself into the rhythm of when you work. And this goes back to a lot of stuff we've talked about in the past. If you're a night owl, then maybe you do. Maybe you start your day very late or maybe you it helps you to split your day. Maybe you work from nine to noon and then you work from nine to two a.m. or something like that. But that's another habit is getting yourself into a scheduled habit of this is what I'm going to be on. This is what I'm going to be off your loved ones, even if it's only your dog will thank you for it. Your thoughts. Yeah. So in addition to that, I want to touch on another good habit. So if you find yourself going through this process and you find that you're doing those ups and downs and instead of that steady pace, why are things taking so long or why are things so hectic? One way to help you slow down is to use the promoter and never say it raise a promoter promoter. Or a Doro. I'm a Doro. Use the Pomodoro approach where you do small bits of work in 20 minute or 30 minute segments. Basically, you time lock your work. You spend a certain amount of time and then you walk away for a little bit. Then you come back, spend a little bit the same amount of time work again. It kind of helps you set the pace of instead of you constantly picking up the phone, checking email, you time block things. And then by time blocking, you basically can batch your processes. It's like, oh, I can check all my emails twice a day and be more productive than checking it five minutes every hour. Well, OK, instead of checking it twice, maybe 15 minutes, you've now spent maybe half an hour checking your email in the day. So using this technique is another way to kind of time block your tasks, figure out why you're taking so long to get things done. Are you distracted? If you have an iPhone or a Mac, you can use the focus feature and turn off all those nasty little notifications you get that distract you. The other cool thing with the Macs and I think even Android has it now, but there's a way to schedule your screen time. So you can actually lock out certain apps from even being accessible during certain time periods. Some of these are like features for kids, but still you can use them as an adult to keep yourself on task. If you pick up your phone and you try to access something you shouldn't, it'll block you. It won't work. So it's another good habit to try and get into to try and stay on task. What do you think about? You know, what are some of your thoughts on that? That actually brings to mind something that I started almost from scratch when I first started out. And it was because I had somebody who's a little senior to me and I noticed one day that I was talking to him and he said, you know what? I like in the minute it was like, you know, early after it's probably one or two in the afternoon, something like that. He said, I'm just I'm dying. Just I'll be back in 10 minutes. He's like, I'm just going to put my head down on my desk and take a nap for 10 minutes. Just to power now. And that has evolved into something, although I do power nap. I'll do like my 10, 15 minute naps during the day and get like, you know, one in the middle of the day to sort of break stuff up. More importantly, what I found is a middle of the day. It's normally people have this thing called lunch breaks and they will actually go away and they'll do a lunch break. But if all you're doing is you're just like rushing to get food in the back, that may not do it. That may not get the benefit. And what I what I found that is much better is to take that time and do something different. Now, it may be and it often is a part of your lunch break. So you can go grab something to eat, but read a magazine, read a book. If you're a gamer, play a play game for a little bit. If you're as a developer, sometimes it may be fun just to take whatever your primary environment is and do something else. Do your little side hustle thing for a while, particularly if it's in a different environment. Like if you're if you're sitting in Windows all day, but you've got a little Linux side project that you're working on, go there. Or if you're in .NET all day, then maybe you want to do a little Java app or something like that. It's it depends on your makeup, your mental and physical makeup and more your mental, I guess, makeup than anything. But do something that's a little bit of a change of pace. And it could be it really is wide open. And if I were you, I try all kinds of stuff, whether it's I said it could be like reading worked really well for me for a while. I was building a I was doing a side project and that was like I spent 30 minutes in my lunch period just writing on that. Like you may do meditation, you may do just listening to music, you may watch a like watch a little TV show or something. Depends on what you are and what your day is like, how that will help. But it is I found it incredibly useful to have that break and be able to then come into your, you know, we'll call it your second half of your day. And it can be sometimes it's grown. So it's like there's times when I would go I'd go work out, go for a walk for 30 minutes or an hour or something like that. And I go get clean up and grab some food. And, yeah, I had a longer lunch break, but I'd start a little early. I'd work a little late. And I was more productive in those those splits of time. And that's my rhythm. Yours might be a little different. But I think it really is. If you start thinking of a long day, six, seven, eight, nine hours in a day, it is just mentally taxing. And if you can break that up, a lot of times that will help out your productivity. Thoughts on that? Yeah. So the next habit kind of builds on that. So I like the idea of taking a break, kind of pivoting during the day, you know, especially around that time of lunch, because with this whole working from home thing that a lot of us do, or even with side hustles, we tend to skip things. We tend to skip going to the gym. We tend to skip lunch. We try to pack in as much work as we can into our day to kind of beef up the bottom line. There are some pros and cons to that. But another good habit on top of what Rob was saying is one of the things I've kind of grown accustomed to over the years is try to learn one new thing. A day. So it's either learning a new piece of code, learning a new architecture. But every single day I spend about 15 minutes to half an hour looking at what's new. Is it something new with Java? Something, you know, what's in the latest release? Is it something with Python? A lot of the things that recently I've been looking at is how to automate my tasks. You know, am I doing something repetitively that I can write a little application to streamline that? Hey, I just got back five minutes a day. Well, at the end of the week, you know, that's 25 minutes. So these are other little habits that you can kind of build into your daily routine. And now this could be your lunch break. Although really for lunch break, try to do something that does distract you from your day job. Learning something new might do that, but be careful because you don't want to be doing something too thought provoking. And then you're kind of juggling between the two and you kind of get distracted or burned out. It's just something to be cautious of. I think it was Tim Ferriss that said it, you know, don't try to read two major pieces of work at the same time because you're just going to confuse yourself or you're going to lose track of, OK, I'm going this route. Oh, now I'm over here. I'm going this. And you then have to spend that mental capacity to get back on to where you were previously on the previous project. So try to stack your tasks in a way that keeps you mentally moving forward, not jumping around. That's on that room. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And we've talked about the cost of mentally switching gears, whether you're in this is something particularly if you if you're in a situation like a consultant or something, you've got a lot of projects that you're working on at a time. It can be very taxing, mentally taxing to switch gears, switch gears, switch gears, switch gears. So wherever you can, wherever you can control those things, those are the best ways to go is to is to try to batch that work just like you would anything else. Now, we've got we're just going to start. There's all kinds of little things that we do. So we'll batch these up and come back in another episode, probably further down the line to talk about some of our habits again. Hopefully you can bring up make some good habits like contacting us. Let us know what your thoughts in particular send us. What are some of the good or the bad habits? We didn't even touch the bad ones. Yeah. What are some of them that you have experienced and that would be particularly that have been impactful for your career and maybe even your your general enjoyment of life? Because sometimes those two are very well intertwined. You can shoot us an email at info at developer.com if you would like to send us that way. You can send us leave us comments out on the podcast or out on our YouTube site. You can check out school.developer.com if you want to learn some more habits, if you want to learn some stuff out there, if you want to spend a little time learning during your lunch break. You can also check out developer.com if you wanted. There's all kinds of things from very short articles to rather long things, presentations, all kinds of different forms of content that can help you out whether you want to learn a little or a lot. Check out our YouTube channel. Actually, if you go to some of the older stuff, we've got a whole bunch of 15 minutes a day kinds of series where we just go and spend 10, 15 minutes and work our way up to, you know, mastering Python or working with the database or mastering SQL, things like that. These are all great resources. Love to use them and for you to give us feedback and also leave us a form. We've got a contact us format on the site. We've got Twitter slash X. We've got Facebook. You name it. We're out there. If we're not, name it and we will get out there. That's just that's how we are because we want to go out there and just try out all of those tools and platforms as well. I think we've spent enough of your time today, so hopefully this like works perfect into your break during your day and now you can go back to work, you know, rejuvenated and ready to be super productive for the rest of your day. But however it is, 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-Nor 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. You