Habit Review for Developers- Boost Productivity and Build Better Workflows

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. Well, hello and welcome back. We are continuing and getting close to the end of our season of Building Better Habits. We are Building Better Developers. We are Developer Noir. I am Rob Brodhead, one of the founders of Developer Noir, Building Better Developers but also a founder of RB Consulting. And that is a boutique, as they call it, consulting group where we help you leverage technology. We take all of the stuff that's out there, your technology sprawl, we talk to you about your specific needs, and we build, essentially we build a custom recipe for you, for your business with the tools that you need, how to use them, whether it's through integration, simplification, automation, innovation, all of those shuns that are out there in a good way. We take a look at all of those things and we find a way to help you do a better job with technology and help it be sort of like you're, you know, something riding shotgun with you instead of something holding a gun to your head. Good things, bad things. I'm going to do this one. This will be a nice simple one because lately my wife has started working with me. Enough said. Good thing and a bad thing. There is good and bad out of both of the, out of that. And so whatever you're dealing with, like family members, close friends, stuff like that at work, like all of you guys can understand and gals can understand that there are some good things involved with that, but there can also be some extra challenges. So it is definitely a unique relationship to have both from your personal side because of however you personally relate to them. And then of course from your professional side because of however you relate to them professionally. Habits. Since we're getting towards the end, I just want to say that the, this has been actually very beneficial to me across the board. The habits that we have brought up, the things that we have done, the challenges that we have had. And I think particularly because it, it did go over the holiday period, so it allowed some extra time for a little burn in a little bit, a little bit of, you know, baking in some of those habits. It really has been a refreshing season for me. Hopefully it is something for you guys as well as you have experienced some of these challenges that you have developed, maybe some habits and maybe even learned a little bit about yourself. Now it's time for you to learn a little bit about Michael, who is on the other side. Go ahead and introduce yourself. Hey everyone. My name is Michael Milosz. I'm one of the co-founders of DevelopNR, Building Better Businesses. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we help small to mid-sized businesses, medical offices essentially revisit what their software does for them. You know, is their business software really helping them do their job? Is it a helpful process or a hindrance? One of the best advantages that we can come and bring to your table is we can help streamline your processes and even introduce software or customize software for you that really streamlines your whole business. We can almost not necessarily completely automate everything, but we can help streamline the process of the moment your employees sit down, they're actually ready to work, not looking for work, trying to find things on their computer. They basically know what they need to get done and they just go through their tasks and get it done. So by the end of the day, you know what's been done, what's been completed and what's ready for tomorrow. Good thing, bad thing, good thing. Wife made it back safely from California. Wildfires did not get her bad thing. While she was out there, she had a head cold, which she brought back and thankfully I did not get it. Habits. So this season of Habits has been wonderful for me. It's helped me really refocus and stay on task for a lot of things. We've talked a whole lot about the Pomodoro technique. I unfortunately, unlike Rob, am not able to really stick to that as much as I like. Unfortunately, life and things keep pivoting me, but my lists really, really help. Being a list of what I really need to get done, the important things I need to get done in the day, I make sure I do those first as soon as I can get them done because life happens and then I'm not struggling and stressing at the end of the day that I didn't get the critical things done. And if I don't want to do it, it gets done and then it's off my plate and I'm not stressing anymore, which also leads to kind of that helpful taking the time to be mindful, you know, stepping aside, work on my anxiety, work through the what ifs and get those off my plate. Again, those lists really help you write it down and then you focus on how do you get it, you know, how do you make it not a problem? Is it really a problem? You just work through it and get it out of the way. And I will pass it back over to you, Rob. Uncomfortable pause there for a second. I was actually, I was looking at our list because I want to go back and in this episode we want to recap a little bit. And I was looking at the list of things that goes back actually a couple of months now. It was just thinking like sort of a little bit of revisiting some of the topics that we've talked about because for one, we have just gone through, we've basically thrown out roughly 30 habits and challenges over the last few months. That can feel a little bit overwhelming. Trust me, I'm with you with that because I've been going through these as well. I've been working on these. I've been trying to particularly as they start to stack up, remember there's like, oh yeah, I'm working on this habit as well as that habit and that habit and that habit. First off, if you've gotten close to that, if you've gotten even a third of them, go and give yourself a little high five because you have made progress. Even just a handful, just a couple of habits, if you have developed these habits, probably are going to make you a better developer, maybe a better person, better professionally and things like that. I do want to highlight, hit on some, revisit a couple of them that I think are worth revisiting for various reasons. The first one I want to talk about is actually where we started. We talked about security awareness way, way, way, way back. It seems like way, way back anyways. It's just a few months ago, but we talked about that and developing a security awareness habit of just doing a regular check-in to make sure that your systems are secure, that you are keeping up with what are the latest hacking techniques and stuff like that. I want to make sure that we, that is one of those that we should do on a regular basis. Just to remind you, if you haven't thought about it since that week, it's probably a good time. Maybe do a quarterly checkup or something along those lines. The Pomodoro technique, as Michael mentioned, is something I cannot, it was actually episode two, we started talking about that. I cannot emphasize enough how much more effective that has been for me in trying to do just initially one and then two or three Pomodoros a day, as opposed to entirely switching my schedule over to that. Doing a sort of half tomato, half a smaller bite of doing the Pomodoro technique, much like many other things we've talked about, simplifying it and cutting it down to something instead of doing the whole thing, but taking little bites has turned out to be very, very effective for me. I also found that it has been a great excuse for me to utilize some of the focus apps and things like that. I'll put my headphones on, get one of those nice little focus music things going, played around with that a little bit. The app that I use is one that has varying types of focus. It's like, are you trying to be creative? Are you trying to just get some work done? Is it light work? Is it hard work? Is it artistic work? Is it for memory? Blah, blah, blah. I've been playing around with those as well to really even more so heighten those Pomodoros that I'm trying to pick up along the way on a regular basis. That one has turned out to be, I think, a highly useful habit. Another one that I think, I think the getting things done kind of challenges and habits that are out there, I think, are going to be very effective for you. For example, as Michael mentioned, building up, creating a list, doing things like the eat the frog is making sure that you take on the things that you don't want to do sooner rather than later. Automation is something. There's all these things that any one of them is an incredibly valuable habit. I just want to reiterate that even if, as a whole, this seems like too much, go ahead and just browse back through some of the topics that we've covered and some of the habits and the challenges and maybe go back and listen to one again or go back and just listen, go like, oh yeah, I didn't really tackle that challenge. Why don't I give that one a shot? Because I think you will find that that will improve you just as it would have then. It will help you now. It's one of the things that it may be too much as you've been going through a couple challenges a week. But now that we've spread out, maybe it's time that you go back and pick up a couple of those habits and see where those take you. So your thoughts on this season, Mike? So yeah, this season, like you said in the beginning, I think one of the best things and we didn't intend for this to happen was for this season really to run through the holidays. We came up with, you know, for those of you that watch the YouTube videos, we kind of come up with some of our topics pre-meeting. We flush out kind of the ideas for what we want to do for the season. And we came up with the idea, so we went through the behind the scenes last season and this season we wanted to focus on the next step as developers. What can we do to improve ourselves? So we came up with habits. A lot of the things we've walked through this season aren't just habits that we ourselves always use because as you've heard, you know, it's like, oh, we didn't think about that or we didn't do that. It's always good to kind of reset where we're at in life, where we're at in our businesses or where we're at even in our growth through being an employee or just through work or life. A lot of the habits that we talked about, like automation, you know, that is critical today. You know, as we move into this world of AI, really understanding automation, getting things done becomes more important because we are now kind of under that microscope of what other industries have been for years of automation. So AI is going to help speed up that automation process. So you're going to need to really start focusing on automation. But in the same token, by automating things, we're removing the redundancy and that is helping us look at other habits to improve our other process, improve ourselves, improve our life. And that is really the goal of this season is to take these habits and embrace them, find what works for you and put them together in a way that you can structure your days, your weeks, your years and continue on that development journey to become a better person. So some of the things, you know, this season we've talked about that were really a couple episodes back, which were really dear to me was, you know, managing anxiety and stress. So, life, we have things that come up that makes us anxious and stressful. But if you don't know how to address that or identify that, you are going to struggle. And that's where a lot of the things we cover here this season, I think are very helpful. And if you have missed any of these, go back through and revisit past episodes because, Breaking bad habits, our anti habit pattern, there may be things you do that aren't good, not good in life and not good in business or not good for relationships, be it your spouse or friends or coworkers. And you want to make sure that you're always moving that dial forward and through better habits and better processes, you're going to get there. It's not something you just do overnight. That is, I mean, we're some 30 episodes in. I mean, this is not something that I mean, that's what 15 hours of habits that took time to even cover that. But then you add the challenges. So this is not something like a quick fad diet. You can't just, you know, chug a couple and hey, I've got it. No, it's something you do have to work at. But you can pick three or four of these habits and enforce them by doing them every day. And you're going to find that, hey, at the end of a week, you will see some improvements. You're going to see small incremental improvements over time. And then suddenly you're going to be like, wow, six months ago, I was here. Now I'm here. And a year or two from now, you might be here. But you will have stumbling blocks along the way. It's just like a diet. You're going to have cheat days. You're going to have skip days. But try not to go too far off the habit train and just, you know, stick with it. I think that's the key is the stick with it piece. I mean, that's really what it's really what a habit is all about. It is about doing it. And it goes back to we've talked about this many times about the idea of incremental improvement and how that you can just like, you know, it's the whole journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. But then you take another step and another step. And that's how the habits are as well is that you just build on it. It's a little bit each day. I don't know how many of these habits are minutes out of a day, but doing that day after day after day does build up quite a bit of distance into, you know, development and into whatever that thing is that you're trying to tackle. And it's amazing what that stuff can do over time. And so it's just a, I think there's a good point to just sort of give yourself a pat and say, hey, if you've taken on any one of these challenges, then even if it didn't work for you, at least you've learned what doesn't work for you. I think that is probably one of the greatest lessons learned for me in the last, I don't know, really probably throughout my career, but definitely in the last 20 years of me trying to, as I've really focused on becoming a better developer, becoming better at what I do is figuring out what I don't do well and figuring out what doesn't work well for me. Because you can go out and you can hear a lot of different recommendations. You can, there's all kinds of, you know, start your day early, start your day late, eat this, drink that, do this, do that, all these things that you can do. And they all have some level of value because they will work for some of us some of the time. And some, you know, maybe all of us occasionally and, you know, maybe none of us, not very often or however you want to mix that. But it is about finding out what works for you. And there may be things that we do that we're like, hey, this has worked really well. Like, for example, the Pomodoro technique is it has worked really well for me. It hasn't worked well for Michael because of just where we're at. Now this, a couple of things I will just say is that like, there may be something that didn't work for you five years ago that will work for you now. And there may be something that has worked for you, but now no longer does. Because sometimes we get into a rut or something like that where we just, it doesn't fit where we are right now. And so don't let that discourage you. But instead just sort of realize that, okay, well, that's something that doesn't work for me or doesn't work for me now. You can always revisit it later, but the key is like, find the things that do work for you, the things that do help you become a better developer and embrace those. And as you get better at those, as those become essentially second nature to you, then you can add on other habits and you can try to grow in other ways. You don't have to grow into a mighty oak tomorrow. It takes time. And that's okay if you're testing your way along there. If you were like, look at some of the most effective people out there. They did not just pick something and go. They have almost always had several failures and several things that they tested along the way to make sure what works for them and what doesn't. And a lot of times they will even caution you and say, well, yeah, this works for me, but it didn't initially. Or it only works for me because I had to combine this other thing. Whatever it is, take everything essentially with a grain of salt, take a look at how it may help you. And if it doesn't work for you, feel free to throw it out. I think the beauty of the way we've set up these challenges is it's just seven days. It probably isn't going to... In seven days, you're not going to build an actual habit. You're going to usually need more like a month or two of doing it. But at least it gives you going through the motion for a short period of time and figure out does that work for you or does it not? Again, I will just hit one more time as we wrap this one up. I think a good example for me was the pomodoro. We started out with just one a day and I realized that that was very helpful to me and then actually went to two. And that's sort of like two to three is probably like my sweet spot. There's like a couple of things that like it allows me to focus on a couple of things I really want to focus on. It actually sort of hits on the do the things, getting things done each day sort of like. It's not necessarily the things I don't want to do. It's not necessarily eating the frog, but it may be. And it's a way to spend a focused time and do the thing that I don't want to do. Closing thoughts before we wrap this one up. I'll throw out kind of a personal journey example with this kind of as a parting thought. For those of you just starting out on your journey, be it in development, be it in your career, whatever. You're going to need to kind of look at everything. You may have to drink from the fire hose for a while so it can be overwhelming. Habits are like that as well. There's a lot of things out there that you can do to make improvements. The thing is, unless you go look and at least try everything, you don't have to consume the whole cake, but just take a bite out of everything. Find out what you like, what you don't like, and then you can pair them up and kind of build the tool suite you need to become a better developer or whatever it is that you do in your job. The same goes with habits. If you try each one of the tips and habits that we talked about, find out what works for you, find out what doesn't work, and then the question is, ask yourself, why doesn't it work? Is it just not the right tool for me now? Then maybe make a list and go through it again in six months, in a year. Habits are not something that you just start and forget about. Habits are something that you continuously review, continuously grow, and you do have to revisit from time to time because sometimes life, your job, may make it so that certain habits just cannot work. You may be in a particular position or job where you are stuck in meetings from eight to five or nine to six. You just may not have a choice, but you can make small tweaks in other ways to improve your daily lives through habits. I think that's a good point for us to spot for us to wrap this one up. We're going to come back and do one more episode, and we're going to sort of recap and talk a little bit about where we're going and a little bit more revisit the habits and why we do them, and then talk maybe a little bit about where we're going in the next season because we still haven't quite figured that one out. That being said, we're very welcome. We're always very happy to get any kind of feedback from you guys. Email us at info at developer.com. Email us there. You go out to developer.com site. You can leave us any sort of on the contact us form. You can lead us feedback on any of the podcast episodes, YouTube episodes out on the developer channel on YouTube. You can shoot us something on X at developer.com, Facebook page, the developer page there. However you get us feedback, we're happy to hear it and any recommendations, suggestions that you have as we move forward. That being said, we will wrap this one up and let you get back to your day. So 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 developer 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.