Detailed Notes
Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche host Episode 7 of Building Better Developers. They explore how to Breaking Things Down for Success. Their discussion centers on maintaining a personal backlog. This practical tool helps streamline both project management and professional growth. Through real examples, they demonstrate how this approach enhances productivity.
*Read More*... https://develpreneur.com/breaking-things-down-for-success-how-developers-can-build-better-habits/
*Episode Challenge:* Weekly Challenge: Breaking Things Down to Build Better Habits
Rob challenges listeners to start using backlogs and break down their weekly tasks. Creating manageable daily lists should become a consistent habit. Regular backlog updates help maintain steady progress. This approach prevents burnout while keeping development work efficient and sustainable.
Rob and Michael invite listeners to share their task management experiences online. They emphasize starting with small, consistent improvements. These daily steps help developers build better work habits. Good task management leads to increased focus and development success.
*Additional Resources*
* Incremental Improvement and Progress – Do It Now (https://develpreneur.com/incremental-improvement-and-progress-do-it-now/) * Mastering Skills In Under Ten Thousand Hours (https://develpreneur.com/mastering-skills-in-under-ten-thousand-hours/) * Self-Confidence That Comes From Incremental Improvement (https://develpreneur.com/self-confidence-that-comes-from-incremental-improvement/) * Implementing An Incremental Approach – Small Progress is Still Progress (https://develpreneur.com/implementing-an-incremental-approach-small-progress-is-still-progress/)
*Follow-us on:*
* https://develpreneur.com/ * https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZOuFN_LhczvGyT2KSItH_g/featured * https://facebook.com/Develpreneur * https://twitter.com/develpreneur * http://linkedin.com/develpreneur
Transcript Text
[Music] all right so yeah sort of like Blended and blurred and changed that up but that's okay so we'll do this one a little differently um oh yeah I just hit record if you don't know that actually I mean I didn't I actually hit it qu while back but we paused and behind the scenes stuff for you guys hello again we're back we're talking about this one I think I wanted to get a little bit more into um W because this is there's actually a couple places one I was thinking about is actually like putting stuff on your schedule like scheduling time but I'm not sure I want to do that because it's I'm not sure that by itself is enough so I think I am going to go back more into like the ticketing tasks apps and and things like that but I think either one of them like it's it's sort of a good followup but it's like where are you where are you feeling it where are you you feel like you would want to go with this so as we're ending La the last episode I started thinking about the task thing like some people may have a hard time putting a list together so what if we did an episode on breaking things down all right so breaking things down like if you have a task or a a like a software it kind of goes with your to-do list it kind of goes with scheduling it kind of goes with batching and it then kind of it it almost to me it's like how would we break down like a large problem or a large task like how would I identify if a task is a big task how would I break it down which kind of leads into then okay how do I then use a ticking system like J how do I schedule out projects it it almost feels like if we go straight to that we're kind of missing something in between well that's what I'm trying to figure out is how do we turn that into where how do we make that a daily habit that makes you success like continuously better as far as tackling that because I get it and I think it it's but it's like I'm trying I'm like I guess yeah my blocker there is like how well how do we turn that into a challenge that would be you know building a habit kind of thing and working up to something and maybe it maybe it's we take something big and have them break it down for the next week or maybe oh maybe we do not sure what I'm still not sure what that that challenge is going to be so if we put a pin in it if we change it to more not saying is that like as like bigger like you know weekly monthly road map kind of stuff but then it still comes back that's not going to be something you're going to be doing every day either though so no but I kind of like like how we were doing the to-do list or our daily task list you brought up the you mentioned oh hey you know if you're building software you know you do it in such break your task up in such a way where you do like the front end the database component the repository there are ways to break up a project into it smaller pieces which kind of gets into like the whole scrum thing the whole points thing you know if you have an eight oops you maybe you need to break the problem down more maybe that's it maybe it's like how do we break a problem down how do we here's here's an idea is um as sort of a followup is gets into like having a personal backlog so it's basically like so start on day one and you've got some tasks and you're like okay I need to get my let's say my five tasks and one of them is like we talk like it's something that's going to take me several days so and this actually touches a little bit on batching and stuff like that so this is like um we'll call it like it's more like strategic planning because then it's basically it's like okay I've got what I'm doing on today but then I've got essentially leftovers and so it's while I'm doing the leftovers like for example I've got this application I need to write so maybe instead of just you know I know I can't do the whole thing tomorrow so I pick a piece but as part of doing that I say you know what if I'm going to do this work I'm going to actually give myself the next you know the next week's worth of work or the next two weeks worth of work because it does start thinking about Sprints and stuff like that which granted it goes beyond our like sort of s-day thing but we could say hey think about like going into that kind of an approach because then what you get to do is you just pull tasks down each day and you do have a you know things that are as you break stuff up you just the extra pieces go into your your backlog and you can always go to that for task or you can periodically have one of your tasks be that I want to break down a bunch of stuff to get to my backlog yeah that kind of works because if we actually do it like that initially we could do it kind of more Cabana versus Sprints where stuff just in the back you just pull it from the backlog as you need work and then move into the more Sprint stuff as we get further into these discussions and that does sort of that's what I'm thinking is like it does sort of like it gives us a couple things to build on basically and a couple places that we can go from there uh let's see and the challenge could be not so much to out two weeks but pick a task or like we were talking the kitchen sink app we could even apply to that versus automation to do I mean we've got a couple things already we've talked about that we could apply it to where here take pick a application or pick a feature you would like to add to your kitchen syn app but make it a larger feature pick a feature that you think may take a week and then break it down let's do that let's sort of do like breaking oh I'll call it uh breakdown backlog so that would work like again we could use like the kitchen sink as part of it we could use the to-do list and then use this to kind of break it down to appli theable I me they can I don't think we need to time them all back I think we can just sort of leave that open that may be like a bonus thing is like hey you could do that um but other than that I think it's like yeah I like to keep them open to I like for us to not lead them too much into something because I would rather it be something it's like hey you're so people are owning it they're owning their own thing uh that reminds me I'm G to put this on the list for future stuff um okay couple ideas there all right I'm going to give the famous Trace dos Uno hello and welcome back we are continuing our season of building better habits because we are building better developers and we do it one day at a time or something like that I am Ron bhead I'm one of the founders of developing or building better developers I am also a founder of RB Consulting where we help you take the vast Wasteland of technology that is out there whether it's technology sprawl or the pain related to it and find ways through simplification automation and integration to like bring that down into something that is a nice pretty little Farmville Village or something like that so that you can be far more effective your business and your customers are happy and everybody wins good thing bad thing uh a good thing is why did I I had like a nice little list so bad thing is is I made myself a list of like I was like oh here's my good thing and my bad thing and I lost my list I don't know how I like it's right here in front of me as I'm banging on this and I didn't ah I hate when I do that ah good thing good thing good thing good thing good thing good thing was I had a night last night there's one of these and this actually goes a little bit to like our Challenge from last week or from last episode at least where whether it's last week or a year ago when you did it is with like doing your to-do list and stuff like that is I got to the end of my day and I had my stuff done I got things done I was like okay the stuff I needed wanted desired to get done that day got done and I had an evening that was nice weather out uh was like Hey I'm going to go I had like a little training thing I had to do but I was like you know what I'm going to go get like a simple Pizza we got a nice big thing of wine and just like hung out on the deck for a while hanging by the fire pit just having a good old time so that was definitely a good thing in the the world of Challen es the um I think one of the biggest problems which actually is sort of a bad thing is me picking the automation piece is because I need to go so I'm failing this but I'm going to do better this time around and I'm I've got a couple more days but it's basically I've got I've got some ideas of what to automate and I need to spend a little time to do that Automation and part of it which is sort of good to itself is that I've been doing all these little automations like you know building out mail filters and some things like that and couple little things but I think that's the challenge and that's why we do this is so that we can keep it in our mind and not let it fall through the cracks so something you may want to do which like I like I said I always I've done the the to-do list challenge for more than seven years I think probably more than 14 years I've done that stuff for a long long time however you do these kinds of things and you you start to build these habits but you may want to put on that list working on one of these challenges or when you get to the end of it's like hey I didn't get to this thing yet I want to make sure I do this because you do want to get those habits built in and those may be those additional tasks that we've talked about that could end up not really like your main task but the things it's like I just need to touch this item or do this thing today don't go out there and touch that person over there because you never know what kind of developer or stuff he's got all over himself Michael go ahead and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Michael M I'm one of the co-founders of develop andur building better developers this season building better habits I'm also the founder of Invision QA where we are experts at automation if you are struggling with bad software no QA limited QA or just problems with overall software development give us a call our whole Mantra is quality first we do test driven development and we will help you build those unit tests those automation tests selenium tests mobile testing whatever you need to make your life better and to improve the quality of your product from development to release good things bad things good things uh let's see good thing good thing good thing it's wrapping up uh we're recording this right before Halloween but yeah I'm a big Halloween guy so tomorrow I'm so stoked so we're actually starting the Halloween marit on tonight and we'll finish that tomorrow so that is a very good thing I'm just stoked uh bad thing uh I decided to try my luck at some horror video games and found out that uh Silent Hill 2 remake is really creepy awesome game creepy as get out it's almost as bad as the baby level on Resident Evil 7 um so while I love Halloween I hate scary in some instances uh challenges uh so I've been doing really good with the automation stuff again that's kind of my Mantra my company uh but as far as the pomodora I'm getting a little bit better at it I need to remember at night to use a different timer than my phone um again I mentioned that last time if you have those you know do not disturb things turned on which is great if you're trying to use that to control your timers you're uh sound might not come on so just be careful with that and the other things I've been working on kitchen syn app I've been U building out some nice UI designs which uh are working actually with the automation piece to make them plug-in play so if I need a custom design it will format it to a particular customers's um kind of uh their colors or branding at a push of a button so you just answer a few questions plug it in boom you have a web UI stylesheet and some basic screens to get you going so making some good progress on that all right speaking of progress let's talk about our habits for this episode this is something make we've there are a lot of habits and there's a lot of things that are interrelated that are part of becoming a better developer just like in the technology World things like you you need to sort of understand a base to be able to understand middle tier to be able to understand what you're doing on the front end and and where is it best to do that work and those kinds of things in the world of getting stuff done of being productive of making sure that things don't fall through the cracks there are a lot of skills related to that and this is where we sort of like got a little bit into a Pandora's box of talking about just a list item last time around we talked about having your list you go attack your list this episode we want to talk about it's really it's it sort of gets into the meta side of that of making the list but more importantly it's taking big things and breaking them into smaller things and doing that in a way and this is also which is where our habits going to talk we're going to talk about is basically having a habit of a personal backlog of when you take that big thing and you chip off a small piece and you put it on your to-do list you take the other chips and you put them in your backlog ideally you you spend a little bit of time breaking that task up let's say it's going to take you a week that you spend a little bit of time one day and you break it into seven tasks or five tasks however you're want to Define your week and those are going to be you know Monday you do task one Tuesday two three four all the way through to Friday the thing here is this also touches on the idea of batching a little bit so let it just instead of just like chipping off one piece and say okay here's what it is and I'll think about that later you say I'm going to look at this a little bit and I'm going to think about what makes sense what is a logical progression to get this done and then break it down and now part of this is when do you know it's too big now that is itself quite an interesting question but we should even if we have never estimated anything and we probably have let's face it we you're life its estimation but let's say you haven't really professionally thought about it before you should at least be able to sit back and go huh what is it going to take me to do this task now the bonus is it really doesn't matter if you overestimate or underestimate particularly if you underestimate great you got it done faster if you overestimate then you can always come back and say okay I've got to find a stopping point I'm going to break this up I'm going to tackle it another day so yeah that's not the best solution but at least it is viable because now you're like oh I took a bigger CH bite off than I can chew I've got to adjust that now the way you do these things typically there's a lot of ways you can approach it but the nice thing is that we have when we're talking about our daily list which is what our backlog is our personal backlog is effectively it is all of those different tasks that we could actually take and put on our to-do list for a given day take them out of our backlog put them on our list go get them done ideally and we've talked about this if you ever go get the if you get the development or book all that kind of stuff we talk about these things about having a backlog about having that pool of tasks because we probably should have told you this before we challenge you to do three tasks or five tasks a day is that when you've got that pool it makes those tasks really easy because you you have things that you've got to do you have things that have to have some sort of progress made on them and so you can figure out looking at your backlog where those what are the tasks that would potentially move the ball forward there find one that fits and then you put it together it's almost like a it's a little bit of a Tetris kind of thing because you probably will have a a bigger tasks and then maybe a couple smaller tasks or a bigger task and maybe a medium in a small task or things like that so you're you're going to look at these and you're going to need to sort of push them together because they're not all going to be the same size and this is where it gets into all right we know that our outer limit our our outest our biggest constraint is we have to get it done in a day which we we cheat and we say you have to get it done in six hours which that's just one task if you only get one task done you need to break it up therefore six hours too big so now we start looking at well what would make sense well you could if it's just two tasks you could say you know 3 hours is sort of your limit but we're talking at least three to five so now you're down a probably one to two hour task now it takes a little bit more work to break something up to that level that is sometimes too granular if you get into the world of scrum and agile and Sprints that is why there are tasks that are not that small there are tasks that take a week or more however to some extent those have to be able to be broken down because you work a day at a time even if it takes you a week to get it done you worked on that five different times so you had five chunks one way or another so the reality is that there's some level of us stepping in and doing work in these smaller chunks the bonus to this is this gets back to why your school your college classes well college is different because they hate you but in regular school and before College your classes were effectively less than an hour and if you look at presentation that are complex presentations they are less than an hour because people can't consume content they can't get heavy into thought for a long for past about 45 to 60 Minutes on average now you'll say I'm a developer I can go heads down for eight hours yes you can but if you don't break that out a little bit you there is a diminishing return so you would find that if you actually break that up and every so often just like even if you get up which is another topic we'll get into this if you get up and go like take a FIV minute walk and come back you will be more productive having taken those five minutes and just step back for a second than you will be if you just stayed heads down the whole time now that is not a hardened pass there are times where it's like don't pick walk going for a walk right when you're in the middle of solving a major problem there is like timing and things like that however the nice thing about this is this forces us to have these bite-sized chunks which is healthier for us in the long run it makes us more productive in the long run and it is easier to estimate small than it is big if you want me to estimate how to repair a total car and I need to just figure out how to I don't know replace a tire that's flat I can figure out how what I can better estimate fixing that flat tire than I can repairing the entire car same thing with code we know that it's like if if I just have to write a a little method or a function I'd probably have a lot better idea of that versus an entire applic and so this is where we start to build our backlog and this is going to be one of the habits is that instead of just this is where we take it to the next level instead of Simply building our list one of the other things we're going to do is we're going to have a backlog and we're going to use that backlog to feed the list but we're also going to at times be building use the building the list piece to help add to our backlog now I'm going to gather my backlog of thoughts while Michael continues this because he also has a lot of thoughts on this thanks for so I'm actually going to take a step out of software for a minute and kind of hits closer to home if you're looking to build task list and you're looking to at massive problems for trying to break things down just think about your grocery list you know you have to go shopping you have to buy food then you have to prepare your meals for the week you you know you get dinner maybe lunches breakfast typically you're not going to go to the grocery store every single day to buy the food you need to prep to prepare your meal for that night cook it and then prepare it no what you end up doing is you look ahead you figure out okay what kind of menu do I want for the week you go to the grocery store you buy a whole bunch of stuff and then you may do that on Saturday and then Sunday you go okay so what are the meals going to be for the week and then what you need to do is oh well there's a bunch of prep work I need for the week so what you can do is Sunday you can do all that prep work put it in the fridge and then Monday oh we're having tacos okay so you pull out all the stuff that you prep for tacos put it together run your recipe 6 30 minutes to cook boom you got your meal if you did not do all that prep then you had to probably go to the grocery store which took you time to get there time to shop time to get back time to prep time to cook and now you're looking at eating at sometime maybe 8 9 10:00 at night because you started so late getting your things together that's kind of what we're talking about by breaking things down if you're in the software world you have problems like that you have to be Forward Thinking you have a problem and you have a deadline or you have an idea that a customer wants and they kind of need the timeline of how long is it going to take to get it done so what you do is you look you kind of plan a little bit and you take what it is you're trying to accomplish and you figure out okay what do I need first what do I need to gather to be able to do this uh project then you break it down you do your prep work that's can be your smaller tasks and then from that prep work you can then break it down into other tasks that you can do throughout the week throughout the day to get the tasks done now as Rob mentioned Sprints and you know projects planning things like that it's life we want to get things done but we also don't want to be overloaded we want to follow those tasks we want to do the Pomodoro Technique we want to ease the stress and get things done the GTD I believe is what you've been referring to um through the past few podcasts so what the idea is here is look ahead look at what it is you need to get done make the list kind of plan for it and then put together a l like a master list that backlock of things that need to be done and then you pull them in in the order that makes sense again you don't want to build the screen before you had the back end because you may not have all the you know the fields all the data points identified that you need on that screen so make sure you do things in the right order not out of order so you're not taking more time to get get things done and lastly because I'm the test guy if you are building software don't neglect testing look at your projects from the user perspective so if you kind of have this planned out what it is that you're going to build look at from the user's perspective as I build it what am I supposed to get out of it so then you can actually write the test with the test so one of your tasks could be if I do this how do I test it and then you essentially can kind of have a corresponding task go with each of those and by the time you get to the end of the week you can push a button and know if everything you did during the week works so that brings us to this Challenge and there's a lot of ways that we can do this but as we've talked through this and and thought through what kinds of things we're going to have in our to-do list what I'd like to do for the challenge is have you step into hopefully you're already doing your daily task list uh maybe you've already finished that but like we're going to do another week of it and what we're going to do this time is we're going to do our daily task list of three to five items and what I want you to do is probably in most cases there's going to be at least 60 70% of the tasks are related in some way so maybe it's your day job or it's the the main project you're working on or something like that certain coding task the thing here is that instead of looking at your week of like I have to code on like let's say you have your day job I have to code on this application every day I just I've got a lot to do it's going to take me at least a week maybe more to get this done so I'm just going to go to work each day the beginning of the week your first day look at the big your your task and what I want you to do is within doing that take that thing particularly this is where it's a challenge like if you have a whole day you've got you know a full 6 to8 hours of work to do and you're trying to figure out well the challenge here is break that into a couple of of pieces how I mean it may just be what you get done before lunch and what you get after lunch or something like that but it's like in a way that you can now have that one item of I've got to work on this project to three or five items that I have these things that I'm going to get done today now within that you most likely are going to be chunking out things for the next day and so what I'm thinking about here is a little combo challenge part of it is the meal prep kind of thing like Michael referred to is what you want to do is let's in this first day and maybe this is one of your tasks on your to-do list in your first day is create a little backlog for yourself of the bigger item for each of the next five days or the next you know I guess next six days let's say we're on day one so that when you get to day two you already have a backlog of the big it items and now as you go through the week every day as you're putting those other lesser items together be spend a little bit of time so the goal is every day for the items that you the you know if you put uh if you split stuff up and you have like say three tasks I want you to actually create six is I want you to spend enough time to put six together so that every day you have you are building actually on top of your your backlog and this is an interesting one because I want you to do it just for a week because at the end of the week technically you're going to have like several weeks worth well you at least have another week of task I guess if you do extra ones every day roughly but what I want you to do is build the Habit so that as we start going forward one of the goals needs to be when I build my list there is always going to be something that doesn't make the list that goes into my backlog and now at some point could look at every time we go which gets into the idea of like technical debt and things like that is like maybe we have a point where we say every day one of the items I'm going to put on my list is something that's in my backlog it will not be something new it will not be something on fire it will be something that's been sitting in my backlog so that's the challenge is to build your to-do list now we've done this for a little bit we're starting to build a habit now we're going to tweak this habit and we're going to build our list for today and also be adding tasks that we can maybe pull from for the future as we start going into our next seven days so this one's going to be a little bit different but I think it's going to be something and and you can put your you can put your backlog in a in a Word document on a spreadsheet on a sheet of paper you name it just ideally put it on a sheet of paper with pencil so you can carry it with you little notebook wherever or if you've got like you know a phone or something that's like a just handy dandy simple list so you can look at it any time and go do I have something to do oh yeah I've got something to do I I have some dead time I'm going to go take something off of my list what you should put on that list is email info@ developer.com and send these guys some sort of feedback I really don't care if it's good or bad I'd like feedback I just like to hear what you like what you don't like obviously you like me you don't like Mike you don't have to send me that part but you can you can always double down but ideally what are the topics we've covered what are the things we've covered that are uh maybe we've covered too much that we haven't covered enough what are some things that you would love to hear from us what are some suggest suggestions you have for us in the greater development or Community for building better habits what are some of the things that you have done and we will be more than happy to either leave your name Anonymous or we can actually give you the fame of being mentioned on a podcast if you want to get to that point you can also reach us out at developer.com there's a contact us form you can leave us comments and follow and uh rate US on the on YouTube on wherever you get your podcast uh Facebook we've got a page out there you can get us out or on X where you can go to develop andur and you can follow us there you can send us stuff you can retweet us whatever you want to do all that being said it's time to wrap this one up so go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so one of the things I would like to caution is as you're putting together these lists and kind of building the backlog don't just put trivial tasks on the to-do list don't just try to fill up with menial stuff if you're running into problems finding things to put on your list I don't know about you but there's always one problem or one nagging issue with a piece of software I'm working on that there's just never time to work on one of the things you could do is start looking at those things like you know why is this always breaking or why am I always getting these nagging email Al birds or why am I getting the you know start putting those things on your to-do list because it's like oh you know maybe you should take a a little bit of time figure that out and the funny thing is if you do and it you figure it out and it goes away that's one less annoying thing off your list so that's one of those check and double check for sanity sake I would I would take that a little like another level beyond that as well is is since we're building a list and we're looking at these things and we're spending time on it if there are things that are on our list or outside of our list that are recurring themes that are things that maybe are getting they're taking longer and longer or maybe it only takes a few minutes but it takes a few minutes every single day that those are things that maybe as Michael said is that we start looking at ways to not just fix a problem but take things that are not problems but are not as efficient as they could be so it could be things like as Michael's Michael's favorite topic is maybe you've thought for a while I should have some unit tests as part of my code write a couple of unit tests make that one of your to-do items or I should comment this code or I should commit those code changes because I haven't touched that base in six months and I've got all of these changes and it's a you know a lightning strike away from losing all my work or whatever it is those things it does get into the idea of maybe automating some stuff that this is really more about like pain points and addressing those and even addressing annoyances so the things where it's like it takes 10 minutes for me to do this to run this report or to do this task how can I make it faster it does get any idea of Automation and things like that but it's really more specifically about process Improvement and it may be backwards sometimes because it could be something like I log in every day to put my to-do list into this appli it takes me 10 minutes why am I doing this how can I do it faster you know what you can do is you can get pencil and paper and you could write them down in a minute every day and be done so this is a different little thing that we're going to get into there's difference between Automation and process Improvement but it's one of those areas you can get into so it's a little bit of a you know Peak under the covers at some of the things that we will talk about in the future that being said it is time for us to go improve our processes and move on into our building our habit so we're going to go do that let you guys go do the same we appreciate the time you've spent with us as always love for you to come back leave us feedback and let us know how these these challenges are working and we're continue to share our experiences where we have been successful and where we have fallen short and hopefully you guys can sort of grow with us as we build better habits as well as the become the better developers that we all want to be go out there and have youself a good one and we will talk to you next time around [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
all right so yeah sort of like Blended
and blurred and changed that up but
that's
okay so we'll do this one a little
differently um oh yeah I just hit record
if you don't know that actually I mean I
didn't I actually hit it qu while back
but we paused and behind the scenes
stuff for you guys hello again we're
back we're talking about this one I
think I wanted to get a little bit more
into
um W because this
is there's actually a couple places one
I was thinking about is actually like
putting stuff on your schedule like
scheduling time but I'm not sure I want
to do that because it's I'm not sure
that by itself is enough so I think I am
going to go back more into like the
ticketing tasks apps and and things like
that but I think either one of them like
it's it's sort of a good followup but
it's like where are you where are you
feeling it where are you you feel like
you would want to go with this so as
we're ending La the last episode I
started thinking about the task thing
like some people may have a hard time
putting a list together so what if we
did an episode on breaking things
down all right so breaking things down
like if you have a task or a a like a
software it kind of goes with your to-do
list it kind of goes with scheduling it
kind of goes with batching and it then
kind of it it almost to me it's like how
would we break down like a large problem
or a large
task like how would I identify if a task
is a big task how would I break it down
which kind of leads into then okay how
do I then use a ticking system like J
how do I schedule out projects it it
almost feels like if we go straight to
that we're kind of missing something in
between well that's what I'm trying to
figure out is how do we turn that into
where how do we make that a daily habit
that makes you success like continuously
better
as far
as tackling
that because I get it and I think it
it's but it's
like I'm trying I'm like I guess yeah my
blocker there is like how well how do we
turn that into a challenge that would be
you know building a habit kind of thing
and working up to
something and maybe it maybe it's we
take
something big and have them break it
down for the next
week
or maybe oh maybe we
do not sure what I'm still not sure what
that that challenge is going to be so if
we put a pin in it if we change it to
more not saying is that like as like
bigger like you know weekly monthly road
map kind of stuff but then it still
comes back that's not going to be
something you're going to be doing every
day either though so no but I kind of
like like how we were doing the to-do
list or our daily task list you brought
up the you mentioned oh hey you know if
you're building software you know you do
it in such break your task up in such a
way where you do like the front end the
database component the
repository there are ways to break up a
project into it smaller pieces which
kind of gets into like the whole scrum
thing the whole points thing you know if
you have an eight oops you maybe you
need to break the problem down more
maybe that's it maybe it's like how do
we break a problem
down how do we here's here's an idea is
um as sort of a
followup
is gets into like having a personal
backlog so it's basically like so start
on day one and you've got some tasks and
you're like okay I need to get my let's
say my five
tasks and one of them is like we talk
like it's something that's going to take
me several days so and this actually
touches a little bit on batching and
stuff like that so this is
like
um we'll call it like it's more like
strategic planning because then it's
basically it's like okay I've got what
I'm doing on today but then I've got
essentially leftovers and so it's while
I'm doing the leftovers like for example
I've got this application I need to
write so maybe instead of just you know
I know I can't do the whole thing
tomorrow so I pick a piece but as part
of doing that I say you know what if I'm
going to do this work I'm going to
actually give myself the next you know
the next week's worth of work or the
next two weeks worth of work because it
does start thinking about Sprints and
stuff like that which granted it goes
beyond our like sort of s-day thing but
we could say hey think about like going
into that kind of an approach because
then what you get to do is you just pull
tasks down each day and you do have a
you know things that are as you break
stuff up you just the extra pieces go
into your your backlog and you can
always go to that for task or you can
periodically have one of your tasks be
that I want to break down a bunch of
stuff to get to my
backlog yeah that kind of works because
if we actually do it like that initially
we could do it kind of more Cabana
versus Sprints where stuff just in the
back you just pull it from the backlog
as you need
work and then move into the more Sprint
stuff as we get further into these
discussions and that does sort of that's
what I'm thinking is like it does sort
of like it gives us a couple things to
build on basically and a couple places
that we can go from
there uh let's
see and the challenge could be not so
much to
out two weeks but pick a task
or like we were talking the kitchen sink
app we could even apply to that versus
automation to do I mean we've got a
couple things already we've talked about
that we could apply it to
where here take pick
a application or pick a feature you
would like to add to your kitchen syn
app but make it a larger feature pick a
feature that you think may take a week
and then break it
down let's do that let's sort of do like
breaking oh I'll call it uh breakdown
backlog so that would work like again we
could use like the kitchen sink as part
of it we could use the to-do list and
then use this to kind of break it down
to appli
theable I me they can I don't think we
need to time them all back I think we
can just sort of leave that open that
may be like a bonus thing is like hey
you could do that um but other than that
I think it's like yeah I like to keep
them open
to I like for us to not lead them too
much into something because I would
rather it be something it's like hey
you're so people are owning it they're
owning their own
thing uh that reminds me I'm G to put
this on the list for future
stuff
um okay couple ideas there all right I'm
going to give the famous Trace dos
Uno hello and welcome back we are
continuing our season of building better
habits because we are building better
developers and we do it one day at a
time or something like that I am Ron
bhead I'm one of the founders of
developing or building better developers
I am also a founder of RB Consulting
where we help you take the vast
Wasteland of technology that is out
there whether it's technology sprawl or
the pain related to it and find ways
through simplification automation and
integration to like bring that down into
something that is a nice pretty little
Farmville Village or something like that
so that you can be far more effective
your business and your customers are
happy and everybody
wins good thing bad
thing uh a good thing is why did I I had
like a nice little list so bad thing is
is I made myself a list of like I was
like oh here's my good thing and my bad
thing and I lost my list I don't know
how I like it's right here in front of
me as I'm banging on this and I didn't
ah I hate when I do
that ah good thing good thing good thing
good thing good thing good
thing was I had a night last night
there's one of these and this actually
goes a little bit to like our Challenge
from last week or from last episode at
least where whether it's last week or a
year ago when you did it is with like
doing your to-do list and stuff like
that is I got to the end of my day and I
had my stuff done I got things done I
was like okay the stuff I needed wanted
desired to get done that day got done
and I had an evening that was nice
weather out uh was like Hey I'm going to
go I had like a little training thing I
had to do but I was like you know what
I'm going to go get like a simple Pizza
we got a nice big thing of wine and just
like hung out on the deck for a while
hanging by the fire pit just having a
good old time so that was definitely a
good thing in the the world of Challen
es the um I think one of the biggest
problems which actually is sort of a bad
thing is me picking the automation piece
is because I need to go so I'm failing
this but I'm going to do better this
time around and I'm I've got a couple
more days but it's basically I've got
I've got some ideas of what to automate
and I need to spend a little time to do
that Automation and part of it which is
sort of good to itself is that I've been
doing all these little automations like
you know building out mail filters and
some things like that and couple little
things but I think that's the challenge
and that's why we do this is so that we
can keep it in our mind and not let it
fall through the cracks so something you
may want to do which like I like I said
I always I've done the the to-do list
challenge for more than seven years I
think probably more than 14 years I've
done that stuff for a long long time
however you do these kinds of things and
you you start to build these habits but
you may want to put on that list working
on one of these challenges or when you
get to the end of it's like hey I didn't
get to this thing yet I want to make
sure I do this because you do want to
get those habits built in and those may
be those additional tasks that we've
talked about that could end up not
really like your main task but the
things it's like I just need to touch
this item or do this thing today don't
go out there and touch that person over
there because you never know what kind
of developer or stuff he's got all over
himself Michael go ahead and introduce
yourself hey everyone my name is Michael
M I'm one of the co-founders of develop
andur building better developers this
season building better habits I'm also
the founder of Invision QA where we are
experts at automation if you are
struggling with bad software no QA
limited QA or just problems with overall
software development give us a call our
whole Mantra is quality first we do test
driven development and we will help you
build those unit tests those automation
tests selenium tests mobile testing
whatever you need to make your life
better and to improve the quality of
your product from development to release
good things bad things good things uh
let's see good thing good thing good
thing it's wrapping up uh we're
recording this right before Halloween
but yeah I'm a big Halloween guy so
tomorrow I'm so stoked so we're actually
starting the Halloween marit on tonight
and we'll finish that tomorrow so that
is a very good thing I'm just stoked uh
bad thing uh I decided to try my luck at
some horror video games and found out
that uh Silent Hill 2 remake is really
creepy awesome game creepy as get out
it's almost as bad as the baby level on
Resident Evil 7 um so while I love
Halloween I hate scary in some instances
uh
challenges uh so I've been doing really
good with the automation stuff again
that's kind of my Mantra my company uh
but as far as the pomodora I'm getting a
little bit better at it I need to
remember at night to use a different
timer than my phone um again I mentioned
that last time if you have those you
know do not disturb things turned on
which is great if you're trying to use
that to control your timers you're uh
sound might not come on so just be
careful with that and the other things
I've been working on kitchen syn app
I've been U building out some nice UI
designs which uh are working actually
with the automation piece to make them
plug-in play so if I need a custom
design it will format it to a particular
customers's um kind of
uh their colors or branding at a push of
a button so you just answer a few
questions plug it in boom you have a web
UI stylesheet and some basic screens to
get you going so making some good
progress on
that all right speaking of progress
let's talk about our habits for this
episode this is something make
we've there are a lot of habits and
there's a lot of things that are
interrelated that are part of becoming a
better developer just like in the
technology World things like you you
need to sort of understand a base to be
able to understand middle tier to be
able to understand what you're doing on
the front end and and where is it best
to do that work and those kinds of
things in the world of getting stuff
done of being productive of making sure
that things don't fall through the
cracks there are a lot of skills related
to that and this is where we sort of
like got a little bit into a Pandora's
box of talking about just a list item
last time around we talked about having
your list you go attack your list this
episode we want to talk about it's
really it's it sort of gets into the
meta side of that of making the list but
more
importantly it's taking big things and
breaking them into smaller things and
doing that in a way and this is also
which is where our habits going to talk
we're going to talk about is basically
having a habit of a personal backlog of
when you take that big thing and you
chip off a small piece and you put it on
your to-do list you take the other chips
and you put them in your backlog
ideally you you spend a little bit of
time breaking that task up let's say
it's going to take you a week that you
spend a little bit of time one day and
you break it into seven tasks or five
tasks however you're want to Define your
week and those are going to be you know
Monday you do task one Tuesday two three
four all the way through to
Friday the thing here is this also
touches on the idea of batching a little
bit so let it just instead of just like
chipping off one piece and say okay
here's what it is and I'll think about
that later you say I'm going to look at
this a little bit and I'm going to think
about what makes sense what is a logical
progression to get this done and then
break it down and now part of this is
when do you know it's too big now that
is itself quite an interesting question
but we should even if we have never
estimated anything and we probably have
let's face it we you're life its
estimation but let's say you haven't
really professionally thought about it
before you should at least be able to
sit back and go huh what is it going to
take me to do this task now the bonus is
it really doesn't matter if you
overestimate or underestimate
particularly if you underestimate great
you got it done faster if you
overestimate then you can always come
back and say okay I've got to find a
stopping point I'm going to break this
up I'm going to tackle it another day so
yeah that's not the best solution but at
least it is viable because now you're
like oh I took a bigger CH bite off than
I can chew I've got to adjust that now
the way you do these
things typically there's a lot of ways
you can approach it but the nice thing
is that we have when we're talking about
our daily list which is what our backlog
is our personal backlog is effectively
it is all of those different tasks that
we could actually take and put on our
to-do list for a given day take them out
of our backlog put them on our list go
get them done ideally and we've talked
about this if you ever go get the if you
get the development or book all that
kind of stuff we talk about these things
about having a backlog about having that
pool of tasks because we probably should
have told you this before we challenge
you to do three tasks or five tasks a
day is that when you've got that pool it
makes those tasks really easy because
you you have things that you've got to
do you have things that have to have
some sort of progress made on them and
so you can figure out looking at your
backlog where those what are the tasks
that would potentially move the ball
forward there find one that fits and
then you put it together it's almost
like a it's a little bit of a Tetris
kind of thing because you probably will
have a a bigger tasks and then maybe a
couple smaller tasks or a bigger task
and maybe a medium in a small task or
things like that so you're you're going
to look at these and you're going to
need to sort of push them together
because they're not all going to be the
same size and this is where it gets into
all right we know that our outer limit
our our outest our biggest constraint is
we have to get it done in a day which we
we cheat and we say you have to get it
done in six hours which that's just one
task if you only get one task done you
need to break it up therefore six hours
too big so now we start looking at well
what would make sense well you could if
it's just two tasks you could say you
know 3 hours is sort of your limit but
we're talking at least three to five so
now you're down a probably one to two
hour task now it takes a little bit more
work to break something up to that level
that is sometimes too granular if you
get into the world of scrum and agile
and Sprints that is why there are tasks
that are
not that small there are tasks that take
a week or more however to some extent
those have to be able to be broken down
because you work a day at a time even if
it takes you a week to get it done you
worked on that five different times so
you had five chunks one way or another
so the reality is that there's some
level of us stepping in and doing work
in these smaller chunks the bonus to
this is this gets back to why
your school your college classes well
college is different because they hate
you but in regular school and before
College your classes were effectively
less than an hour and if you look at
presentation that are complex
presentations they are less than an hour
because people can't consume content
they can't get heavy into thought for a
long for past about 45 to 60 Minutes on
average now you'll say I'm a developer I
can go heads down for eight hours yes
you can but if you don't break that out
a little bit you there is a diminishing
return so you would find that if you
actually break that up and every so
often just like even if you get up which
is another topic we'll get into this if
you get up and go like take a FIV minute
walk and come back you will be more
productive having taken those five
minutes and just step back for a second
than you will be if you just stayed
heads down the whole time now that is
not a hardened pass there are times
where it's like don't pick walk going
for a walk right when you're in the
middle of solving a major problem there
is like timing and things like that
however the nice thing about this is
this forces us to have these bite-sized
chunks which is healthier for us in the
long run it makes us more productive in
the long run and it is easier to
estimate small than it is big if you
want me to estimate how to repair a
total car and I need to just figure out
how to I don't know replace a tire
that's flat I can figure out how what I
can better estimate fixing that flat
tire than I can repairing the entire car
same thing with code we know that it's
like if if I just have to write a a
little method or a function I'd probably
have a lot better idea of that versus an
entire applic
and so this is where we start to build
our backlog and this is going to be one
of the habits is that instead of just
this is where we take it to the next
level instead of Simply building our
list one of the other things we're going
to do is we're going to have a backlog
and we're going to use that backlog to
feed the list but we're also going to at
times be building use the building the
list piece to help add to our backlog
now I'm going to gather my backlog of
thoughts while Michael continues this
because he also has a lot of thoughts on
this
thanks for so I'm actually going to take
a step out of software for a minute and
kind of hits closer to home if you're
looking to build task list and you're
looking to at massive problems for
trying to break things down just think
about your grocery list you know you
have to go shopping you have to buy food
then you have to prepare your meals for
the week you you know you get dinner
maybe lunches breakfast typically you're
not going to go to the grocery store
every single day to buy the food you
need to prep to prepare your meal for
that night cook it and then prepare it
no what you end up doing is you look
ahead you figure out okay what kind of
menu do I want for the week you go to
the grocery store you buy a whole bunch
of stuff and then you may do that on
Saturday and then Sunday you go okay so
what are the meals going to be for the
week and then what you need to do is oh
well there's a bunch of prep work I need
for
the week so what you can do is Sunday
you can do all that prep work put it in
the fridge and then Monday oh we're
having tacos okay so you pull out all
the stuff that you prep for tacos put it
together run your recipe 6 30 minutes to
cook boom you got your meal if you did
not do all that prep then you had to
probably go to the grocery store which
took you time to get there time to shop
time to get back time to prep time to
cook and now you're looking at eating at
sometime maybe 8 9 10:00 at night
because you started so late getting your
things together that's kind of what
we're talking about by breaking things
down if you're in the software world you
have problems like that you have to be
Forward Thinking you have a problem and
you have a deadline or you have an idea
that a customer wants and they kind of
need the timeline of how long is it
going to take to get it
done so what you do is you look you kind
of plan a little bit and you take what
it is you're trying to accomplish
and you figure out okay what do I need
first what do I need to gather to be
able to do this uh project then you
break it down you do your prep work
that's can be your smaller tasks and
then from that prep work you can then
break it down into other tasks that you
can do throughout the week throughout
the day to get the tasks
done now as Rob mentioned Sprints and
you know projects planning things like
that
it's life we want to get things done but
we also don't want to be overloaded we
want to follow those tasks we want to do
the Pomodoro Technique we want to ease
the stress and get things done the GTD I
believe is what you've been referring to
um through the past few podcasts so what
the idea is here is look ahead look at
what it is you need to get done make the
list kind of plan for it and then put
together a l like a master list that
backlock of things that need to be done
and then you pull them in in the order
that makes sense again you don't want to
build the screen before you had the back
end because you may not have all the you
know the fields all the data points
identified that you need on that screen
so make sure you do things in the right
order not out of order so you're not
taking more time to get get things
done and lastly because I'm the test guy
if you are building software don't
neglect testing look at your projects
from the user perspective so if you kind
of have this planned out what it is that
you're going to build look at from the
user's perspective as I build it what am
I supposed to get out of it so then you
can actually write the test with the
test so one of your tasks could be if I
do this how do I test it and then you
essentially can kind of have a
corresponding task go with each of those
and by the time you get to the end of
the week you can push a button and know
if everything you did during the week
works so that brings us to this
Challenge and there's a lot of ways that
we can do this
but as we've talked through this and and
thought through what kinds of things
we're going to have in our to-do list
what I'd like to do for the challenge is
have you step into hopefully you're
already doing your daily task list
uh maybe you've already finished that
but like we're going to do another week
of it and what we're going to do this
time is we're going to do our daily task
list of three to five items and what I
want you to do is probably in most cases
there's going to be at least 60 70% of
the tasks are related in some way so
maybe it's your day job or it's the the
main project you're working on or
something like that certain coding task
the thing here is that instead of
looking at your week of like I have to
code on like let's say you have your day
job I have to code on this application
every day I just I've got a lot to do
it's going to take me at least a week
maybe more to get this done so I'm just
going to go to work each
day the beginning of the week your first
day look at the big your your task and
what I want you to do is within doing
that take that thing particularly this
is where it's a challenge like if you
have a whole day you've got you know a
full 6 to8 hours of work to do and
you're trying to figure out well the
challenge here is break that into a
couple of of pieces how I mean it may
just be what you get done before lunch
and what you get after lunch or
something like that but it's like in a
way that you can now have that one item
of I've got to work on this project to
three or five items that I have these
things that I'm going to get done today
now within that you most likely are
going to be chunking out things for the
next day and so what I'm thinking about
here is a little combo challenge part of
it is the meal prep kind of thing like
Michael referred to is what you want to
do is let's in this first day and maybe
this is one of your tasks on your to-do
list in your first day is create a
little
backlog for yourself of the bigger item
for each of the next five days or the
next you know I guess next six days
let's say we're on day one so that when
you get to day two you already have a
backlog of the big it
items and now as you go through the
week every day as you're putting those
other lesser items
together be spend a little bit of time
so the goal is every day for the items
that you the you know if you put uh if
you split stuff up and you have like say
three tasks I want you to actually
create six is I want you to spend enough
time to put six together so that every
day you have you are building actually
on top of your your backlog
and this is an interesting one because I
want you to do it just for a week
because at the end of the week
technically you're going to have like
several weeks worth well you at least
have another week of task I guess if you
do extra ones every day
roughly but what I want you to do is
build the Habit so that as we start
going forward one of the goals needs to
be when I build my list there is always
going to be something that doesn't make
the list that goes into my backlog and
now at some point could look at every
time we go which gets into the idea of
like technical debt and things like that
is like maybe we have a point where we
say every day one of the items I'm going
to put on my list is something that's in
my backlog it will not be something new
it will not be something on fire it will
be something that's been sitting in my
backlog so that's the challenge is to
build your to-do list now we've done
this for a little bit we're starting to
build a habit now we're going to tweak
this habit and we're going to build our
list for today and also be adding tasks
that we can maybe pull from for the
future as we start going into our next
seven days so this one's going to be a
little bit different but I think it's
going to be something and and you can
put your you can put your backlog in a
in a Word document on a spreadsheet on a
sheet of paper you name it just ideally
put it on a sheet of paper with pencil
so you can carry it with you little
notebook wherever or if you've got like
you know a phone or something that's
like a just handy dandy simple list so
you can look at it any time and go do I
have something to do oh yeah I've got
something to do I I have some dead time
I'm going to go take something off of my
list what you should put on that list is
email info@ developer.com and send these
guys some sort of feedback I really
don't care if it's good or bad I'd like
feedback I just like to hear what you
like what you don't like obviously you
like me you don't like Mike you don't
have to send me that part but you can
you can always double down but ideally
what are the topics we've covered what
are the things we've covered that are uh
maybe we've covered too much that we
haven't covered enough what are some
things that you would love to hear from
us what are some suggest suggestions you
have for us in the greater development
or Community for building better habits
what are some of the things that you
have done and we will be more than happy
to either leave your name Anonymous or
we can actually give you the fame of
being mentioned on a podcast if you want
to get to that
point you can also reach us out at
developer.com there's a contact us form
you can leave us comments and follow and
uh rate US on the on YouTube on wherever
you get your podcast uh Facebook we've
got a page out there you can get us out
or on X where you can go to develop
andur and you can follow us there you
can send us stuff you can retweet us
whatever you want to do all that being
said it's time to wrap this one up so go
out there and have yourself a great day
a great week and we will talk to you
next time bonus
material so one of the things I would
like to caution is as you're putting
together these lists and kind of
building the backlog
don't just put trivial tasks on the
to-do list don't just try to fill up
with menial stuff if you're running into
problems finding things to put on your
list I don't know about you but there's
always one problem or one nagging issue
with a piece of software I'm working on
that there's just never time to work
on one of the things you could do is
start looking at those things like you
know why is this always breaking or why
am I always getting these nagging email
Al birds or why am I getting the you
know start putting those things on your
to-do list because it's like oh you know
maybe you should take a a little bit of
time figure that out and the funny thing
is if you do and it you figure it out
and it goes away that's one less
annoying thing off your list so that's
one of those check and double check for
sanity
sake I would I would take that a little
like another level beyond that as well
is is since we're building a list and
we're looking at these things and we're
spending time on it if there are things
that are on our list or outside of our
list that are recurring themes that are
things that maybe are getting they're
taking longer and longer or maybe it
only takes a few minutes but it takes a
few minutes every single
day that those are things that maybe as
Michael said is that we start looking at
ways to not just fix a problem but take
things that are not problems but are not
as efficient as they could be so it
could be things like as Michael's
Michael's favorite topic is maybe you've
thought for a while I should have some
unit tests as part of my code write a
couple of unit tests make that one of
your to-do items or I should comment
this code or I should commit those code
changes because I haven't touched that
base in six months and I've got all of
these changes and it's a you know a
lightning strike away from losing all my
work or whatever it is those
things it does get into the idea of
maybe automating some stuff
that this is really more about like pain
points and addressing those and even
addressing annoyances so the things
where it's like it takes 10 minutes for
me to do this to run this report or to
do this task how can I make it faster it
does get any idea of Automation and
things like that but it's really more
specifically about process Improvement
and it may be backwards sometimes
because it could be something like I log
in every day to put my to-do list into
this appli it takes me 10 minutes why am
I doing this how can I do it faster you
know what you can do is you can get
pencil and paper and you could write
them down in a minute every day and be
done so this is a different little thing
that we're going to get into there's
difference between Automation and
process Improvement but it's one of
those areas you can get into so it's a
little bit of a you know Peak under the
covers at some of the things that we
will talk about in the future that being
said it is time for us to go improve our
processes and move on into our building
our habit so we're going to go do that
let you guys go do the same we
appreciate the time you've spent with us
as always love for you to come back
leave us feedback and let us know how
these these challenges are working and
we're continue to share our experiences
where we have been successful and where
we have fallen short and hopefully you
guys can sort of grow with us as we
build better habits as well as the
become the better developers that we all
want to be go out there and have youself
a good one and we will talk to you next
time around
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