Building Better Habits How Fun Habits Can Replace Bad Habits

Welcome to Building Better Developers, the Developer Nord podcast, where we work on getting better step by step, professionally and personally. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back. We are still here. We are Building Better Habits and we are just continuing to build better habits. We are Develop Nord. I happen to be Rob Brodhead, one of the founders of Develop Nord, Building Better Developers, and also a founder of RB Consulting, where we are what people refer to as a boutique consulting company. Our focus is helping you focus with the world of technology that's out there, is helping you find the best way to leverage the technologies out there, whether it's stuff that you already have, whether it's stuff that is out there and available that maybe you may not even know is out there that will help you do your job better, run your business better. Whether it's software or it could be teams or organizations or all kinds of stuff, it's basically helping you take that technology sprawl of people and services and applications, all kind of stuff, and through simplification, automation, integration, is find a way to refine that and make a really good, smooth running machine to help your business leverage technology instead of sort of have that tug of war with doing the technology versus actually better business and earning money and maybe even making your customers happy. Those kinds of things that sometimes we forget, those are the core part of why we do what we do. In the habits world, this one I'm not going to do a spoiler, I'll save that a little bit and talk about, because I'm going to talk about as we get into this episode and some of the habits, I do just want to go back a little bit and talk about the health habit of getting up and doing a little walking around and stuff like that and just finding a way to get away from your desk occasionally. One of the things that we stumbled across over the, I'll take credit for it, my wife actually found a Peloton, found it cheap and I know I'm like six years behind the curve on this or whatever it is, but it gives us a nice little bike that's something we can exercise with in the house and it's 15 minutes kicks our ass, so it's enough right now to just be like a good way to get out there and get a little sweat going, get your heart rate up and that kind of good stuff and having that habit of trying to do it just every day, the other day kind of thing, having a reminder of that has been very helpful from a habit point of view. Good thing, bad thing. Good thing is, the bad thing is we are now into, we're past the holidays and so there's a lot of stuff there and within that I had a lot of plans for the holidays that all went awry mostly because I had planned on taking two weeks off at the end of the year as I have in the past at times and as I also have in the past at times did not do it because work got in the way and so the bad thing was is that that time is sort of that that time is over, but the good thing is also that that time is over because now it was so chaotic it is nice to be able to get back into a regular schedule as it were and to look ahead, the year ahead and some of the things that are the plans that I've been working on in the last few months now getting to the execution point of that where I'm actually now taking those plans and executing on those. Another good thing is that Michael's across the internet for me as always. I'm going to let you introduce yourself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Molloch. I'm one of the founders of developer NURB, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help companies figure out what they need to make their software work for them. Too many companies today have Swiss Army Knife applications to try to help them do their work and typically they end up doing more work to make these apps work for them. We help you streamline that. We help you automate, integrate and essentially streamline your processes so that your apps work for you. You're spending more time doing what you enjoy, working on your business instead of working on the apps or trying to make the apps work for you. Good thing, bad thing. Again we're past the holidays like Rob said. A lot of good things. It kind of has stopped raining, although the bad thing is it's gotten cold so I'm having to worry about freezing pipes again. But it is nice to see the sun come out. So many days during the holidays, I don't know why this year, it was just so cloudy, it was so dreary. It was just like, I don't want to go outside. Now it's like, oh, it's sunny. Go outside. Hey, it's cold. Put on that big jacket. Talking about our habits for this season. You know, some of the things now that we're kind of in the new year and I don't want to get away too much, but one of the big things that got me through the holiday was working on planning, scheduling, trying to make sure that I was able to have some downtime, maybe not as much as I wanted, but to just try to stay focused. So I used the planning, the scheduling to work my way through that. The other thing that kind of got me into this a little bit more was breaking things down. So that kind of goes into the training thing. So we hit the end of the year. One of the things I typically like to do is I like to kind of reset what's new. What software tools do I use for development have been updated this year? You know, Java had another major release this year. So what new features are with that? You know, Django had some couple updates, Python. What is it that these applications or these frameworks have added that could either make my life easier or are going to make it harder because I may be five or six versions behind and, oh, that is a really neat feature, but what is it going to take to get me there? So that could be one of the struggles I need to work through. So good thing, bad thing. You know, again, it's a new year. Kind of look at your tools, look at your planning and also look at your skills. So I want to start with, this one I want to look at fun. I want to talk about building a fun habit. And this is one that is, again, sort of near and dear to my heart because it's fun. And it started with actually what the germ of this idea came from a conversation with a developer. They'll be unnamed. We'll just call him Mike, that realized that he liked doing a certain type of development and he hadn't done it in a while and got back to it. And I've done that a couple of times in the previous years where there's been something that had gotten away from me, something I didn't do as much that I used to do. One example was just reading fiction books. I think I've mentioned this before that I went through and started reading again. Programming is one of those or software development. There's so many areas as a developer that we can work in that sometimes we forget that there's certain things that we like to do. For myself, one of them is I like building software. I like solving the problems. I like finding a need for something and then finding a solution for that thing. And that's why I have almost a dozen, but a solid half dozen of side projects that have started that have been in various states because I was able to do stuff with them, took them to a certain point and then had to move on. So they're not necessarily, you know, I'm not going to say that they're not going to So they're not necessarily totally dead and languishing, but some level of that. And it's things like just maybe I haven't used them as much in a while. I moved on to something else. Well, this is what got me thinking about that is one of the things that I've started this year is I want to do every day. I've got a, and I think I've got seven of them. I've got at least six, but I'm going to go through every day. I'm going to spend just 15 minutes working on that app. And it's basically going to be to essentially to revitalize it to just once a week, basically touch each app. And it's as simple as like the first 15 minutes of each of these apps is like, where is it? How do I pull it down? Can I build it? Can I run it? Do I have a copy of the database? Those kinds of things is just sort of like resetting and then putting it out on like where do I want a server that I can reach it and not so it's not just sitting on a, you know, basically a deployment out to we'll call it production, whatever that happens to be and maybe even setting up a production environment. But then within that, how am I going to make this useful? Where do I want to go with it? How am I going to essentially take it to some level of completion, whether it's version one, version two, version 18, wherever it's at is basically like saying, all right, I want to have a software company of myself that I'm going to be moving these things forward because I like doing this. And this is part of it is like just doing that little bit every day is it's like a, you know, it's like the candy reward that I get at the end of the day or something like that or even at the beginning of the day. It's like, hey, I get to spend a little time doing this thing that I want. And that's what I'm going to go with with this one is the is the fun habits is think about what is something that you enjoy doing and set aside even 15 minutes. You can do 30 minutes. Great. You know, like gaming, if you're a gamer, 15 minutes may not be enough, but you don't want to do two hours because that may be too much. But, you know, there may be some time there. And this is something I'm even suggest I may even myself be like, I'm going to spend 15 minutes gaming or something like that. But pick something. And it's ideally do it at a certain time, like at the beginning of the day, maybe during your lunch break at the end of the day, at the end of the workday or something like that. And just be like, I am going to do this each day and do that fun thing. Now, you may already have some of these, so it may be easy for you to like adjust a little bit and add on top of those. But I think it's one of those things that we don't we can drift from the things that we enjoy doing and find an excuse to go do that thing. So if it's, you know, if you just love designing databases, then make it a point that you're going to find some little mini projects or something like that. Or maybe you're going to go back and look at databases you've built in the past and you're going to redesign those in a version two of the database or whatever the stuff is you like to do. Put that on your calendar and make that a daily thing that you're going to do so that you can build that habit of doing that fun thing. And I think you're going to find that not only are you making progress in whatever that fun thing is, developing those skills, whatever it is, it's also going to give you that little like extra reward jump to your step as you start your day or as you wrap up your day to be like, Hey, I made it through a day. Here's my reward. What are your thoughts on that? You can reward me, Michael, by giving me your thoughts on that. So it's a great idea, you know, talking about fun habits and you talked about reading fiction again. One of the things I've tried really hard to get back into is audio books because I really don't have, I used to like to read, but the problem I have there is as a developer, I actually spend more time reading technical documentation, reading software documentation. So to me, picking up a book for leisure nowadays is a little tedious. It's like, I need to rest my eyes. I need to kind of decouple. So I've gone back to audio books and one of the things I was bad about last year, but the years before that was I used to get through about an eight to 10 hour book a week. I tried to block out enough time to wear like maybe 15 minutes in the morning on the way to work or 15 minutes in the evening on the way back or just try to carve out about 30 minutes a day to where I could basically carve out a book a week. And that actually worked pretty well. I actually got through about 22 books one year of a combination of a variety of things. You just have to make sure that whatever it is you're listening to, it's enjoyable. So I did pick up some books that were not as enjoyable and I very quickly just put them down. So it is okay to start something and not finish it because if it's something you're not enjoying, why waste your time on that? Move on to something else. As Rob mentioned, one of the other things I like, I forgot I like to do because I've been doing back end development for so long, is I like designing applications. I like building UIs. I like building mobile apps. I like all this fun presentation kind of work. And so I find myself picking up some things right now, building some components, playing around with web pages. I love that. That also got me back into one of the habits we talked about last year was like the kitchen sink app, building our software libraries. So one of the habits I'm trying to really get back into now is as I do something or even if it's fun or whatever, I want to make sure that if I write something, it gets into that code library. It gets in that kitchen sink code repository in an organized way so that instead of me searching like stack overflow or the web, I can just go, hey, look through my little kitchen sink app file folder and say, hey, I've already got this. Let me just pull this in. Let me refresh it. Run with it. Saves me time, builds me tools. And who knows? You may have a library of modules or features that you can just say, hey, I can pick and choose here. I have an application in a day or two. So over time, that's essentially what you end up with. And the other thing I kind of want to get back to is my kind of test, automated testing tool that I built a couple years ago. I really enjoyed that, really dived into that. And in fact, I was so involved in that that I was spending probably about 40 hours a week on top of multiple jobs and things. It's like that was just so much fun. But if you overdo it, if you overaccess in some of these fun habits, you burn out and you don't want to burn out something fun. You want to keep it fun. So as you're working through these habits, make sure that you are checking yourself. Make sure that you are not overdoing it, just like, you know, eating, just like drinking. Don't go into excess. Try to keep it within that happy medium. If you find yourself going into excess, OK, how do I tailor it back? You know, how do I chop it back up into those 15 minutes periods or hour periods? You pay upon what it is that you're working on. So the testing tool is one of them. I'm trying to integrate my ideas for that test automation in everything I'm doing right now. I may not be applying it right now, but I am kind of building a checklist of, oh, hey, this is an idea. I can automate this, add it to the list. So it gets back into all the things we talked about in the building better habits last year. I'm applying it essentially to the test automation. So it's like, oh, how can I automate this? So there's automation. I'm building a list. I'm scheduling. I'm planning ahead. So as you're doing these fun habits, you can kind of take a look at what we've already talked about for other habits. And how can you apply it to your fun habit to make it fun, enjoyable and make sure that you stick with it, that make sure that you continue to have fun in your day and reduce the stress from other factors like your day job? Yeah, I think this is and we talked about anti habits in the past episode. I think this is one of those where it is a it is some of this is finding those things as these are those positive habits, those things that really entertain us and make us happy. And this may be a perfect one to replace the thing that doesn't, you know, that is a negative kind of habit. So it could be something like, for example, I had a rough week. I was like, I just like I'm ready for like beer and wings. I'm just ready to go out and do that kind of thing. Yeah. And it's something like that where you may do that. You may have a comfort food that you're like, hey, I'm going to go have something to eat. But maybe instead of that, you have this other thing. So it's like maybe instead of that, I'm going to go play a game for 30 minutes or I'm going to go for a jog or I'm going to go for, you know, I'm going to go. Whatever it is, I'm going to go build this thing. I'm going to work on a puzzle, whatever it happens to be that you can be. You can take those things that are our various coping mechanisms and take the ones that maybe we don't need to do as much or that we do too often. And replacing those with things that are that are healthier and that are better. That will wrap this. Well, actually, this will not wrap this one up because first I got to throw a challenge at you. So the challenge this time is got way ahead of myself. I was having too much fun. Got to focus. Challenge this week is one we're going to start with today. What is it that you enjoy doing? What is something that like looking ahead today, you could just say it would be really cool if I could spend 15 minutes or a half hour doing this. This would make me happy. This is something that is like maybe even a little mini goal for the day. And then make that your goal for the next seven days. Is it each day I want you to do that. You have the you have my permission. Whoever asks you, Rob from Building Better Developers said I can do this. It's not going to help you at all, but hey, it's just good to throw it out there. They'll confuse them. Trust me. It's go to this as every day. Spend 15, 30 minutes, whatever it is to do that fun thing. Do that positive thing. And I think what you're going to find, even if you have to make time to do it, I think you will find that it will be worth it. I like when I did this years and years and years ago, I had something I was doing and I took away like I actually ended up getting up 15 minutes earlier each day. So I could spend 15 minutes doing this and the 15 minutes of sleep that I lost was more than rewarded by doing that thing. It was something I looked forward to and helped me get out of bed, helped me get going. It really was a beneficial thing to do. So definitely give that a shot. See how that goes for the next week and let us know. As always, you can shoot us an email at info at developer.com. You can reach out on Facebook on X. X we're at developer.com. You go to the developer page, developer.com. We have contact us forms. You can leave feedback on any of the blog articles that are out there, any of the articles that are there that are pointing to the podcast and the video stuff. You go out to the developer channel out on YouTube and you can find this and many, many, many other videos from us over the years. Leave us feedback there. Wherever you consume your podcasts, leave us feedback there. We're available. We're happy to hear that and just that helps us build a better podcast for building you better developers. That being said, we're going to wrap this one up and have a better day ahead of us. Hopefully, 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 to develop a new 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. Thank you.