Why Habits Matter - Unlock Peak Productivity and Success

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 coincidentally enough wrapping up this season of Building Better Developers, Developer Noir Podcast. This season has been about building better habits. Hopefully, we've built quite a few. By we, I mean all of us. I know I have. I know Michael has. Hopefully, the rest of you guys have joined in and got some better habits along the way as well. I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Rob Brodhead, one of the founders of Developer Noir, also a founder of RB Consulting, where we go out there and help you wrangle technology. We help you figure out that technology sprawl when you're looking out over the wild, wild there in your business and you're wondering where should I spend money? Where did I spend money? Wrong. Where do I need to leverage what I've already done? Through simplification, automation, innovation, integration, we find ways with you, we craft your special recipe for your business to take all that technology out there and leverage it so that you can best use it for your business. It is a unique fit for everybody. It's just like a custom suit. You can go out and you can get low-end clothes that sort of fits everybody to some extent, but not real well. Or you can spend a little bit more money and you can have something that is a tailor-made, custom fit. With technology, you're already spending a lot of money. Let's make sure that you're spending money in a way that gives you that custom fit instead of an outfit that you throw in the closet and never want to be seen in. Enough of that analogy. As we wrap up this season, I just want to, I can't, I have time and again mentioned how the Pomodoro Hobbit has helped me. I think another one that is like right up there with a 1A and a 1B is the doing what you love, is going back and making sure that you regularly touch whatever that thing is that you do that gives you joy. Whether it is a little bit of exercise, whether it is a specific type of project, whether it is, and it don't have to do a lot. It's just a little, and especially because I've actually been through a season of being very, very busy, having a lot of stuff going on, but just that 10, 15 minutes a day really does help keep you sane, basically. Good things, bad things. I'm going to take it on a little bit of a higher level. Good thing is that we are wrapping up another season, that we have gotten through yet another season. This was originally just sort of a one-off kind of thing way, way back when I created the development or website. Then later it became something I was like, hey, this could probably be a good little podcast for a while. Now we are actually approaching getting into the neighborhood of a thousand episodes out there. It's good that we have just continued on, that we're getting through another season, but it's also bad because we are wrapping up the season and we're going to have to dive into the next one. Another thing that's good is that I have a co-host on the other side, so I'm going to let Michael introduce himself. Hey, everyone. My name is Michael Mollosch. I'm one of the co-founders of Development NURB, Building Better Developers. I'm also the founder of Envision QA, where we take the focus and detailed approach of test-driven development of testing code and apply it to building software and working with businesses and clinicians to really identify, walk through what it is your software is doing for you and helping you curtail, customize, or find the right tool to help your business grow. This season, as we wrap it up, I kind of want to skip the good and bad and kind of just jump into how this season has really helped me for habits. As Rob said, a lot of the things that we started out with were very interesting and important to us and also helped us grow as well. But the things that I've always had fun with that I never really thought of too much as a habit was like the Kitchen Sink app or things like the Pomodoro technique, which I still suck at, but it currently, for me, depends more upon my situation, my daily situation, because sometimes I can be head-stand focused, sometimes I can follow the Pomodoro technique, and other times I'm better off if I just stay head-stand for two to three hours and get it done. You just slog through the problem. You just get it done. Other things that I got away from that this helped me kind of circle back on, it's like the automation. I found myself doing the same thing every day, and it's like, you know, three lines of code in a script file just saved me 10 minutes a day, which, you know, after five days is almost a full hour a week you get back, and that hour actually allowed me to get more stuff done, and then it kind of snowballed, I got a little bit more time back. So things like that were very helpful. And the other thing that especially since our season kind of went through an election period as well, it helped with building habits to help with anxiety and also, you know, taking breaks, taking news breaks, walking away from things, how to talk to people, how to, you know, work through meetings, take criticism, code reviews, you know, as we get anxious and kind of frustrated, we can get hostile with our coworkers. We can take things the wrong way. And a lot of the habits we talked about this season really, by following the techniques we talked about and doing those challenges, helped me get back on track. And I hope that that's a story that a lot of you, that resonates with a lot of you, is that this has been helpful for you. As I get all choked up because of this, I want to talk, revisit a little bit, like, why do habits even matter? Why is it something that we care about? And it is because it actually goes back to, like, survival instinct and things like that. And it's actually, it was a show I watched, it was now a couple years ago, but they basically, they were pitting adults versus children with solving problems. There were different styles of problems that they had them solve. And in some cases, the adults smoked the kids. And in some cases, the kids smoked the adults. And the interesting thing that came out of that when they were looking at some of the problems that are out there is that as adults, and actually just as human beings, as we evolve, we build shortcuts. We see things and see them often enough that they allow us to do them automatically, to skip through essentially the detailed process of analyzing it and instead just go straight to the end. It's basically like when you look at, for example, like if you had to do long multiplication or long division versus just knowing what the answer is. You can go through it. However, sometimes we learn that there are shortcuts. And that's what some of the habits are, is they are building some of those shortcuts. So it's things like in a physical sense, it's often referred to as muscle memory. So it's for example, if there's a golfer that's out there and they just swing and swing and swing and they hit a thousand balls a day, they are building muscle memory so that they will, when they pull their arms back and swing it through, then it's going to be the same, essentially the same motion, the same level of effort and energy exert and stuff like that. That's what we want out of our habits is we want to look at the things that we do on a regular basis, which for us is it's things like writing code. It is interacting with our coworkers. It is designing systems. It is solving problems. And how do we find ways to do that better? And what we do is we build habits. We say this thing will be beneficial to us. And so we do it in a way that now it becomes automatic for us to do it. We don't have to think about it. And I think that's something that is on a meta level. You can look back. If you've gone through and picked even a handful of these challenges and these habits and tried to pick them up, the first thing is that you have to remember to do it each day. So it's a little, it is a little bit clunky or whatever because you're like, oh yeah, I've got to put it on my to-do list. I've got to remember to create a to-do list, things like that. But then what happens over time is that it becomes so natural that actually it becomes You feel uncomfortable not doing it. There are things where you'll get through the day and you're like, oh, I didn't do that. And it won't feel, you'll feel a little bit off because you're like, oh yeah, I didn't do that thing that is that habit that I have. And so I think that's really where the value of the habits are is that it is us saying, it's sort of us, it is in effect automating our lives in a way. It's saying that this thing is very useful. And so I want to do it on a regular basis. I want it to just happen. I don't want to have to think about it because then all of that, what it does is it reduces the cost of that. You don't have to think about it. You don't have to switch into that mode. You don't have to spend the extra time of documenting it or whatever it happens to be. You just do it. And that is where habits become highly valuable. And I think I'm going to stop there and throw that over to you and see what, what are your thoughts on some, maybe a big lesson learned in going through this season? Yeah, one of the biggest lessons learned, and I've touched on this in a couple of different episodes is habits are not something that happen overnight. These are things we have to work towards to make even small improvements. Now the funny thing is some of these small improvements can be huge improvements. Like I said, you know, you automate three things and you get an hour back a week. That adds up over the course of a year. It's interesting, though, to me personally, why habits matter. It's because it's kind of a checklist on am I doing things right? Am I doing things the right way? Am I able to keep moving that dial forward? Am I getting things done? If you find yourself asking yourself that a lot or you get stressed and your head's down, it's like I'm buried under work. I can't get through things. Habits really are the answer to that. They're a way for you to focus and reset to dig yourself out of being buried under work, being buried under life. There's always light at the end of the tunnel. It's not always that train, but you know, baby steps get you closer. That light gets bigger. You keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. As we've discussed the habits this season, other topics that come to mind for developers starting out, look at improving your coding skills. I talked about drinking from the fire hose. Sometimes it's better to not take a habit that is too restrictive too early on. Maybe turn up the fire hose. Have more stuff thrown at you, but use like Rob likes the Pomodoro technique to spend maybe 15 minutes a day on like C sharp, 15 minutes a day on Java, 15 minutes a day on Python. Look at different languages if you're a coder. If you're like me early on, I read almost every single textbook I could get my hands on because, you know, spoiler alert, I was around before the internet. We had to read books. We couldn't just turn on a computer and say, hey, where's this information? So I grabbed every single book I could get my hands on and found out very quickly there was things I did not understand or just really didn't float my boat. Like I did not like networking. Routers, switches, totally confused the crap out of me. Didn't get it. But I found out very quickly by, okay, I only found that out by reading different technical manuals, different books that were out there when it came to programming. So a lot of the books out there at that time were like basic word, DOS were like C, C plus plus, you know, Java was not even really out yet. It was still Elm, still Oak. And so it was a different world back then. And it was funny because I found out I liked math, but I didn't find that out until I made it to high school. So it's like we don't really know what we are supposed to do until we find what we're supposed to do. So the journey of the habit that I'm going to throw out there is, you know, by improving coding skills, learn something new every day, take one of these habits and apply it to trying something new. And that's going to help you figure out what it is that you want to do. So if you're struggling, not just with your job, but with life, but just trying to figure out where your place is on this planet, the best way to do it is to look at the habits we have and why the habits matter. It's so that we can figure out what it is that we want, where we belong in this world, and what makes us happy. Habits will help you get there. And it kind of gives you that roadmap. It kind of gives you maybe not like here's A, here's B, here's how to get there, but it gives you the incremental steps that you need to figure it out in a structured way so you're not scattered, you're not overwhelmed, and it will get you there. You will find that just baby steps, we've probably already used the word getting it done, but it's just you have to keep taking a step forward in order to reach your destination. If you stand still and expect someone else to help you, someone might, but the world is going to pass you by and you're just going to be standing still. Nothing is going to change. You have to be the kind of you have to be the take charge of your own destiny. And to do that, you just have to start taking steps forward and use habits. Habits are the tools in your tool belt to get you there. I cannot emphasize enough that that is the biggest value right there. It is, and we've talked about taking something huge, something very big, and then breaking it down into something that is something we can make progress on. Because winning the Super Bowl is a big thing. It takes a long time to get there. You may, especially if you're a kid, but then it's like, okay, well, you start out and you practice and you do stuff and then you join a team and then you practice some more and you win a game and you win another game and you win another game, blah, blah, blah. You get there eventually with anything we do. It's the same way. There are steps that are made. There is no such thing as an overnight success. There were steps taken to get to that point. And so the sort of the big challenge I have in moving forward is building your figure out what are your own challenges and habits that you want to build. Now, one that has been used in the past, an idea that I'm going to throw back out there again, is the idea of taking something big like building a product, starting a business, starting a blog, starting a podcast, writing a book. Those things are in themselves pretty big. Getting a certification is there as well in a lot of cases. And so these are big and they are rewarding and they are actually very nice things to have on your resume. So if there's one of those that you haven't done, pick it. If it sounds interesting, if it hasn't appealed to you, if you don't want to write a book, then don't say, I'm going to write a book. But if it is like, oh, it would be sort of cool to try, then try. And by try, I mean, start a habit. Do five minutes of writing a day or 10 minutes of writing a day or 15 minutes. There are whatever your product is, whatever your goal is, there are going to be obstacles, but there are also a lot of people out there that have done it. And they will talk about, you can go find ways that you can incrementally get your way to that. Learning a new language, it may be as simple as like, I'm going to learn this command or that command, or I'm going to solve this problem in the language or that problem in the language. Or I'm going to read on this for a little bit, or I'm going to write this, do this automation in this new language, whatever it happens to be. There are essentially baby steps to everything. There are little steps that you can take towards anything that you want to do. And that is where I think this season will give you the biggest boost, is take a look at what we've done. We just sort of literally in almost every episode write and we're like, hey, here's a habit. Let's go talk about it. That kind of stuff. You can do this. We're not some, we're not magicians that are out there somehow magically doing all this stuff. All you need to do is take a look at maybe your roadmap. What is your career roadmap? Where do you want to be? Like Michael said, you're at A, figure out a B that you would like to be at. And then spend a little time saying, well, what would it look like to be a little closer to that destination tomorrow and a little closer the day after that? And then suddenly you've got something, you've got some incremental steps. And then what you want to do is maybe the only habit is just taking a step each day, but maybe there's something around that that is going to help you. And that is where you're going to go. That's where I want to leave you with the final challenge for this season is the next challenge is for the next seven days, create a habit and spend seven days working towards that habit. And then of course, at the end of that time, shoot us an email and let us know how it went for you, because we would love to hear, we love feedback. Even when it's from episodes that were posted years ago, we still want to hear the feedback. What do you like? What don't you like? Where would you like us to go next? Because we will be diving into another season. I believe it's 24 is now our upcoming season, which is just insane. Most podcasts don't make it to 24 episodes, much less 24 seasons, particularly when we've got a season or two out there that are a lot of episodes. I think we've got two seasons that are 60 plus episodes per season. One, maybe double that. So our seasons are a little bit off sometimes. That being said, I know we're a little bit off, but thank you so much for your time. Thank you for spending time with us in this season. We look forward to seeing you right around the corner when we start the next season. There's no break or anything like that going on. We're going to dive right into the next one. We're as excited as you are, and we are wondering as much as you are, what is it that we're going to do in that next season? 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-Noor 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.