Goal Setting and Habits: The Keys to a Productive New Year

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 Happy New Year. It is 2025. Wow. That's like, again, just sort of mind boggling to somebody like myself. We are back. We are building better developers. We are developing more. This is a new year, not a new season. This is just a special episode. We will get back into our building better habits episodes and wrapping up that season. Next episode first, as you may have noticed, once again, that note to Michael that we've got a nice little like jingle at the front for the new year, cheering it on because here we are, we've made it into yet another year. And as it being another year, it is also a good time for us to, as everybody does, they look at New Year's resolutions and what are they going to do and how am I going to set myself up so that when I get to 2026, January, early January, I'm in a lot better place than I am, or at least a better place than I am this year. And as always, one of the things is we talk about like incremental steps and things like that. So that's what's going to be our focus in this special episode. But first, I'm going to get all like self-focused and talk about myself a little bit. I want to introduce myself. I'm Rob Broadhead. I'm one of the founders of Develop-a-Noor, also founder of RB Consulting, where we are boutique consulting kind of an operation where we go in and we help organizations do business better based on the technologies they have. We help you leverage your technology, avoid the pain of technology sprawl and find ways through simplification, automation, integration. We find ways to allow you to use your tools better, be more of a process-driven, you know, lean kind of an organization that is actually getting the most bang for their buck out of their IT infrastructure investments. Good thing, bad thing. Let's see, good thing is, I'll start with a bad thing because this one's just been frustrating. Bad thing is merging code. I hate, sometimes merging code branches is a piece of cake and it's just like you click a button, it's like, boom, everything's merged. And sometimes you click a button and boom, everything blows up in your face. I am in the latter part of that, hence the bad thing is I've just been like, and it's been annoying little things and getting all of the merge tools to work right so I don't lose work that I've done. And I have lost work I've done a couple times and had to like roll stuff back and go find it. So not a lot of good there. But a good thing for me is that I have, even though like, so you have to like roll it back a little bit because I'm currently before New Year's. I know you guys had a great New Year's. I am planning on right now having a good year's because we actually have New Year's plans. We got all that kind of stuff set. We have our reservations and all the things. So good thing is that I got that stuff done before New Year's. So when you're actually listening to this, I'm probably hanging out going, wow, I had a great New Year's. So that's my good thing. Looking ahead, actually, I guess just looking across the internet, it's time for me to go ahead and introduce Michael. Go ahead and introduce everybody. Hey, everyone. My name is Michael Milosz. I'm one of the founders of developer NURB, Building Better Developers. And I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we help companies build better software through test driven development approaches, writing more unit testing, integration testing, and essentially driving development through testing so that you know that what your code that you're writing is supposed to do before you do it. That way, when you write the code, you can test the code. It also helps companies improve their brand because when software works, customers are happy. That is where we come in. Good and bad thing. So similar to Rob's, not so much with merges, but my bad, so to speak, is people committing code without the proper testing involved. So it's like, oh, yeah, my code works. I merge it. I don't retest it. I push it up and everything breaks. Don't like that. On the good side of things, though, if take that as a lessons learned, we have worked with the developers to bring them back up to speed. Make sure you check your code. And we're implementing steps to ensure that doesn't happen. That is where Envision QA comes in. And kind of looking ahead for this year, post, so as Rob mentioned, we're doing this before New Year's plans. So New Year's plans, I'm hoping we've got some plans to get out to the river. Hopefully the weather will participate. When you see this, we'll be hopefully enjoying some time on the river. Well now we have to go back to work, though. While we're looking towards the end and towards these, you know, this holiday ahead of us, where you guys are at, where we will soon be is into the beginning of the year. And we need to look at what are we going to do in the year ahead? That's what's our focus going to be for this holiday special is we're talking a little bit about setting goals. Now we do this every year. We've talked about setting goals for a long time. And just to reiterate, there is a, I'll say there's like tiers of goals or, you know, like levels of goals that we always want to focus on is that we have our long-term career roadmap, lifetime goals and things like that. And then we've got our, you know, a little more smaller, usually then you drop down to like annual goals. Like what do I want to get done this year? And then quarterly goals. And then even within that, you know, monthly and then maybe even down to weekly and daily goals that they should all eventually roll up. And we talked in last episode about doing things that make you happy, doing the things that energize you versus the things that drain you. And I think that's one of the things I really want to, you hopefully have already started into setting some goals and working on those at this point. But I want to make sure that you just sort of like revisit that and make sure like, did I do a good job because this is a great time to adjust. Now the other thing is, is you set these goals hopefully, and you've got some goals as you step into this year. And we talked so much about the incremental and we talk about actually in this season that we're in the middle of, the podcast season, not like, you know, that it's the middle of winter right here. The podcast season, we talk about building better habits. This is a perfect time for you to build some better habits is to take a look at those goals that you've set for yourself or you are setting for yourself as you start the year and try to start it right. And everybody knows this, but that's why everybody on like, you know, New Year's Day, January 2nd, January 3rd, the like the gyms are filled because there is like, I'm going to work out today. And then like a day later, like, I'm not going to get up this early or whatever it is. And they skip it. You're the key is, yeah, you can miss one here and there, but never miss two in a row. I heard that when they were talking about micro habits and I think that is a key is like, yeah, life, life will interrupt. But if you have to miss it for a day, the come hell or high water, make it that next day is get yourself back on track. Now here, this year, it's a little bit weird because of where New Year's fell and you've got a weekend and some stuff like that. So it's actually a perfect time for you to really focus on as you're sort of coming out of this holiday season is focus on getting that, getting those tasks done each day, whatever those goals are that you've set is let's, let's start chipping away at them. Even if it's something that feels like, so you're going to do the second half of the year maybe is like, what do I need to do to position myself so that when I get to that point, that I get to that point that I'm able to focus on it, let's start taking a look at what is out there that we can do today. And you don't have to do a lot. It's not like you have to spend half your day working on these goals, but I think it is very useful to spend even five or 10 minutes working on these goals, touching them, moving them forward so that tomorrow you're further ahead than you were today. I think that's going to be more important than your, whatever the goals are that you set is making sure that you have a, you have yourself set up to be successful in those goals. And that doesn't mean that you like lower your goals to a level that it's like, okay, I can just like fall out of bed and achieve this goal. It is that you set yourself up for success, that you start moving forward, you start making the steps that you need to do, do the work that is required to get there. For example, I have got lots of stuff ahead of me in the year. There's like a lot of things that I need to do. There's a lot of boxes I need to check off. And most of those are things that are sort of like big tasks in themselves. So I can't do it in one shot, but what I am going to be doing is prepping for a lot of that, is trying to make sure that I'm in a good position when I get to that point, that I don't have other things that are going to distract me, that I've got all my ducks in a row, that I've got all of the prerequisites taken care of and things like that. And so I'm going to sit down. One of the things I'm going to do is have my little roadmap of like, here's some of the things I need to do. That's like, here's the sort of my timeline. And then I back that up and say, okay, if I'm going to get this done by this date, then I need to have these things done by this date. And I need to get these things done today to get myself moving towards that so I'm not effectively studying for the final exam all night the day before the final exam. So more importantly than setting your goals and choosing your goals to me is getting yourself situated and getting yourself into that mindset that you can succeed with those goals. And now my goal is to take another sip of tea. And I'm going to pass it on to Michael because see right there, very good incremental step I've made success. Nice segue. Yeah. Looking at this year, especially for a lot of you listening or watching, one of the biggest things we've talked about a lot with, you know, building better habits and even in the last episode, you know, taking small steps in incremental steps is a lot of the reasons why the whole idea of people, you know, joining gyms at the beginning of the year, trying to lose weight. A lot of the cultural mentality that has been driven into us is very quick rewards. You know, we're looking for quick results to actions. You know, it's like, oh, I've got to lose 30 pounds. Let me hit the gym. I should lose 30 pounds by the end of the week. That is very unrealistic. So as you are putting together your goals or you're planning to do something, make sure that it is not just realistic, but also something that's a little challenging. So while yes, you want to lose weight, you may not lose 30 pounds in a week, but instead of losing half a pound a week, you can try to lose two pounds a week, you know, set the goal that is a little reasonable, but challenging because we want to challenge ourselves. We don't want to get complacent. The other problem with the whole idea of losing weight or, you know, not getting things done is we try to take off too much at one time or like I said, you know, with that losing weight, it's like, I want to lose 30 pounds by the end of the week. That's just not realistic. If I want to lose a half a pound, okay, so I cut back a little bit of food. If I want to get, lose more weight or get more done. So you're going to have to do, I'll eat a lot less food, but don't starve yourself because if you starve yourself, then you get other consequences essentially to your actions. And the reason I started with that is in software development, there are consequences to our actions as well as benefits. So if we go into a project, we set a goal that, Hey, I want to learn like Amazon cloud. I want to get certified in that. that you give yourself enough time to achieve this goal in a manner that you're not going to burn out. You're not going to quit. You're not going to just throw the rage quit, throw that book across the room and never get certified. You need to give yourself enough time. Now for me, that may be like an hour a day for you. It might be 15 minutes a day, just reading a little bit at a time or going online, doing some sample questions, things of that nature. So what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other, but you need to pace yourself. You need to kind of maybe put some checks and balances in place for your goal setting so that as you're going through it, through the year, through the months, whatever that you are doing in a way that is both mindful of your mental state and that you're still achieving that goal, that you're still moving forward so that by the end you feel accomplished. You've done it. You've completed that goal and you're not seeing there at the end. Why the hell did I do this? Oh, I'm never going to touch this again. I hate this. We have all been there. I've run into that quite a bit. I've rage quit video games more than once and I've never gone back, but that's what you want to avoid. It's like check yourself, maybe do it daily, maybe write a list, maybe set weekly reminders. As you're doing this, as you're going through that journey of building better habits, of working through your goals for the year, make sure that you are keeping yourself healthy. Make one of your goals is to self check. Make sure your mental state complies with what you're trying to do because if you start getting depressed, you start getting angry, you're not going to achieve those goals. You're going to start going off track and probably quit. Be mindful of what you're trying to accomplish. Be mindful when things do go wrong and things can go wrong. You may go on a bender and eat a dozen donuts when we can gain 10 pounds back. That's okay. That's just a setback. Setbacks are fine. Quitting is not fine. Getting yourself into a position where I think I can't do it because I'm telling myself I can't do it is different than, hey, whoops, I had a bad day. Let me reset tomorrow, get back on track and keep moving forward. That whole incremental thing we've been talking about. Set your goal, stick to it, take small steps to achieve it, but make sure you keep to it. If you have a bad day, that's okay. Keep moving forward. Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing is that, under is going into this stuff. We know there's going to be setbacks. It's just allowing those setbacks to occur and just saying, okay, it was a setback, reset and start moving forward again the next day. Sometimes it can take a while. Sometimes it's going to be something where it's like you get a setback and then you get another setback and you get another setback because you're learning, you're struggling. There's something like that. It's like find a way to get back to it. It is. It's going to come down to determination. Even if you're walking into a wind, as long as you're still trying to move forward, eventually the wind will die down and you'll be able to move forward again. That may not be a great analogy, but it's one of those things where it's like we need that incremental work. Sometimes the incremental work that you did today was that you found that maybe you're trying to solve a problem and you have to incrementally work your way through it. Maybe all you found today was that that's not a way to solve the problem. At least you have one less thing to try as you move forward. It's finding a way to, it really is to keep yourself in check and also to keep yourself with a realistic mindset of like, well, hey, at least I did make some effort on this. I got some work in it and maybe it didn't pay off as much as I wanted it to, but at least I made the effort and I'm still building the habits of doing that task, whatever that happens to be or working towards whatever that goal is. Definitely, we push and push and push and we talk about all the time about being better, being better, being better. It should not be exhausting to be better every day. It should be something that you can do in a way that is you just saying like, hey, here's a little thing that I'm going to try a little different or I'm going to do a little different or I'm going to just do it again because that will make me better. Simple things like maybe doing 10 pushups a day. I'm just going to do 10 pushups again tomorrow because then, or I did them yesterday. I'm going to do 10 pushups today and then maybe somewhere down the road. Now I can do 15 or I can do 20 or I suddenly realized that I can do 10 a lot faster and a lot easier than I used to. It's just things like that. Sometimes just the repetition itself is going to help so you don't have to necessarily like push yourself to do more. Sometimes doing the same over a period of time is going to end up helping you. Just like saving money. If you save a dollar a day at the end of the week, you're going to have $7 saved. If you try to push yourself and say, well, now I'm going to do $1 and then I'm going to do $2 next day and $3 next day, yes, you will advance faster, but that may exhaust your budget. You want to make sure that you, which is I think a pretty good analogy of it's like you only have, you've got a limited resource of your energy, your time and things like that. So don't try to race to the end. Sometimes it's slow and steady wins the race and you need to just sit there and just allow your time to build, momentum to build and your capabilities to build so that you can cross that finish line and accomplish that goal. One of the goals I think you should set is to send us an email. Just one. Just send us an email this year. And you know what? You could accomplish that right now. You could go out there. You could shoot an email out to info at developerneur.com. You could tell us, hey, guess what? I just checked something off of my list this year. I accomplished a goal. You could even say it was a major goal. Because not a lot of people send us email. More people could. You are in a select few. You are one of the few, one of the proud and we'll even send you a reply back to give you that. Maybe we'll figure out a way to like create your little certificate that was like, hey, I sent an email. Okay. That maybe is going too far. Maybe I crossed the line. So that we're going to ratchet back that goal. But you can also reach us by leaving us comments here, leave us feedback. You can check us out at developerneur.com. You can follow us at developerneur.com. You can go out to our Facebook page and leave feedback there. All of these different places that we are at. You can also follow us. You can see the latest episodes. You can check out podcasts, video stuff out on YouTube on developerneur.com channel. And just tons and tons of content. So if there's something out there that you're looking for, I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't covered that at some point. Because I actually use our site more often than not to just go like, you know, oh yeah, how did we do that? And sure enough, it's somewhere out there on a blog article. That being said, we're going to wrap this one up. And I want to wish you a happy new year. Next episode, we are right back into building better habits. So enjoy your little like time off here before we're going to be like pound, pound, pound. Let's get going forward again. But we're going to try to do it in a way that allows you to be energized and not drained. We'll see how this works out. That being said, go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week. And we will talk to you next time.