Meeting Prep for Developers: Simple Habits to Enhance Focus and Reduce Stress

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 of building better habits. We are building better developers. We are developing more. I am Rob Brodhead. I'm one of the founders of development, also a founder of RB consulting, where we take all of your technology that's out there. And yes, you probably have more than you think you do. We help you take a look at your business, how that technology can help you, how it can either also hurt you. So where do you need to like trim the fat? Where do you maybe need to upgrade something? Where do you need to integrate, automate or simplify and just make your life better overall as far as your technology choices are concerned, making better technology choices as it were. Good thing, bad thing. Let's see. Well, let me go back. Bad thing, which is related to actually the challenge that we'll talk about is that I will throw out here for those of you that are on the podcast. I did not add a challenge at the end of the last episode. Now that may get edited somewhere along the way, but maybe not. So the challenge is to go out there because it was a, it was one of these where it's like, Hey, let's go get some exercise. And my challenge, I'll be, I'll keep it very simple. Three times a day, go out, take five minutes, do a walk. Doesn't matter when, doesn't matter where during your work day. This doesn't mean like you get up and you walk to brush your teeth and then you walk to your bed at the end of the night. I'm talking like at work, take those breaks, go ahead and get yourself a little bit of, you know, get the blood flowing. So bad thing was I forgot about that. Good thing is, is I'm in one of these seasons that like every time you turn around, there's like another customer that's coming with a cool project. It's not just that it's like, Hey, there's more work coming. There's some stuff. What's like, this is going to be really fun to work on. I'm really looking forward to helping out with this. Sometimes it's big, sometimes it's very small, but that is always a good thing. Challenge wise, as I mentioned, I'm really liking the Pomodoro thing. It's like, I hadn't gotten away from it for several years. And I think it's always because I tried to do, you know, six or eight in a day, even doing four or five. But I think keeping it down, I'm keeping the number two and it seems to be like a magic number. I may be able to squeeze it up to three, but it's really good that I can do that and I can work it in within, within meeting schedules and travel and all this kinds of other stuff. So really working well for me. The to-do list, getting back to, I've done lists forever, but getting back to a little bit more of that focus of having prioritized stuff and not has helped quite a bit. From an exercise point of view, this is something I've gotten, this sort of got us to that topic is, it has helped me quite a bit. I'm actually, I've lost some weight. I don't know that it's because of that, but getting up, you know, roughly once an hour, maybe once every hour and a half or something like that, and just taking five minutes to just walk around a little bit, just stand around a little bit, do something that's not sitting there. Years ago, I would spend five to 10 minutes and work on a couple of ballroom dance moves because that was just something I could do and it got me moving in the blood flow. So whatever you want to do, whether it's jumping jacks or whatever, I highly recommend it. I also highly recommend that you pay attention to Michael, who is about to introduce himself because there will be a test afterwards. Hey everyone. My name is Michael Mollash. I'm one of the co-founders of DeveloperNURB, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we help small and mid-sized businesses, clinicians, nurses kind of review their software stack, figure out what technologies they're using, what processes that they need to have automated, and basically see if the software that they're currently using works for them or find the solution that really meets their needs. If it's anything from like an EMR to a software assessment or even just making sure that the software works. Reach out to Envision QA. We're there to help you. Good and bad? Good. I've gone a week without any more problems with the house. So hey, good check mark there. No more water bills. Well, excessive water bills. Bad? Still having some issues here and there with personal health issues in the family. But other than that, we're still trying to figure out what's going on there. With the challenges, so lists. I've been working on making sure I have my lists every day. I've actually kind of dusted off my JIRA, my personal JIRA, and I've actually started using that to kind of organize some bigger projects and bigger tasks I'm working on. We haven't really gotten into too much scrum, but I've kind of used the Pomodoro technique a little bit more with Agile to try and streamline things a little bit within some projects I'm working on. It's really reduced my stress level and kind of sticking to that Pomodoro and the walking that we talked about last episode. You know, exercise. Weather's actually improved right now. We're not really cold yet. Weather's actually nice. So getting out, walking around, change the scenery has actually given me more of a positive attitude and kind of reset me so I can actually be more enthusiastic about sitting down and working on the next problem. So speaking of that kind of stuff, this episode, I want to talk about meeting prep. It's a little bit prep in general, but it's really more specifically about meeting prep because this is something that I think we've run into as an issue far too often, particularly in the development world. And we all do it. So I'm not, I am not going to tell you that I am perfect at this in any way, form or fashion, but these are some things I have learned. The challenge is if we're lucky, we won't have as many challenges because we will have like a meeting at the beginning of the day and maybe a meeting at the end of the day or something like that. However, usually they are interspersed with some of the other work that we're doing. And this goes to some of the things we've talked about before. It can be very difficult to change gears mentally and go from being deep into coding and then talk about even the same project, talking about design or talking about a different area of the application or heaven forbid, which does happen way too often, a completely different project, a completely different tact. It could be stuff, especially if you get, as you get more senior where it's like you're deep into coding and now suddenly you're talking about, I don't know, HR issues about some of the, you know, the team, or you're talking about a project and planning as far as like times and resource scheduling and stuff like that. Or if you're home, it can be stuff where it's like you're sitting there working and then you take a lunch break and you have a, I don't know, call with your attorney to plan for your will, or you've got to go call to like chase down a bill or something like that where it's like those changes can be very difficult. And now things like a phone call give us a little bit of time because we have to grab the number and stuff like that. But if it's a scheduled meeting, then we have a, you know, we've got some issues there because we have to sometimes physically get to wherever we are. However, it's probably just as demanding and troublesome and far more perilous to have to like fire up zoom or something like that. If you've got a, some sort of a virtual meeting, but more importantly, the thing is, is if we're going into a meeting is to go into it so that we can, we don't have to like just slam it, hit the ground running and just go. We do have those couple of minutes that you can like, you know, you can socialize and you can be nice and you can sort of like get to know something about the people that you work with. I talked to, I'm telling this to myself because I never do that. So this is like, if you ever have a meeting with me, you'll realize that I'm just like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, get in, get out and done. So don't do as I do do as I'm hoping that I eventually do in this case. But what you do want to do is you're going to get in and there's that, that everybody's gathering and they're finding their seat and that kind of stuff. Or in a zoom call, it's like you're waiting for a few people to come in late and things like that. But within a very short period of time, you're going to be stepping into the meeting. Now if it's run well, there's an agenda, there's an item. It's like, we're going to talk about this. We're going to talk about that. Especially if it's a meeting that has run by somebody, they sent you the agenda or you have an idea of what the topic is going to be. If you do, if they have spent the time to give you an agenda to let you know what the topic is going to be, if it's something that you have any idea of what it's about, you need to spend a few minutes before the meeting. So like if it's a nine o'clock meeting, let's say at eight 50, you need to stop and you need to start thinking about that meeting. Maybe make a couple of notes. Change your mindset. Think about what is it that needs to come out of this? What are your goals? What, as far as like, is there something you need to learn? Is there something that you need to pass on? Because it could be a status. It could be a general information gathering. There's so many reasons that we can have a meeting. But the thing is we want to be able to step into it with an attitude of like, okay, I'm at this meeting. I'm respecting the time of the people that are in it with me. And that means that I am trying to be on time as much as possible. And yes, I know meetings run late and we have those problems, which that'll be in advance. That'll be like bonus points in a little bit. I'll talk to you about that. But get in that meeting, pay attention, like set the phone down and stuff like that. Like if you're going to go in a meeting and you're going to sit there and check mail the whole time, find a way out of that meeting. Because if you're not, if you're, if you're just there to check mail or something like that, or you're just there to fill a, put a button, a seat, then find a way to spend the effort to get out of it because there's no sense in you doing that. Likewise, if you're a developer and you're getting pulled into a meeting and you've got an issue that, you know, something that you're tackling, particularly if it's like a production issue or something like that, beg out, say, Hey, I'm sorry, I've got something that I've got to do. Ideally don't do it at the last second. If you know it's coming or something like that, say, Hey, I'm not going to be able to get it. Let's move it. Let's reschedule it. That kind of stuff. If somebody says no, then there's sometimes you're going to be forced into a meeting that you really just can't avoid. Then do your best anyways, and then try to use whatever information you can there to feed being able to get out of the next one. For example, saying, Hey, look, we talked about A, B and C last time. All of this, I could have gotten from that person down the street that was in the meeting. And so I'm just going to get it from them because then I, we don't have to double up. Find a way to get out of the ones that you really aren't there for. You don't need to be in and be present in the ones that you are. Make sure that you're there, that you're paying attention, that you're following the agenda and that you're helping move it forward. And you're not in a situation where you're in a meeting. One of the other things you're not like that person that's like struggling through a whole bunch of stuff. That's not on the agenda because as a developer, we can get into little, we can go down rabbit trails all day long and we need to do our best while obviously the person running it should help us and say, Hey, table that not part of the agenda, but we can help ourselves and say, Hey, I'm realizing this is not on topic. Why don't I talk to whoever it is or can we schedule a follow-up or something along those lines? I think I'm going to go ahead and this point, because I'm going to come back and talk a little bit more specific about the challenge next. So I'm going to throw the meeting talking stick over to Michael for now. Thanks Rob. So I liked how you introduced the meeting prep and talk through all those points. I kind of want to talk about the opposite of that. If you do not go into a meeting prepared or you have been in these meetings. So if you don't do what Rob suggests, you're probably running into these meetings where you're having meetings about meetings where people essentially come into a meeting. They aren't prepared. They kind of flounder through the meeting. And next thing you know, you have another meeting about that meeting. And then you essentially go through more prep on that. And then another meeting. If you take the time, put the effort in before, make sure everyone that comes in, closes their laptops, turns off their phones, focuses on the meeting. The meeting is going to go smoothly. The other thing with meeting prep isn't necessarily just preparing for the meeting. But have someone take notes of the meeting. That way, those that aren't paying attention or those that can't make it, or those that just don't understand or have very limited attention spans, will go out of the meeting, forget what you said. And next thing you know, you have another meeting and you're repeating yourself again to a different group or the same group. Being prepared isn't just preparing the material. It's also making sure that the people present in the meeting are attentive, are focused on the topic, and are there to discuss the topic. If they don't know why they're there, they probably either don't need to be there or there wasn't enough prep to get them there. And they're going to spend more time in that meeting, essentially doing the prep, and then run out of time and have to go have yet another meeting. YAMM is one of the biggest deterrents in our careers. And with digital, I find it's even worse because there are so many times where I'm in a meeting and I watch my manager not paying attention. You can see him on camera. He's looking at a message. And next thing you know, what did you say? You can easily tell in digital meetings who's not present, who's not there. And it's worse when you don't turn on the camera. So one additional thing I'll throw out before I give it back to you is if you have to have virtual meetings, if you can try to encourage people to turn that camera on. Seeing people, seeing them be attentive, and if that camera has to be on, they tend to pay more attention because they know people are looking at them. Having the camera off, typically you'll see there's more distractions, less interactive in a meeting. You may see people less talkative or less engaged. So if you want to kind of spruce things up, get the camera on, make sure you get those agendas out before the meetings, make sure you take the notes. And then I don't want to say necessarily call out the bad actors in a meeting, but try to encourage people to turn off their messages like at the start of our podcast, I ensure that Rob has turned off his beepy little reminder thing. Do that going into a meeting. Not only that, use the Pomodoro. Don't schedule your meetings in our blocks if you have another meeting right after that. Make sure you give yourself some time. Try to follow the agenda and try to give people time for Q&A that doesn't run over. So I'll pass it back to you. So I think this takes us to an approach that I actually have somewhat done over the years, but haven't actually done it. So I was thinking about this as a challenge sort of to myself. And so I'm going this out to all of us. We have seen meeting agendas, I'm sure you can go out and Word or Pages or whatever, and you'll see like all these little templates for how to do meeting agendas. Or if you've got the old Franklin planner or something like that, you've got all of those out there. You also have summaries. And I think something that may help us, and so this is your challenge. In the next week, before you get into a meeting, just take at least, probably no more than 10, but at least five minutes before the meeting, open up a notebook, not an electronic notebook, like pencil and paper. And at the very least, put a date, a topic, and what are just two or three things that you think are going to be discussed. If there's only one thing, then put the one thing. The goal is you walk in there with a sheet of paper, somehow, that's got a little bit of writing on it about the meeting. And then it's sort of like a follow into this challenge is add to that during the meeting. Even if it is just we did one, two, three, even if it is, I need to remind Michael that he needs a haircut today or something like it could be something try to stay on topic, obviously to the meeting. But the goal is to take notes, is to go in there with the idea that you're going to take notes. Even if you sit down with a pad of paper and a pencil or pen, and you don't write down a single note, I have found that just doing that does help me focus more because I'm like, I'm here to pay attention. I'm here to pay attention to the meeting, not to pay attention to my phone or something else. Does that mean I never use my phone? No, but it does help. So it's like, let's try to like baby step our way out of this. And then at the end of it, when you get out of it, the wrap up to the challenge is just write a little summary. For example, action items, is there something I need to do? And that's usually the best thing for me if I'm really, even in the middle of like a requirements gathering or something like that. Well, requirements are too easy because I'm just taking notes all day long. If it's just like a general status meeting, that's a good one. If it's general status meeting where I'm not really there tonight, necessarily getting anything specific. One of the nice things is that I will have some action items that along the way I'll be like, oh, I need to check out this. Oh, I need to do this. Oh, I need to do that. Or, hey, I need to follow up on that. Give yourself something so that you have that task that you have something to do other than simply stand there or sit there during the meeting and occasionally interact is that you've got something now that if you're not doing a presentation or you're not being presented to, then this is going to help you. I think, you know, focus a little bit. What else will help you focus a little bit is sending us an email at info at developer.com because we're going to help you build better habits. You're going to say, you know what? I struggle with focus while I'm, I don't know, watching horse racing. And we're going to say, you know what? We're going to do a habit builder just on that. Now, if one of you sent it, I'm going to be really impressed if we can pull something like that off. We'll figure there's a world of the internets out there that we can figure out how to solve that. Talk about niching down a lot. That's what we can bring to the table. That being said, you can also bring to the table your opinions wherever you want to, whether it is through whatever your podcasting, your pod catcher application is, you can leave us feedback there and comments. You can reach out to us on our comment for contact us form on developer.com. We are out there on X at developer. There's a Facebook page. There is a YouTube. You can go out and see us on a developer there. We're just all over the place. So you just like yell out loud developer and then just follow it up with a message may not get to us, but it might. So it depends on where you're at. That being said, we're going to let you get back to it. So go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. You can subscribe on Apple podcast, 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.