Detailed Notes
Maintaining focus and productivity is essential in today's fast-paced world, especially for high-intensity roles. In this podcast, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche of Develpreneur share their insights on mastering focus and productivity. Let’s dive into their expert advice on improving your workflow and achieving outstanding results.
Read More ... https://develpreneur.com/supercharge-your-focus-and-productivity-expert-tips-for-success
Stay Connected: Join the Developreneur Community
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
Additional Resources * Keep Focus On The Important Things – Interview With Pranay Parikh (https://develpreneur.com/keep-focus-on-the-important-things-interview-with-pranay-parikh/)
* Essential Habits for Software Developers: Boosting Productivity and Career Growth (https://develpreneur.com/essential-habits-for-software-developers-boosting-productivity-and-career-growth/)
* Focus is the Key To Success (and Maybe Happiness) (https://develpreneur.com/focus-is-the-key-to-success-and-maybe-happiness/)
* Increasing Productivity and Quality With Proper Tools (https://develpreneur.com/increasing-productivity-and-quality-with-proper-tools/)
Transcript Text
[Music] all right I've already hit record so I don't have to do that this time I am thinking because although we're really doing a really good job I think of like cranking through this whole like scope creep and it's beating this horse left and right but I one of the things you mentioned that I think would be a fun one to get uh to talk about is staying on task and avoiding distractions um because you threw that out there so I want to it was intriguing to me and I I mean you gave me a little more information but what are you thinking about how we want tackle that so this topic kind of falls into the idea that people can multitask because truthfully multitasking is a lie because really you could really you should work on one task at a time get it done move on typically you will get it done faster because you're focused on it you're not having that constant Divergent um it also fits within the other conversations we've kind of had around using tools to uh reduce distractions reduce uh the number of phone calls you get the number of emails you know the batching idea of putting things together um but I think especially with what we were talking about here with scope creep and everything it really kind of still fits into that because if you let yourself get distracted by oh we have feature coming or oh we have this and you focus solely on that but you will get it done but if you let other things distract you like oh we could throw this in or oh we could it it's kind of one of those where it's like you could do too much and do harm versus staying on task limit your scope and get things done it's actually it's funny I've got I don't know if my employees uh actually watch this at all but there is definitely one where that's I'm thinking exactly him because he'll take he'll take everything and you know there'll be 10 tickets and sometimes he'll take all 10 tickets and be like okay I'm working on all of them and to some extent he is I mean he'll be he'll be moving around because he working on all these stuff but it really is unless they are all in the same like chunk of code it really is not efficient because I mean there are times that it is it can be useful to do something like that you can do two things at a time if one is like running in a back ground or something like that yeah you can do that but particularly if you're trying to you know solve a problem which is mostly what we're doing then it's really hard to do two of those at once it'd be like doing a you know getting one of those puzzle books which I think about because I was just traveling and you get those things but where you're doing like a crossword puzzle and you're doing a logic problem at the same time it's like cool yeah great you can do that but no that's going to be very distracting not to mention you know same thing it's like if you do a cross word and a sadoku soku thing you know it's a very different uh language effectively that you're dealing with there's a the context and everything and that's often what we end up with even if it's the same application in the same language and everything else the same portion of the application there's going to be things like we're in a different file we're in a different function we've got different variables we're working with all of those things that then I don't think we think about how much that costs us to sort of you know pick ourselves up go to the other one sort of like settle into it and then do some stuff and then pick herself up move her to other settle in and then do some stuff there's always some some adjusting that has to go on to hit that so I I really like that I think that's going to be I like that is a good way to go because it is a it is again on this like how do you get crap done how do you really focus and it is it's like it gets into that well your estimates suck yeah your estimates suck because you allow too many things to enter I know that's pretty harsh but you know it's like and I'm not talking you I'm like no it's that guy over there um you it's something like that where it's like you're you're not very good at it and it's not that your estimates are bad it's that you don't understand where your time is going and that is where these tools actually I think are a great thing is when you start doing like the Pomodoro stuff and I'll give you that word because you always forget it when you start doing those Pomodoro things it is amazing what you get done in your you know like when I did it I think I did last time I did I think I did 45 minutes on 15 minutes off what I got done in that 4 minutes was crazy I ended up actually sometimes I actually backed it down because I got so much done in 45 I was underestimating what I could get done and I get done I like oh I got three minutes left but also going from uh you know Pomodoro 1 to Pomodoro 2 when you try to do the 25 minute five minute off it is amazing how fast that five minutes disappears where you're like I don't know how many times I would go from the 25 and it would be 10 or 15 minutes later before I'd be able to start again even if I'm just like refilling my tea and going to the bathroom it's just like it time goes too quick that's why I moved it to the 15 is so I could more realistically have the breaks but those are the things that we we need to learn what is the cost of firing up our email or answering that chat message or you know jumping on slack or whatever it is is understanding where those costs are yeah even within those you know like with all these meetings now that a lot of people are still hybrid or virtual you know you really can't focus if you have back-to-back meetings without a short break I mean people have to use the bathroom so or they need water so you really should give your meeting times like a five minute lead in uh you know each meeting shouldn't be on the top of the hour maybe start five minutes in or end five minutes before the hour you know little things like that are huge the other thing uh and we'll get to the into this into the actual episode but when you're working on your tickets yeah you can take like those 10 tickets if it's a feature complete set of tickets if you need all these tickets to actually do a feature set then yes that makes sense because you may need to build a database table which you then need to call to then put the gooey you can split that up but unless you do them in the right order you're going to have problems because if you do them out of order you're going to be blocked oh I can't do this oh I can't and that's going to also mess things up so all right I think we got plenty to go for it you guys got your bonus material before the episode this time I think I mean we've been like already throwing some great little nuggets out there so get your pencil and paper ready because we are about to get started well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season where we are going through the developer Journey we are building better developers we are develop preneur we're awesome like that and you are part of us it's we as a collective my name I'm going to go out of the royal wi my name is Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of develop andur building better developers also a founder of RB Consulting where we build better software basically we take the technology that's out there and through integration simplification and automation we find ways to allow you to better use your solutions to improve your processes and to make sure that you can focus on helping your customers and earning the almighty dollar without having as big a cost and without spending as much time trying to use all of those tools I will start our good thing bad thing this time around so um let's see where do I want to go with this one good thing we'll start with my good thing I like sometimes you just have days that are just productive you know there's those days we all have the days that aren't where we get we get to the end of the day and we're like what I wasted a day at work you or something like that yesterday I'd come back I hadn't done anything for a while which may be part of what was related to it and it was just bam bam bam I was knocking stuff out left and right things were getting done I was able to knock cross them off my list within itself is always awesome so that was my good uh bad today not so much I've like had a couple things I've done but then get gotten caught into some things that we're going to talk about in this uh episode which is basically things like distractions and things like that as how do you stay on task how do you stay focused how do you make sure that your estimates are realistic and you're not interrupted by whatever it is if it happens to be a toddler that comes up and bothers you periodically if it's your neighbor that's cranking chainsaws whatever it happens to be those kinds of things that being said before we jump into it I do want to allow Michael his opportunity to tell me all the good and bad about his life and introduce themselves to you hey everyone my name is Michael M I'm one of the co-founders of preneur building better developers and I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help businesses assess their current Tech stack what software and utilities are using within their business to make sure that what they have meets their business needs and if not we help them find the right tools and Technologies or we'll build it for you good and bad uh good similar to you uh I had a really productive night last night I was really hammering through some requirements and building out some user stories for a customer uh kind of good and bad with that went and talked to the customer today and basically had a fire hose of information that hit me in the face from the questions that I was able to build from the user stories and the requirements that I defined last night so it is good and bad uh the good you know making progress bad I was able to unpack a lot more so a lot more work to do but you know not not necessarily scope creep because we're still on task but we'll talk about that today and that is actually a good thing before we move into the the meat of this is that this is something we're going to talk about L is that sometimes you do need to you're hit by the fire hose and sometimes you need to call timeout and step back and be able to absorb or you know digest what it is you get this gets into some of the things we're to talk about about like we are human beings we are built a certain way we have some strengths and we have some weak weaknesses and one of our strengths is not being able to be hit by 18 different things at once and being able to process all of that maybe Bruce Lee or somebody like that can can do that but we can't so you if you don't know who Bruce Lee is Google or use your favorite search engine we'll say it that way we'll say in the generic fa the generic approach I want to talk about and I actually I want to talk about because Michael wanted to talk about the idea of staying on track of focus of of avoiding distractions where you can or working in the midst of distractions because this is something that I think is very key to being successful whether it is a as a as an entrepreneur whether as a developer whether honestly even as a human being is that the people that succeed almost always particularly if they succeed at anything that requires work anything that's not just really simple it's going to be through through focusing and making that a priority that was something that you know back in the day and I think he still says it I just haven't you know heard from him a while but like John Lee Dumis and the uh uh what is it entrepreneurs on fire I think is what it was it's something on fire I know it's on fire it's one of those John Lee Dumis check his stuff out talks about focusing about uh was it find one fix one find one course until solved or something like that but it's basically it is it's focused it's we do not no matter what you think you do whether you think you are a woman that can or a guy that can't we don't really multitask that well there are things that we can do yes we can process multiple things at a time but it's just like looking at something Vision if you're looking at something it is very easy to miss things in the peripheral yes you may catch them but you also can miss them and it's the same thing when we get into to focusing and this is where we need to if you're a Superman or Superwoman and you can multitask okay realize the rest of us are humans and so when we are setting stuff up whether for ourselves or for others and by others I'm talking about like when we're in meetings and things like that we need to make sure that we have the wiggle room we'll say or the bandwidth built within that meeting so that people can actually get what they need to out of that meeting meetings are probably the worst because I know too many places where it it's just back to back to back to back meeting you're just in a meeting you're in there you're cranking through stuff you don't have time to think about it and then you're on to another one and I've been I was in a job for a while that I wasn't even a developer I was just managing developers and I went I would do sometimes six meetings back toback in a day maybe a lunch break in there and I would get to the end of it and I would spend most of the night having to try to like re you know re connect to what was all the stuff that's there find a way to parse through that look at my notes and like some of was like what the heck was I think I don't even remember that part I don't want I don't know how those notes got there be cognizant of that stuff there's a reason that schools and classes have a length that is typically 45 minutes to an hour at most and if you have longer classes of two to four hours you usually have more people falling asleep as you get into the later part of those things because we just struggle to focus in these days even more so because the late the younger Generations have less and less ability to focus for long periods of time they they're used to stuff really fast it may be phone related maybe not we'll never see we'll never know actually I think we all know that is why so think about that is that when you're putting together meetings when you're scheduling yourself for meetings when you are setting up your schedule and what is your availability make sure that you have time to digest what it is you're doing because if you don't you went to that meeting and if you're not able to properly digest it then you've basically wasted that time what's worse is you're you're not going to miss all of it but you're also not going to get all of it so it's not going to be till some point down the road that you're going to be able to find out that oh crud I missed that important piece that I needed to get particularly and this is to you know to Michael's credit like particularly if you're working on requir and things like that you really those are the toughest ones is just like take as much in as you can be focused on that put the phones away for those of you that do that and really focus on what it is you're working on as a developer I'll throw this one out and then pass it over to Michael is because this is a place I could talk all day as a developer is the same thing is focus on one task right and an example I've used before is that when you're a developer if you go grab like eight tasks at once then you're you're just grabbing eight tasks at once that doesn't mean you're working all eight of them you may think you are maybe you've coded one and you Cod it another and you Cod it another but I could do that I could walk through each of and put a little boiler plate that says Rob's doing this Rob's doing this Rob's doing that doesn't really move the ball forward if I look at one that I'm focused on moving the ball forward on that ticket and now you may have some stuff that is connected in some way so I need to I need to work this ticket but I also need to work that ticket because those two coincide and I need to make sure I'm thinking about both of those maybe they have an integration point that I need to make sure that those are done in a way that is it's easier for me to do those two together than for me to do it Michael to do it and for us to constantly convers have a conversation about what does that integration Point look like but other than that and that even then should if your tickets require you to grab three or four at a time then they probably weren't written right there is something wrong about how they were done you should be able to go work one complete it and move it through the process so that people can start testing it you can move on to the other one and you can move forward if you have to hold off completion until another one is done that's okay but it's like you should just don't try to fake everybody out work one to ticket at a time get it to completion get it to done and then move to the other thing I think I've I haven't vented enough but I think I'm G to take a deep breath and I'm going to let you throw your thoughts into this because I know you have a couple of thoughts on it as well yeah so let me give you a simple scenario you know we were talking about developers being developers in in developer Focus but in reality as humans we typically have been told for years that we can multitask you can do more than one thing at a time and while you can the true idea of multitasking is a lie you can really only do one task at a time and you can you need to do it well uh otherwise you're basically putting one block down in the foundation going over here answering the phone the blocks aren't building themselves so if you sit there and you build the blocks then you go talk on the phone finish that call and then you come back and maybe start the next column if you do things in an organized way we've talked about this before talked about batching and different ways of managing your time the idea is if you're constantly being distracted either self-imposed or environmental distractions you're never going to really be able to truly focus on what it is that you're working on and do a good job you may do an adequate job you may get it done but when we're writing code that typically leads to bugs that typically leads to missed requirements we don't want those things to happen so we need to kind of stay focused put those blinders on a little bit and just stay in our lane and get things done now in reality you know we have meetings we have phone calls we have Messengers we have distractions unfortunately and I've been bad about this too I'll get into the point where I'm too focused or it's too quiet like you get other distractions that unfortunately are sometimes self-imposed and you'll turn on the radio and and oh now you're listening to music and you're distracted by the music and you're not really focused on what you're doing or you have the TV on and you're now suddenly watching the news not working or you're in a meeting trying to chat with someone in the messenger and you missed a very critical important detail about a project so these are the things that I was referring to when we're talking about this particular topic because typically again we're told that you know we can do multiple things you should be able to do multiple things but the problem is if we're not doing the right things we're going to be distracted we're not going to be able to stay on task it's going to take longer for these things to get done you know in the past two podcasts we've talked about Sprints you know we don't want our tickets to be kicked down the road we don't want them to keep being pushed down we want to get our work done we want to get the requirements we want to make sure that we understand it we do the work we get it done and we can release the software on time it's just one of those situations where you have to have a lot of self-discipline but a lot of times we don't know what we don't know either people need to point out that hey you're not focused on this or you're not doing this you know things like that in our professional career can be handled by our managers or by our teammates by doing one on ones by doing uh 360s where you you know you do the um Anonymous reviews of your fellow uh employees your fellow teammates to see that everyone's on task so well we are we have to be aware of our environment and we have to be aware of our tasks it's there are other things we can do as teams to work together to stay on track to make sure we're doing what we need to do and help avoid some of those distractions and I'll tell you one of the biggest things that annoys me is when people say that they listen to and unfortunately I'm going to throw us under the bus here listen to podcasts well they work now how can you focus on what you're listening to while you're working you know if you're driving sure you can half listen but you should be focused on the road uh you know there are things you need to do to be safe there are things you need to do to get your job done done and if you're finding yourself distracted or doing too many things maybe it's time to look and say hey I need to stop doing something while I'm doing something else wow that's actually there's a lot of great stuff there so I do have to say if you think that you can multitask and that boy the podcasting while you're developing listening podcast like that's a that definitely is one of those that's really easy distracted but if you think that that that's not the case then what do you think about people talking on the phone while they drive that's a mic drop right there it's like you that's proof you cannot multitask don't tell me that you can because that should be almost mutually exclusive and it's not because you have almost been hit by somebody whoever all of you out there have almost been hit by somebody chatting away on their phone not paying attention or even worse heads down looking at something on their phone and they're not paying attention to you some of you may have hit somebody because you were doing that same thing now if you think that we are just full of it I would challenge you and this is something that even if you know that we're right I would challenge you anyways try to tomorrow or today depending on when you're doing this set aside block a time whatever it is 30 minutes an hour probably can't go beyond that because we talk about there's so much there's only so much time we can really be focused and B the most out of it but pick like a 30 minute actually just pick a 15minute slot this goes back to when we've done a lot of these you know learn something over a period of days and 15 minute chunks because it goes back to way way back I had on part of my schedule I had one product I was building this little side hustle thing I was building this product and I like I'm going to spend 15 minutes a day on it and I was writing a book at the same time time I'm going to spend 15 minutes a day on it the first thing I found it is really hard to restrict yourself to 15 minutes once you get into anything like that is really hard and it it really is 15 is too little because it's really hard to settle in Focus get something done and get it all done by 15 minutes you're going to like when that alarm goes off you're going to be like dang it didn't get it done you're going to be scrambling to get stuff however those 15 minutes were focused particularly after the first couple of times I tried it I got so I could I was amazed at how much I could crank out in a 15minute period more so if you try like a Pomodoro approach or one of those where we get into something where it's like a half hour 45 minutes or an hour and you are focused and I mean focused like shut off the email put the phone away just focus on your task even if your task for example would something that's somewhat multitasking like I'm writing code but I'm also having to deal with maybe I'm manipulating data so I'm going back and forth between writing code and and writing some sequel statements or viewing some data things like that even if it's in itself the task has multitasking built into it there's where you're having to shift gears if you can just focus on that I dare you because you will get done and you'll be like wow I got a lot of crap done now if you're a manager that does not mean that you're behind schedule and you take all your people and you say I'm going to lock you in a room for eight hours and you're getting a lot of crap done because that's not how it works it's still we still have that depending on where we're at probably you know 45 minutes maybe an hour 15 hour 20 I don't know everybody and there's studies so you can go look those things up but there we are designed to do like work and then we got to take a breath now you know it could be something like hey I got to go drink I got to go pee well if you don't drink you're not going to have to pee and if you don't pee you're not going to have to drink or something like that but there's still physical constraints that is what I'm trying to get to is that put yourself in a situation where you can be successful get rid of the distractions there are lots of tools out there there are a lot of things we've talked about it you can go search the develop in or SES you can see about all the different ways that you can help to help yourself focus on that task and I guarantee you it will in itself make you a better developer you're going to find out that you're going to write as Michael led to you're not going to have as many bugs you're probably going to have better tests you're G to have better flow to your code because you didn't stop and go right at you know and then pick it back up later and sort of forget where you're at everything is going to look better and I say this as somebody who doesn't do it often enough there are too many times that I get stuck pulled away from something and I come back and I'm like man I wish i' had been able to finish that thought before I got distracted because now I'm having to think back through where was I at what did I sometimes like what code did I write what code did I not write what did I finish and what did I not finish if you can focus it will pay huge dividends so don't be don't shy away from that don't be afraid of doing things like put something on if you're a place that's run by schedules and meetings and all that put something on your calendar and if somebody double books you be free to say I'm sorry I'm already booked now if it's your boss you may have to worry about that but that's that's a conversation to have and say look if you want me to work this is what I need to do if you want me to just hang out at meetings okay I will go to all those meetings now you're going to want to say it better than that because most people are going to take that in a bad way and they're going to be like take a hike but find a way you may that may be a difficult conversation you need to have and I have seen a lot of people do it successfully and it's basically approached as look I'm going to be more effective if I'm not in that meeting if you can summarize it if you can let me know what needs to be there now if you have to be if you're an integral part you're an integral part of that that's okay but even then say hey I need to have time to get stuff done so please respect my schedule when I've got something on the schedule don't double book me please you know and and sometimes it's just as easy as pushing back and saying hey I'm double booked I need to reschedule you know sometimes it's a little more difficult that is obviously some things I'm very passionate about because that is the I think that is a lot of the EB and flow that we have as developers is that when we I talked about that as a good and bad uh just recently we have our good days we're very productive and we have our bad days when we're not and most often we're going to find that the bad days where we aren't as productive we got interrupted we were trying to multitask or there was something that took us away from our ability to just sit down and just like knock out a problem and if you if your problems are too big if you have too much that's on the plate to be able to get that find a way to the first problem you want to solve is how do I break this down into bite-sized chunks so I can make this I can make that progress that was one of the things that I was actually I learned with doing the 15 minute approach and this is not I'm not writing a book on it it's not something that I've thought about more than like in this episode but it is something that I got out of that was particularly with my side hustle I had a project I was building I had an application I was building and part of my starting every week was I looked at what can I get done in 15minute increments through this week I explicitly had to spend a little bit of time and sometimes you could do that like take your first 15 first day of the week take 15 minutes and just break down the next hour the next four days of 15 minutes what can I get done in those because when you start breaking that stuff down one it allows you to really focus on it two once again now you're you're constraining what you have to think about integration all that kind of other stuff you're now on a very small thing so it's a problem that's going to be easier to solve it's just like anything else if you wanted to melt a huge block of ice it's a lot easier if the first thing you do is smash it into a bunch of little pieces because now those little pieces can more easily be melted I mean it's just it's a one of those things that's in nature if we can take it in a smaller bite it's going to be easier I'm going to take a small but actually very large breath and pass that back to you because I think we've got a couple things there we've talked about yeah one additional thing I'd like to add to that is be conscious of your task what is it that you're working on because a lot of times we'll be assigned task or working on tasks that have future deadlines like this ticket which should maybe take an hour isn't due till Friday and we're picking up on a Monday one of the biggest things I see is people fill all that time between Monday and Friday to get that ticket done the other flip side of that is if it's something you don't want to do or you dread doing or just something you don't have fun doing you tend to kick that down the road you you procrastinate you find things to do to avoid doing that which leads to this distraction so you're essentially giving yourself permission to be distracted because you don't want to work on this ticket my recommendation there is work on the least basically your least favorite task first get them out of the way preferably earlier in the day so that the rest of your day you're going from a less uh Happy mind frame back to a happy mind frame so you don't end the day unhappy and take that into your personal time so just a lot of the things we talked about here and we've talked about before and tools is again focus on what you're working on if you find yourself filling that time because you don't want to work on it get it done move it to the top of the list get it done if you find that you have tasks to do that aren't due for another day well then get them done now or don't take them on till you get closer to that date work on something else that's more pressing you know prioritize your time we've talked about batching you know batch your processes if you have to be on the phone three four five times a day to call people do that all in one time frame you know are people not you know if you're having to call the same person three four times a day because they're not there but you typically find out that almost every person you need to call is at by their their phone between like 2 and 3 move all your call times to 2 to 3 so that you're calling people and not doing that wasted task of call me hanging leave a message call H batch organize your tasks so that you can stay focused and stay on task there was a lot of great stuff in there um that is all incredibly important I do want to go back to the first one is the the it's the idea of eating the frog is doing the thing that you dislike the most first make that your highest priority and get that thing done and I will just add on to that because Michael did a great explanation of it is think about when you've had something that you didn't want to do that you dreaded that you were you were stressing and this could be even these could be difficult conversations as well as maybe a difficult task or a not fun task when you've gotten those done think about how you felt because that always is in itself like that's a better win if I get to the end of a day and the only thing I got done was the one thing that I dreaded my day is great if I still have that thing I dreaded and I got 4,000 other things done spoiler alert probably 399,000 of those or whatever was totally useless crap that I didn't need to do but I'm not going to feel as good it's embrace the discomfort of getting that thing done so you can embrace embrace the glory of getting it done and off your plate and it it reduces stress it does so many good things to you on a physiological level that it is a very valuable approach to take you can go look up go search eating the Frog and you will find a lot of productivity gurus that that is one of the things they talk about that that is very often one of the things however they look at it take the things you want to do least first get them out of the way and then it frees you up as Michael said so now you have a happier day and you're not getting to the end to day going crap I still got to look at that tomorrow I got to think about like just get it done and get it out of the way and you're ready to have a happier life through all of that we would have a happier life if you would take that thing that really isn't that hard is just send us an email at info developer.com and let us know what it is that you would like to hear from us what are some of the topics you'd like us to cover we still have a little bit of time before we're done with the developer Journey season and so if there's something that you would like us to talk about in the developer Journey or something you think we've missed because we have sort of progressed our way through it as we're going shoot us an email let us know we would love to do that we'll even give you credit or Leave You Anonymous whatever you want to do to say hey we got this great idea idea from Bob and Shaban or from some Anonymous person that's not Bob and shabor again we'll do a better job of being anonymous than that and we would love to just like take that information and use it for our our whether it's this season or future season and future topics you can also check us out on develop and.com we got a lot of information out there a lot of places to go we even find that often useful to us we will search it and use it as reference material you can check us out at school at developer school. developer.com you can also leave us a you know any kinds of comments here whether you're here is the YouTube whether it's the podcast stuff the develop preneur is the channel on YouTube podcast it's developer building better developers actually is specifically the adverti or the name wherever you're going to use it wherever you podcast if you go to one of those lady in the boxes we won't say their name because sometimes that triggers stuff you can say hey I would like to listen to the building better developer podcast and guess what they are going to fire up the most recent episodes so there's things like that that are available that hey it's the technology we've found a way to use so it helps you help yourself better that being said we're going to wrap this one up we will return we are not done with this season as always go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material although we we sort of started with bonus material I don't know if we need it's like bonus bonus material at this point yeah I would just say a lot of the topics we talked about in today's episode Bill we're constantly building on that but one of the biggest things I I I would challenge based on a few things you threw out at the end is if you find yourself stressing or literally thinking about work at night revisit your day and look at what you did did you work on the tasks that you're stressing about or did you fill that time with something else not as important and if you are revisit that look at what you need to be getting done so that you can be more mindful at the end of the day and be more relaxed and more uh in the moment with your family friends whatever out of work leave work at work but don't take it with you if you're taking it with you you aren't focusing on the right things at work to keep your mind clear at the end of the day that that is like a building better life kind of thing and that's something that it's actually it's funny I just just finished up reading all of the if you know you know kind of thing but all the shanara series books which is it ends up being like 37 books it's taken me a couple of years to get through all of them and I went from like start to finish the story covers like I don't know three or four thousand years of characters and stuff but the point to this is is that I started it as I needed something at the end of the day to pull me out of work it is too easy for me to like work and then just boom fall asleep but then I end up like I'm writing code in my dreams and that code is not very useful I have never gotten any good a single line of good code that comes out of that not to mention the fact that you've got like depending on where you're at in life but you probably have family you've got you should have family and hobbies and things that you do that are not work even if you love your work doing work that is different from your work working on your side hustle if you're like you like us if you're if you're a gamer occasionally crank out a couple of games or do something ride a bike you know sit under a tree and read a book whatever it is that gets you away because that will fulfill you and allow you to recharge and be able to better use the hours that you have so that really is critical I think that's one of those things it's like we love to fill our days and we've talked about this a lot of times we when we get into the holiday specials these are the things that we've that we've discussed in the past is that yes we burn the candle at both ends that we that just the developer thing is that we work long hours and we talk about it all the time we brag about it basically we have War stories about it even while we're cussing about you know the people that did it but that's just like part of what we do but we need to make sure that with all of the ways we can be more productive we can fill more minutes of our day we need to realize that we will be more productive if we fill less of those hours with basically like just filler and instead be very productive go do your job go do your work go do the thing that you need to do and then be done with it set it aside and then you can come back tomorrow on whatever that problem is it's just like a phone call if you're talking to eight people at once on the phone you're not going to give anybody anything it's not gonna be good to anybody everybody's gonna hate it but if you talk to one person and then you hang up now you that's done you got that done it's the same thing with productivity so this is it's maybe drifted a little bit from where we originally discussed it but I think this is still there's a lot of stuff that trust us we live and breathe this kind of stuff all the time this is the stuff that we are conciously working on ways to make all these little life hacks and micro adjustments and things like that to keep us sane while also keeping us productive and obviously the samean part we really struggle with the productive we're a little bit better at uh parting thoughts and we'll wrap this one up yeah the biggest takeaway uh yeah you know we have to take care of ourselves you know like we did drift a little bit more into kind of a life hack than just building better developers but Focus task creep really be mindful of what it is that you're working on what it is you need to get done and just stay on task get it done then do the next thing again I I love saying this because it's really true multitasking is a lie you can do one thing at a time you can split the work and it will take twice as long and if you're splitting the work then you're splitting your focus and that's we've talked about that before but you know the more you split your focus the more draining it is and the less you're really going to be focusing on the quality of what it is that you're working and that's that really is where the building develop the better developer comes from is that to really it is a craft it is an art it is something that we cannot just casually do it and get better there's going to be things we're Miss and so this is It's while it's about productivity it really is about being a better developer because that's honestly that's the value you bring as a better developer there there are studies where crappy developers they don't call them that but you know lowend or beginner developers are 10 times or more or 10 times or you good developers are 10 times or more more effective than not good developers there's like there's a huge dichotomy between the people that are just like slinging some code and those that really can just like crank and do stuff there's and there's a lot of reasons for it but that productivity is part of it is being able to focus being able to not get distracted by the language not getting distracted by the tools those kinds of things all those little things add up and that includes includes things like having your email open having your phone buzzing next to you all that kind of stuff and we'll have to talk another time a topic of what happens when you get distracted and it picks you off because I've had a few of those and it's stuff like I answer a phone and I'm like sorry I did not mean to be that rude when I answered the phone that way or I'm sorry I did not that was sorry that was uncool that was I reacted a little too much but hey it's like you know some people you know it's like PTSD or something like that it's one of those things it's like just you know don't uh don't startle the people that are like really dis you know really focused and how we deal with those kinds of situations so that may be something we put on our list that being said we have way given you too much bonus stuff well we haven't we love giving you stuff it's it's all out there give us feedback whether you like it or not uh you but not whether you like your feedback or not but whether you like us or not obviously see we've been doing this too long I need to like break I need to get away from this and I'm not as productive as I was before proof right there if I C if it if it happens to me it must happen to you as always go out there and have yourself a great one we will talk to you next time we'll be back we'll be wrapping up this season a few more episodes here and there and get through the developer Journey let us know if you have any suggestions for the next one and have yourself a great day we'll talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
all right I've already hit record so I
don't have to do that this time I am
thinking because although we're
really doing a really good job I think
of like cranking through this whole like
scope creep and it's beating this horse
left and right but I one of the things
you mentioned that I think would be a
fun one to get uh to talk about is
staying on task and avoiding
distractions um because you threw that
out there so I want to it was intriguing
to me and I I mean you gave me a little
more information but what are you
thinking about how we want
tackle that so this topic kind of falls
into the idea that people can multitask
because truthfully multitasking is a lie
because really you
could really you should work on one task
at a time get it done move on typically
you will get it done faster because
you're focused on it you're not having
that constant Divergent
um it also fits within the other
conversations we've kind of had around
using tools to uh reduce distractions
reduce uh the number of phone calls you
get the number of emails you know the
batching idea of putting things together
um but I think especially with what we
were talking about here with scope creep
and everything it really kind of still
fits into that because if you let
yourself get distracted by oh we have
feature coming or oh we have this and
you focus solely on that
but you will get it done but if you let
other things distract you like oh we
could throw this in or oh we could it
it's kind of one of those where it's
like you could do too much and do harm
versus staying on task limit your scope
and get things
done it's actually it's funny I've got I
don't know if my employees uh actually
watch this at all but there is
definitely one where that's I'm thinking
exactly him because he'll take he'll
take everything and you know there'll be
10 tickets and sometimes he'll take all
10 tickets and be like okay I'm working
on all of them and to some extent he is
I mean he'll be he'll be moving around
because he working on all these stuff
but it really is unless they are all in
the same like chunk of code it really is
not efficient because I mean there are
times that it is it can be useful to do
something like that you can do two
things at a time if one is like running
in a back ground or something like that
yeah you can do that but particularly if
you're trying to you know solve a
problem which is mostly what we're doing
then it's really hard to do two of those
at once it'd be like doing a you know
getting one of those puzzle books which
I think about because I was just
traveling and you get those things but
where you're doing like a crossword
puzzle and you're doing a logic problem
at the same time it's like cool yeah
great you can do that but no that's
going to be very distracting not to
mention you know same thing it's like if
you do a cross word and a sadoku soku
thing you know it's a very different uh
language effectively that you're dealing
with there's a the context and
everything and that's often what we end
up with even if it's the same
application in the same language and
everything else the same portion of the
application there's going to be things
like we're in a different file we're in
a different function we've got different
variables we're working with all of
those things that then I don't think we
think about how much that costs us to
sort of you know pick ourselves up go to
the other one sort of like settle into
it and then do some stuff and then pick
herself up move her to other settle in
and then do some stuff there's always
some some adjusting that has to go on to
hit that so I I really like that I think
that's going to be I like that is a good
way to go because it is a it is again on
this like how do you get crap done how
do you really focus and it is it's like
it gets into that well your estimates
suck yeah your estimates suck because
you allow too many things to
enter I know that's pretty harsh but you
know it's like and I'm not talking you
I'm like no it's that guy over there um
you it's something like that where it's
like you're you're not very good at it
and it's not that your estimates are bad
it's that you don't understand where
your time is going and that is where
these tools actually I think are a great
thing is when you start doing like the
Pomodoro stuff and I'll give you that
word because you always forget it when
you start doing those Pomodoro things it
is
amazing what you get done in your you
know like when I did it I think I did
last time I did I think I did 45 minutes
on 15 minutes off what I got done in
that 4 minutes was crazy I ended up
actually sometimes I actually backed it
down because I got so much done in 45 I
was
underestimating what I could get done
and I get done I like oh I got three
minutes
left but also going from uh you know
Pomodoro 1 to Pomodoro 2 when you try to
do the 25 minute five minute off it is
amazing how fast that five minutes
disappears where you're like I don't
know how many times I would go from the
25 and it would be 10 or 15 minutes
later before I'd be able to start again
even if I'm just like refilling my tea
and going to the bathroom it's just like
it time goes too quick that's why I
moved it to the 15 is so I could more
realistically have the breaks but those
are the things that we we need to learn
what is the cost of firing up our email
or answering that chat message or you
know jumping on slack or whatever it is
is understanding where those costs
are yeah even within those you know like
with all these meetings now that a lot
of people are still hybrid or virtual
you know you really can't focus if you
have back-to-back meetings without a
short break I mean people have to use
the bathroom so or they need water so
you really should give your meeting
times like a five minute lead in uh you
know each meeting shouldn't be on the
top of the hour maybe start five minutes
in or end five minutes before the hour
you know little things like that are
huge the other thing uh
and we'll get to the into this into the
actual episode but when you're working
on your tickets yeah you can take like
those 10 tickets if it's a feature
complete set of tickets if you need all
these tickets to actually do a feature
set then yes that makes sense because
you may need to build a database table
which you then need to call to then put
the gooey you can split that up but
unless you do them in the right order
you're going to have problems because if
you do them out of order you're going to
be blocked oh I can't do this oh I can't
and that's going to also mess things up
so all right I think we got plenty to go
for it you guys got your bonus material
before the episode this time I think I
mean we've been like already throwing
some great little nuggets out there so
get your pencil and paper ready because
we are about to get started well hello
and welcome back we are continuing our
season where we are going through the
developer Journey we are building better
developers we are develop preneur we're
awesome like that and you are part of us
it's we as a
collective my name I'm going to go out
of the royal wi my name is Rob Broadhead
I am one of the founders of develop
andur building better developers also a
founder of RB Consulting where we build
better software basically we take the
technology that's out there and through
integration simplification and
automation we find ways to allow you to
better use your solutions to improve
your processes and to make sure that you
can focus on helping your customers and
earning the almighty dollar without
having as big a cost and without
spending as much time trying to use all
of those tools I will start our good
thing bad thing this time around so um
let's see where do I want to go with
this one good thing we'll start with my
good thing I like sometimes you just
have days that are just productive you
know there's those days we all have the
days that aren't where we get we get to
the end of the day and we're like what I
wasted a day at work you or something
like that yesterday I'd come back I
hadn't done anything for a while which
may be part of what was related to it
and it was just bam bam bam I was
knocking stuff out left and right things
were getting done I was able to knock
cross them off my list within itself is
always awesome so that was my good uh
bad today not so much I've like had a
couple things I've done but then get
gotten caught into some things that
we're going to talk about in this uh
episode which is basically things like
distractions and things like that as how
do you stay on task how do you stay
focused how do you make sure that your
estimates are realistic and you're not
interrupted by whatever it is if it
happens to be a toddler that comes up
and bothers you periodically if it's
your neighbor that's cranking chainsaws
whatever it happens to be those kinds of
things that being said before we jump
into it I do want to allow Michael his
opportunity to tell me all the good and
bad about his life and introduce
themselves to you hey everyone my name
is Michael M I'm one of the co-founders
of preneur building better developers
and I'm also the founder of Envision QA
where we help businesses assess their
current Tech stack what software and
utilities are using within their
business to make sure that what they
have meets their business needs and if
not we help them find the right tools
and Technologies or we'll build it for
you good and bad uh good similar to you
uh I had a really productive night last
night I was really hammering through
some requirements and building out some
user stories for a customer uh kind of
good and bad with that went and talked
to the customer today and basically had
a fire hose of information that hit me
in the face from the questions that I
was able to build from the user stories
and the requirements that I defined last
night so it is good and bad uh the good
you know making progress
bad I was able to unpack a lot more so a
lot more work to do but you know not not
necessarily scope creep because we're
still on task but we'll talk about that
today and that is actually a good thing
before we move into the the meat of this
is that this is something we're going to
talk about L is that sometimes you do
need to you're hit by the fire hose and
sometimes you need to call timeout and
step back and be able to absorb or you
know digest what it is you get this gets
into some of the things we're to talk
about about like we are human beings we
are built a certain way we have some
strengths and we have some weak
weaknesses and one of our strengths is
not being able to be hit by 18 different
things at once and being able to process
all of that maybe Bruce Lee or somebody
like that can can do that but we can't
so you if you don't know who Bruce Lee
is Google or use your favorite search
engine we'll say it that way we'll say
in the generic fa the generic
approach I want to talk about and I
actually I want to talk about because
Michael wanted to talk about the idea of
staying on track of focus of of avoiding
distractions where you can or working in
the midst of distractions because this
is something that I think is very key to
being successful whether it is a as a as
an entrepreneur whether as a developer
whether honestly even as a human being
is that the people that succeed almost
always particularly if they succeed at
anything that requires work anything
that's not just really simple it's going
to be through through focusing and
making that a priority that was
something that you know back in the day
and I think he still says it I just
haven't you know heard from him a while
but like John Lee Dumis and the uh uh
what is it entrepreneurs on fire I think
is what it was it's something on fire I
know it's on fire it's one of those John
Lee Dumis check his stuff out talks
about focusing about uh was it find one
fix one find one course until solved or
something like that but it's basically
it is it's focused it's we do not no
matter what you think you do whether you
think you are a woman that can or a guy
that can't we don't really multitask
that well there are things that we can
do yes we can process multiple things at
a time but it's just like looking at
something Vision if you're looking at
something it is very easy to miss things
in the peripheral yes you may catch them
but you also can miss them and it's the
same thing when we get into to focusing
and this is where we need to if you're a
Superman or Superwoman and you can
multitask okay realize the rest of us
are humans and so when we are setting
stuff up whether for ourselves or for
others and by others I'm talking about
like when we're in meetings and things
like that we need to make sure that we
have the wiggle room we'll say or the
bandwidth built within that meeting so
that people can actually get what they
need to out of that meeting meetings are
probably the worst because I know too
many places where it it's just back to
back to back to back meeting you're just
in a meeting you're in there you're
cranking through stuff you don't have
time to think about it and then you're
on to another one and I've been I was in
a job for a while that I wasn't even a
developer I was just managing developers
and I went I would do sometimes six
meetings back toback in a day maybe a
lunch break in there and I would get to
the end of it and I would spend most of
the night having to try to like re you
know re connect to what was all the
stuff that's there find a way to parse
through that look at my notes and like
some of was like what the heck was I
think I don't even remember that part I
don't want I don't know how those notes
got there be cognizant of that stuff
there's a reason that schools and
classes have a length that is typically
45 minutes to an hour at most and if you
have longer classes of two to four hours
you usually have more people falling
asleep as you get into the later part of
those things because we just struggle to
focus in these days even more so because
the late the younger Generations have
less and less ability to focus for long
periods of time they they're used to
stuff really fast it may be phone
related maybe not we'll never see we'll
never know actually I think we all know
that is why so think about that is that
when you're putting together meetings
when you're scheduling yourself for
meetings when you are setting up your
schedule and what is your availability
make sure that you have time to digest
what it is you're doing because if you
don't you went to that meeting and if
you're not able to properly digest it
then you've basically wasted that time
what's worse is you're you're not going
to miss all of it but you're also not
going to get all of it so it's not going
to be till some point down the road that
you're going to be able to find out that
oh crud I missed that important piece
that I needed to get particularly and
this is to you know to Michael's credit
like particularly if you're working on
requir and things like that you really
those are the toughest ones is just like
take as much in as you can be focused on
that put the phones away for those of
you that do that and really focus on
what it is you're working on as a
developer I'll throw this one out and
then pass it over to Michael is because
this is a place I could talk all day as
a developer is the same thing is focus
on one task right and an example I've
used before is that when you're a
developer if you go grab like eight
tasks at once then you're you're just
grabbing eight tasks at once that
doesn't mean you're working all eight of
them you may think you are maybe you've
coded one and you Cod it another and you
Cod it another but I could do that I
could walk through each of and put a
little boiler plate that says Rob's
doing this Rob's doing this Rob's doing
that doesn't really move the ball
forward if I look at
one that I'm focused on moving the ball
forward on that ticket and now you may
have some stuff that is connected in
some way so I need to I need to work
this ticket but I also need to work that
ticket because those two coincide and I
need to make sure I'm thinking about
both of those maybe they have an
integration point that I need to make
sure that those are done in a way that
is it's easier for me to do those two
together than for me to do it Michael to
do it and for us to constantly convers
have a conversation about what does that
integration Point look
like but other than that and that even
then should if your tickets require you
to grab three or four at a time then
they probably weren't written right
there is something wrong about how they
were done you should be able to go work
one complete it and move it through the
process so that people can start testing
it you can move on to the other one and
you can move forward if you have to hold
off completion until another one is done
that's okay but it's like you should
just don't try to fake everybody out
work one to ticket at a time get it to
completion get it to done and then move
to the other thing I think I've I
haven't vented enough but
I think I'm G to take a deep breath and
I'm going to let you throw your thoughts
into this because I know you have a
couple of thoughts on it as
well yeah so let me give you a simple
scenario you know we were talking about
developers being developers in in
developer Focus but in reality as humans
we typically have been told for years
that we can multitask you can do more
than one thing at a time and while you
can the true idea of multitasking is a
lie you can really only do one task at a
time and you can you need to do it well
uh otherwise you're basically putting
one block down in the foundation going
over here answering the phone the blocks
aren't building themselves so if you sit
there and you build the blocks then you
go talk on the phone finish that call
and then you come back and maybe start
the next
column if you do things in an organized
way we've talked about this before
talked about batching and different ways
of managing your time the idea is if
you're constantly being distracted
either self-imposed or environmental
distractions you're never going to
really be able to truly focus on what it
is that you're working on and do a good
job you may do an adequate job you may
get it done but when we're writing code
that typically leads to bugs that
typically leads to missed requirements
we don't want those things to happen so
we need to kind of stay focused put
those blinders on a little bit and just
stay in our lane and get things done now
in reality you know we have meetings we
have phone calls we have Messengers we
have distractions unfortunately and I've
been bad about this too I'll get into
the point where I'm too focused or it's
too quiet like you get other
distractions that unfortunately are
sometimes self-imposed and you'll turn
on the radio and and oh now you're
listening to music and you're distracted
by the music and you're not really
focused on what you're doing or you have
the TV on and you're now suddenly
watching the news not working or you're
in a meeting trying to chat with someone
in the messenger and you missed a very
critical important detail about a
project so these are the things that I
was referring to when we're talking
about this particular topic because
typically again we're told that you know
we can do multiple things you should be
able to do multiple things but the
problem is if we're not doing the right
things we're going to be distracted
we're not going to be able to stay on
task it's going to take longer for these
things to get done you know in the past
two podcasts we've talked about Sprints
you know we don't want our tickets to be
kicked down the road we don't want them
to keep being pushed down we want to get
our work done we want to get the
requirements we want to make sure that
we understand it we do the work we get
it done and we can release the software
on time it's just one of those
situations where you have to have a lot
of
self-discipline but a lot of times we
don't know what we don't know either
people need to point out that hey you're
not focused on this or you're not doing
this you know things like
that in our professional career can be
handled by our managers or by our
teammates by doing one on ones by doing
uh 360s where you you know you do the um
Anonymous reviews of your fellow uh
employees your fellow teammates to see
that everyone's on task so well we are
we have to be aware of our environment
and we have to be aware of our tasks
it's there are other things we can do as
teams to work together to stay on track
to make sure we're doing what we need to
do and help avoid some of those
distractions and I'll tell you one of
the biggest things that annoys me is
when people say that they listen to and
unfortunately I'm going to throw us
under the bus here listen to podcasts
well they work now how can you focus on
what you're listening to while you're
working you know if you're driving sure
you can half listen but you should be
focused on the road uh you know there
are things you need to do to be safe
there are things you need to do to get
your job done done and if you're finding
yourself distracted or doing too many
things maybe it's time to look and say
hey I need to stop doing something while
I'm doing something
else wow that's actually there's a lot
of great stuff there
so I do have to say if you think that
you can multitask and that boy the
podcasting while you're developing
listening podcast
like that's a that definitely is one of
those that's really easy distracted but
if you think that that that's not the
case then what do you think about people
talking on the phone while they drive
that's a mic drop right there it's like
you that's proof you cannot multitask
don't tell me that you can because that
should be almost mutually exclusive and
it's not because you have almost been
hit by somebody whoever all of you out
there have almost been hit by somebody
chatting away on their phone not paying
attention or even worse heads down
looking at something on their phone and
they're not paying attention to you some
of you may have hit somebody because you
were doing that same thing
now if you think that we are just full
of it I would challenge you and this is
something that even if you know that
we're right I would challenge you
anyways try to tomorrow or today
depending on when you're doing this set
aside block a time whatever it is 30
minutes an hour probably can't go beyond
that because we talk about there's so
much there's only so much time we can
really be focused and B the most out of
it but pick like a 30 minute actually
just pick a 15minute slot this goes back
to when we've done a lot of these you
know learn something over a period of
days and 15 minute
chunks because it goes back to way way
back I had on part of my schedule I had
one product I was building this little
side hustle thing I was building this
product and I like I'm going to spend 15
minutes a day on it and I was writing a
book at the same time time I'm going to
spend 15 minutes a day on it the first
thing I found it is really hard to
restrict yourself to 15 minutes once you
get into anything like that is really
hard and it it really is 15 is too
little because it's really hard to
settle in Focus get something done and
get it all done by 15 minutes you're
going to like when that alarm goes off
you're going to be like dang it didn't
get it done you're going to be
scrambling to get stuff
however those 15 minutes were focused
particularly after the first couple of
times I tried it I got so I could I was
amazed at how much I could crank out in
a 15minute period more so if you try
like a Pomodoro approach or one of those
where we get into something where it's
like a half hour 45 minutes or an hour
and you are focused and I mean focused
like shut off the email put the phone
away just focus on your task even if
your task for example would something
that's somewhat multitasking like I'm
writing code but I'm also having to deal
with maybe I'm manipulating data so I'm
going back and forth between writing
code and and writing some sequel
statements or viewing some data things
like that even if it's in itself the
task has multitasking built into it
there's where you're having to shift
gears if you can just focus on that I
dare you because you will get done and
you'll be like wow I got a lot of crap
done now if you're a manager that does
not mean that you're behind schedule and
you take all your people and you say I'm
going to lock you in a room for eight
hours and you're getting a lot of crap
done because that's not how it works
it's still we still have that depending
on where we're at probably you know 45
minutes maybe an hour 15 hour 20 I don't
know everybody and there's studies so
you can go look those things up but
there we are designed to do like work
and then we got to take a breath now you
know it could be something like hey I
got to go drink I got to go pee well if
you don't drink you're not going to have
to pee and if you don't pee you're not
going to have to drink or something like
that but there's still physical
constraints that is what I'm trying to
get to is
that put yourself in a situation where
you can be successful get rid of the
distractions there are lots of tools out
there there are a lot of things we've
talked about it you can go search the
develop in or SES you can see about all
the different ways that you can help to
help yourself focus on that
task and I guarantee you it will in
itself make you a better developer
you're going to find out that you're
going to write as Michael led to you're
not going to have as many bugs you're
probably going to have better tests
you're G to have better flow to your
code because you didn't stop and go
right at you know and then pick it back
up later and sort of forget where you're
at everything is going to look better
and I say this as somebody who doesn't
do it often enough there are too many
times that I get stuck pulled away from
something and I come back and I'm like
man I wish i' had been able to finish
that thought before I got distracted
because now I'm having to think back
through where was I at what did I
sometimes like what code did I write
what code did I not write what did I
finish and what did I not finish if you
can focus it will pay huge dividends so
don't be don't shy away from that don't
be afraid of doing things like put
something on if you're a place that's
run by schedules and meetings and all
that put something on your calendar and
if somebody double books you be free to
say I'm sorry I'm already booked now if
it's your boss you may have to worry
about that but that's that's a
conversation to have and say look if you
want me to work this is what I need to
do if you want me to just hang out at
meetings okay I will go to all those
meetings now you're going to want to say
it better than that because most people
are going to take that in a bad way and
they're going to be like take a hike but
find a way you may that may be a
difficult conversation you need to have
and I have seen a lot of people do it
successfully and it's basically
approached as look I'm going to be more
effective if I'm not in that meeting if
you can summarize it if you can let me
know what needs to be there now if you
have to be if you're an integral part
you're an integral part of that that's
okay but even then say hey I need to
have time to get stuff done so please
respect my schedule when I've got
something on the schedule don't double
book me please you know and and
sometimes it's just as easy as pushing
back and saying hey I'm double booked I
need to reschedule you know sometimes
it's a little more difficult that is
obviously some things I'm very
passionate about because that is the I
think that is a lot of the EB and flow
that we have as developers is that when
we I talked about that as a good and bad
uh just
recently we have our good days we're
very productive and we have our bad days
when we're not and most often we're
going to find that the bad days where we
aren't as productive we got interrupted
we were trying to multitask or there was
something that took us away from our
ability to just sit down and just like
knock out a problem and if you if your
problems are too big if you have too
much that's on the plate to be able to
get that find a way to the first problem
you want to solve is how do I break this
down into bite-sized chunks so I can
make this I can make that progress that
was one of the things that I was
actually I learned with doing the 15
minute approach and this is not I'm not
writing a book on it it's not something
that I've thought about more than like
in this episode but it is something that
I got out of that was particularly with
my side hustle I had a project I was
building I had an application I was
building and part of my starting every
week was I looked at what can I get done
in 15minute increments through this week
I explicitly had to spend a little bit
of time and sometimes you could do that
like take your first 15 first day of the
week take 15 minutes and just break down
the next hour the next four days of 15
minutes what can I get done in those
because when you start breaking that
stuff down one it allows you to really
focus on it two once again now you're
you're constraining what you have to
think about integration all that kind of
other stuff you're now on a very small
thing so it's a problem that's going to
be easier to solve it's just like
anything else if you wanted to melt a
huge block of ice it's a lot easier if
the first thing you do is smash it into
a bunch of little pieces because now
those little pieces can more easily be
melted I mean it's just it's a one of
those things that's in nature if we can
take it in a smaller bite it's going to
be easier I'm going to take a small but
actually very large breath and pass that
back to you because I think we've got a
couple things there we've talked
about yeah one additional thing I'd like
to add to that is be conscious of your
task what is it that you're working on
because a lot of times we'll be assigned
task or working on tasks that have
future deadlines like this ticket which
should maybe take an hour isn't due till
Friday and we're picking up on a Monday
one of the biggest things I see is
people fill all that time between Monday
and Friday to get that ticket done the
other flip side of that is if it's
something you don't want to do or you
dread doing or just something you don't
have fun doing you tend to kick that
down the road you you procrastinate you
find things to do
to avoid doing that which leads to this
distraction so you're essentially giving
yourself permission to be distracted
because you don't want to work on this
ticket my recommendation there is work
on the
least basically your least favorite task
first get them out of the way preferably
earlier in the day so that the rest of
your day you're going from a less uh
Happy mind frame back to a happy mind
frame so you don't end the day unhappy
and take that into your personal time so
just a lot of the things we talked about
here and we've talked about before and
tools is again focus on what you're
working on if you find yourself filling
that time because you don't want to work
on it get it
done move it to the top of the list get
it done if you find that you have tasks
to do that aren't due for another day
well then get them done now or don't
take them on till you get closer to that
date work on something else that's more
pressing you know prioritize your time
we've talked about batching you know
batch your processes if you have to be
on the phone three four five times a day
to call people do that all in one time
frame you know are people not you know
if you're having to call the same person
three four times a day because they're
not there but you typically find out
that almost every person you need to
call is at by their their phone between
like 2 and 3 move all your call times to
2 to 3 so that you're calling people and
not doing that wasted task of call me
hanging leave a message call H batch
organize your tasks so that you can stay
focused and stay on
task there was a lot of great stuff in
there um that is
all incredibly important I do want to go
back to the first one is the the it's
the idea of eating the frog is doing the
thing that
you dislike the most first make that
your highest priority and get that thing
done and I will just add on to that
because Michael did a great explanation
of it is think about when you've had
something that you didn't want to do
that you dreaded that you were you were
stressing and this could be even these
could be difficult conversations as well
as maybe a difficult task or a not fun
task when you've gotten those
done think about how you felt because
that always is in itself like that's a
better win if I get to the end of a day
and the only thing I got done was the
one thing that I dreaded my day is great
if I still have that thing I dreaded and
I got 4,000 other things done spoiler
alert probably 399,000 of those or
whatever was totally useless crap that I
didn't need to do but I'm not going to
feel as good it's embrace the discomfort
of getting that thing done so you can
embrace embrace the glory of getting it
done and off your plate and it it
reduces stress it does so many good
things to you on a physiological level
that it is a very valuable approach to
take you can go look up go search eating
the Frog and you will find a lot of
productivity gurus that that is one of
the things they talk about that that is
very often one of the things however
they look at it take the things you want
to do least first get them out of the
way and then it frees you up as Michael
said so now you have a happier day and
you're not getting to the end to day
going crap I still got to look at that
tomorrow I got to think about like just
get it done and get it out of the way
and you're ready to have a happier life
through all of
that we would have a happier life if you
would take that thing that really isn't
that hard is just send us an email at
info developer.com and let us know what
it is that you would like to hear from
us what are some of the topics you'd
like us to cover we still have a little
bit of time before we're done with the
developer Journey season and so if
there's something that you would like us
to talk about in the developer Journey
or something you think we've missed
because we have sort of progressed our
way through it as we're going shoot us
an email let us know we would love to do
that we'll even give you credit or Leave
You Anonymous whatever you want to do to
say hey we got this great idea idea from
Bob and Shaban or from some Anonymous
person that's not Bob and shabor again
we'll do a better job of being anonymous
than that and we would love to just like
take that information and use it for our
our whether it's this season or future
season and future topics you can also
check us out on develop and.com we got a
lot of information out there a lot of
places to go we even find that often
useful to us we will search it and use
it as reference material you can check
us out at school at developer school.
developer.com you can also leave us a
you know any kinds of comments here
whether you're here is the YouTube
whether it's the podcast stuff the
develop preneur is the channel on
YouTube podcast it's developer building
better developers actually is
specifically the adverti or the name
wherever you're going to use it wherever
you podcast if you go to one of those
lady in the boxes we won't say their
name because sometimes that triggers
stuff you can say hey I would like to
listen to the building better developer
podcast and guess what they are going to
fire up the most recent episodes so
there's things like that that are
available that hey it's the technology
we've found a way to use so it helps you
help yourself better that being said
we're going to wrap this one up we will
return we are not done with this season
as always go out there and have yourself
a great day a great week and we will
talk to you next time bonus material
although we we sort of started with
bonus material I don't know if we need
it's like bonus bonus material at this
point yeah I would just say a lot of the
topics we talked about in today's
episode Bill we're constantly building
on that but one of the biggest things I
I I would challenge based on a few
things you threw out at the end is if
you find yourself stressing or literally
thinking about work at night revisit
your day and look at what you did did
you work on the tasks that you're
stressing about or did you fill that
time with something else not as
important and if you are revisit that
look at what you need to be getting done
so that you can be more mindful at the
end of the day and be more relaxed and
more uh in the moment with your family
friends whatever out of work leave work
at work but don't take it with you if
you're taking it with you you aren't
focusing on the right things at work to
keep your mind clear at the end of the
day that that is like a building better
life kind of thing and that's something
that it's actually it's funny I just
just finished up reading all of the if
you know you know kind of thing but all
the shanara series books which is it
ends up being like 37 books it's taken
me a couple of years to get through all
of them and I went from like start to
finish the story covers like I don't
know three or four thousand years of
characters and stuff but the point to
this is is that I started it as I needed
something at the end of the day to pull
me out of work it is too easy for me to
like work and then just boom fall asleep
but then I end up like I'm writing code
in my dreams and that code is not very
useful I have never gotten any good a
single line of good code that comes out
of that not to mention the fact that
you've got like depending on where
you're at in life but you probably have
family you've got you should have family
and hobbies and things that you do that
are not work even if you love your work
doing work that is different from your
work working on your side hustle if
you're like you like us if you're if
you're a gamer occasionally crank out a
couple of games or do something ride a
bike you know sit under a tree and read
a book whatever it is that gets you away
because that will fulfill you and allow
you to recharge and be able to better
use the hours that you have so that
really is critical I think that's one of
those things it's like we love to fill
our days and we've talked about this a
lot of times we when we get into the
holiday specials these are the things
that we've that we've discussed in the
past is that yes we burn the candle at
both ends that we that just the
developer thing is that we work long
hours and we talk about it all the time
we brag about it basically we have War
stories about it even while we're
cussing about you know the people that
did it but that's just like part of what
we do but we need to make sure that with
all of the ways we can be more
productive we can fill more minutes of
our day we need to realize that we will
be more productive if we fill less of
those hours
with basically like just filler and
instead be very productive go do your
job go do your work go do the thing that
you need to do and then be done with it
set it aside and then you can come back
tomorrow on whatever that problem is
it's just like a phone call if you're
talking to eight people at once on the
phone you're not going to give anybody
anything it's not gonna be good to
anybody everybody's gonna hate it but if
you talk to one person and then you hang
up now you that's done you got that done
it's the same thing with productivity so
this is it's maybe drifted a little bit
from where we originally discussed it
but I think this is still there's a lot
of stuff that trust us we live and
breathe this kind of stuff all the time
this is the stuff that we are conciously
working on ways to make all these little
life hacks and micro adjustments and
things like that to keep us sane while
also keeping us productive and obviously
the samean part we really struggle with
the productive we're a little bit better
at uh parting thoughts and we'll wrap
this one
up yeah the biggest takeaway uh yeah you
know we have to take care of ourselves
you know like we did drift a little bit
more into kind of a life hack than just
building better developers
but
Focus task
creep really be mindful of what it is
that you're working on what it is you
need to get done and just stay on task
get it done then do the next thing again
I I
love saying this because it's really
true multitasking is a lie you can do
one thing at a time you can split the
work and it will take twice as long and
if you're splitting the work then you're
splitting your focus and that's we've
talked about that before but you know
the more you split your focus the more
draining it is and the less you're
really going to be focusing on the
quality of what it is that you're
working and that's that really is where
the building develop the better
developer comes from is that to really
it is a craft it is an art it is
something that we cannot just casually
do it and get better there's going to be
things we're Miss and so this is It's
while it's about productivity it really
is about being a better developer
because that's honestly that's the value
you bring as a better developer there
there are studies where crappy
developers they don't call them that but
you know lowend or beginner developers
are 10 times or more
or 10 times or you good developers are
10 times or more more effective than not
good developers there's like there's a
huge dichotomy between the people that
are just like slinging some code and
those that really can just like crank
and do stuff there's and there's a lot
of reasons for it but that productivity
is part of it is being able to focus
being able to not get distracted by the
language not getting distracted by the
tools those kinds of things all those
little things add up and that includes
includes things like having your email
open having your phone buzzing next to
you all that kind of stuff and we'll
have to talk another time a topic of
what happens when you get distracted and
it picks you off because I've had a few
of those and it's stuff like I answer a
phone and I'm like sorry I did not mean
to be that rude when I answered the
phone that way or I'm sorry I did not
that was sorry that was uncool that was
I reacted a little too much but hey it's
like you know some people you know it's
like PTSD or something like that it's
one of those things it's like just you
know don't
uh don't startle the people that are
like really dis you know really focused
and how we deal with those kinds of
situations so that may be something we
put on our list that being said we have
way given you too much bonus stuff well
we haven't we love giving you stuff it's
it's all out there give us feedback
whether you like it or not uh you but
not whether you like your feedback or
not but whether you like us or
not obviously see we've been doing this
too long I need to like break I need to
get away from this and I'm not as
productive as I was before proof right
there if I C if it if it happens to me
it must happen to you as always go out
there and have yourself a great one we
will talk to you next time we'll be back
we'll be wrapping up this season a few
more episodes here and there and get
through the developer Journey let us
know if you have any suggestions for the
next one and have yourself a great day
we'll talk to you next time
[Music]