Detailed Notes
In the latest podcast episode, we explored the crucial topic of organizing business documentation—a challenge every entrepreneur faces, particularly in the tech industry. As we approach the season's end, we reflect on balancing working on your business and in your business. This episode delved into maintaining effective organization to ensure an efficient and productive workflow.
Read more: https://develpreneur.com/organizing-business-documentation-a-critical-challenge-for-entrepreneurs
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Additional Resources
* Navigating Communication Tools in Modern Workplaces (https://develpreneur.com/navigating-communication-tools-in-modern-workplaces/)
* Version Control – The Key To Modern Development (https://develpreneur.com/version-control-best-practics/)
* CYA Documentation: Getting Started With Consulting (https://develpreneur.com/cya-documentation-getting-started-with-consulting/)
Transcript Text
[Music] hello everybody we are back and my first complaint today we're not going to have a whole episode on this because it's really like two seconds is I cannot for the life of me find the recording button for Zoom it's like every time I I go and it's because it's one of these it's like a window that you can expand out and it adds all the little menu items but then if you go smaller which is what I tend to do when I do this instead of full screen that button disappears all right rant ended there you go the more you know it's just I guess have a big screen that's just always the way to do it have some big know 80 foot wide screen and then then it's never that issue now um you've got Mac right of course soow Zoom you suggest it would be well I guess it could be Linux so that no offense to everybody that's in Windows but yes offense to everybody that's in the windows World um if you look at the top you should see a little Zoom text yep if you click that the record options right there oh yes it is it's always up there this is why I like looked at cuz if all these buttons and then they've got your little like yeah the regular controls wow thanks now I feel small all right just start right out it's like okay I obviously have no technical skills no we just haven't had enough coffee to start that would be it maybe it's because it's a little early and I had a late night and so I was like uh um I do like the organization thing I think that's where we're going to go with on this because it's a it's funny cuz a how you describe it is also what I run into is it's sort of like it's one of these things that we have things that they get out of hand it's like we you you let it go on autopilot or whatever and if you don't have your autopilot set right the next thing you know it's like that's a freaking mess and it's it's funny because I was just talking about some other things um actually one that's much more near and dear to everybody's heart uh just like finances stuff I've had so much stuff automated that it's like I just have forgotten I just like it's just it just happens and that's not a good thing to do because then you need to go check back because you'll find stuff where it's like what the heck why are they charging me for this or where did this come out or what is this thing doing and it's it had gotten out of hand for you know part of the reason is because I was tired of chasing down because we had all these different varying varying medical bills for varying organizations and varying kids and me and all this kind of other stuff that was going out it was just a little here and it was always odd just like a little here a little there and it was something was like okay well I'll just go put this on some automated payment and that on an automated payment all that long story short short story long depending on how you look at it it was basically one of these that the next day no I'm like God there's all this money moving around and I'm I'm not even paying attention to it anymore and you know I think if we take it into the uh it's the other one like I think you know you mentioned your folders in your file structure or your files in your folder structure uh I think that and then emails is another one you know we've talked about email before but I think it's another good it is a an extension of that conversation and then there's a there's a lot of stuff around that so I think that's um you know just like I think we talked about like using your history and stuff like that if you're on a on a Unix box some of these things that we can keep track of like you what have we done what is the work that we're doing where you know what is that thing that I solved yesterday or that document I created last week and finding it it's also along the conversation we've had in the past where you know there's working in your business and working on your business and I think this kind of falls into that you know working on your business because you know organization is a key part of keeping things smooth because if you can't find what you're looking for you can't find that bill or you can't find that document you created you know that could impact your business and that's honestly that's a lot of what we're selling to everybody is it's like you know that's what it is supposed to give to you as an easier way to find your document read your document scan your document search your stuff organize your data report on your data and all of that so I think that is perfect I think this will be the organization episode or something along those lines so hello and welcome back we are continuing our series our season season 21 we're actually wrapping up I think probably this one and maybe one more episode and then we will have a maybe a surprise uh topic for Season 22 I know it'll be a surprise to us maybe it won't be a surprise to everybody else but uh this episode we're going to talk about organization as we're talking through just some of the things that we run into on a regular basis going through our professional lives one of the things that is a is it's always a balance or trying to find the right balance as an entrepreneur and I think it goes Way Beyond being uh Technical and being in a technical industry but also just entrepreneurs in general because it does come up a lot it's the idea of working on your business or in your business you have to do both but you know you're you're trying to figure out the best balance to building your brand your business to going out and finding customers and working with them versus doing the work that they're paying you to do so you have a couple of of things that sort of work against each other but we don't work against each other my name is Rob Broadhead I am one of the founders of develop and building better developers and on the other side I'm going to actually give you two names to start this time so I'm like really spoon feeding them as we have Michael M over on the other side say hi to everybody hey everyone I'm mikae MOS one of the co-founders of developing ner and also founder of Envision QA so we started in the in the pregame here that you could see out on YouTube we started talking about this a little bit and it feels like it's a good subject for us because it's just uh for one it is something that you have to do periodically and two as we're recording this we're hitting about a mid year you know the middle of the year and it seems like everybody does this stuff at the in the new year everybody's in this like hey I'm going to change stuff up I'm going to do all this blah blah blah blah blah and then you sometimes have like spring cleaning bests in the you know sometimes as part of cleaning everything else maybe you're like throwing some documents out and cleaning some stuff up particularly if you are close to or involved in any sort of that educational Rhythm where you know kids are kids adults and stuff like that are like graduating from a they're finishing up a semester and they're wrapping up maybe for a summer break and so it's easy to just you know clear out effectively clear out your locker and throw out all the crap you don't want which usually is really almost everything that was in your locker now as we get older we don't have those rhythms as much we have to make sure that we create those and we do have them I think from a technology point of from a software development point of view I think one of the great things that we good markers is that we typically will have like a project or a a release or something like that and so there those are good contained parameters around stuff around our documentation and our notes and our code and all those kinds of things now we've talked before the code that you're creating if you're a software developer should be sitting in Version Control somewhere and that should be just like easy to search through pag stuff branches all that different topic the other material is where we run into I think it's easier for us to lose track of it that other material being emails which we've talked about many times but now it's it's in the past it's been email in documents like did we put together like stat even just status reports um we may have design and requirements documents that we're working on we may have had some sort of write up that we did for a demo or you know or code review things like that me that we want to they do have a value to us moving forward because they're uh either a template or they are reference material that we can go back to and say hey we you know we wrote this thing up and this is something we can refer back to to help us through our tasks a good example in my most recent stuff and we've mentioned this uh before as well is like we constantly just we're constantly spinning up servers and and setting stuff up whether for a new project or promoting something out to production and in the last few days once again I got myself into a pickle will say because I was I was pushing a uh putting a a Django python server behind a Pachi getting that thing rolled out and I've done this now I don't know dozens of times in the last couple years but it seems like every single time I do it it's a it's a slightly different Linux variant it's a slightly different Library it's always going to be a slightly different version of python and Django and they're it's very sensitive it's very fragile and so I end up having like digging my way through all this and plus that and getting like your making sure SL SSL certificate is in the right place and making sure those are up to date and they all match and short story long again one of the reasons that I can do that or at least jump start it is I have all my notes from the prior time now two things there is like I need to know where my notes are I actually could I organize those fairly well because I have a Confluence page and then within that it's just a link of how-tos it's a almost every and have it from almost every customer I've had it'll be you know how to set up the initial development environment or how to connect to their servers or how to uh you know what are their maybe it's like what are their development standards and some things like that it's you it's it's a sort of like a a one-page cheat sheet how do I get a hold of that person it's like a one-pager for for that c for that company for that project so you've got that now we've got these wikis as well as our documents and our folders and if you're like us Michael and I in particular I think running this a lot where you've got and if you're a side Hustler you're going to run into this is you've got your work work and then you got your side hustle work and then you probably got your family stuff and then you've got things that cross all of these and figuring out where to put stuff is very important one because then that way you're going to be find it easier to find it uh and also it's making sure that you keep that up to date particular is you shift maybe from when you're working more in a a certain mode for your job versus your side hustle it maybe that you're in a lot of like let's say you're in a lot of marketing mode for your side hustle for a while and then that comes up later in your business well you want to make sure that you say oh yeah I did that before but I Did It For My Side hustle and not for my business so before I pass it over him it's just like a I think that it's it's really it's about to me it's about rules of thumb in a sense it's just like so set stuff up that you're comfortable with one find a tool that works for you is and it it can be there there's just so many tools out there is find something that works for you whether you want to do a uh a one-size fits-all like um a clickup or Monday or some of these other tools that are out there that sort of they have everything they'll a lot of them are CRM now like HubSpot really started out this and has gotten more CRM where they will a lot of them they'll you can routee your email through there you can have all your documents there you can have you know email campaigns like your mail chimps and stuff like that can go out of there so you can have like a One siiz fits-all dashboard but you may also be like me you have different levels of stuff is you got your like the documents that you know you're going to use over and over again and you want those to be pristine or close enough like hopefully you your resume over your career you're probably going to like you know keep touching that again and updating it and tweaking it and cleaning it up you're also probably going to have hopefully if you're smart you're going to have temp it's like heyy whenever I write this kind of document like me whenever I write a proposal I've got a proposals folder that has got 20 years back of varying proposals and so I can go back and pick them um in various places and say like oh yeah I did this how did I do that save you a little bit of time and then you also have like uh slack conversations or chats or stuff like that where you want to just pull that information or raw like console sessions where I was cracking through and trying to install something and get all the right libraries in and stuff like that so make sure that whatever it is that you use that it works for you and then you're going to have to spend some time with it that's a probably the hardest part you have to invest some time this is actually the in versus on your business part of this is working on your business is getting your infrastructure together so that you know where things are coming in and where things are going and as a if you're like us and you have any you know technology pieces to it to your to your skill set and honestly now even if you don't there are a lot of automation tools out there there are a lot of ways for you to figure out your your general structure and then automate things to put those in the right places you can look at like iftt if this then that.com um you can look at there's make there's a bunch of other tools out there now that are sites that are built for Automation and they're built to help those that are not as technical or that want a low or zero code approach to their automation help them figure out what you know everything needs to have a place and then making that automation put those things in their place that was a lot so I'm going to take a deep breath for a long time and and so what are where where are you and and maybe talk a little bit about your struggles recently because I know this is now during here near and dear to your heart because you've just gone through a documentation uh cleanse of some sort yeah so one of the so you've really touched on kind of the whole organization and approach you know you talked about wikis you talked about you know working in your business working on your business the problem we run into as entrepreneurs doing side hustles or even in our day-to-day jobs is we get busy we go out we have to look up things on the internet we have to download things we write up documentation like Rob said and we get our job done but the problem is a lot of times we're under such pressure to start the next piece to jump onto the next job the problem is we don't reflect on what we just did and and of course you know with Source control we can commit that code but all those websites we went to all that research we did unless you take a step back and go write up a Wiki or write up a document and keep track of all that information or put it in a read me you're going to lose it because if you just continue to go on to the next project to the next project to the next project you're basically either going to have one heck of a downloads folder where everything's sticking in there and you have no idea where anything is or you're going to print out stuff it's going to sit on your desk it's going to clutter things up so you need to take a pause at a certain point like we've discussed with the email you don't necessarily have to have zero email in your inbox but there are rules and structures you can put in place to organize things so you can write up rules that oh I get this email from this person it goes into this folder you can essentially do the same thing with your documentation as you work through the week maybe do a daily maybe every Wednesday or every Friday spend a few minutes look at your downloads folder what did I download for the week do I need to keep any of this and if so where does it belong the other problem I've run across is while I do have a decent file folder uh file cabinet structure online the problem I'm running into at the moment is I just shifted companies so I have my old Mage Consulting that is now Invision QA one of the problems I just recently ran into is I was still storing documents into Mage Consulting that really need to be in en Vision QA so I actually misfiled information that I really needed so when I went looking for it I couldn't find it which unfortunately then I had to spend an hour or two digging through all my documents to find where the heck this file was finally found it but that is a level of anxiety you don't want you want to make sure that you do this sooner than later now like Rob was I like the analogy you gave of the students you know you're at the end of the semester you basically clean out your locker and you keep what you want which really most of us just throw all of our stuff away and we just move on to the next course unless it's something like calculus one calculus 2 things of that fun nature even then it's like do I really need that if you're like me I'm a little more of a packrat when it comes to documentation I'm always worried I will need that document or I'll need that link to that website so I have put structures in place to kind of protect myself and keep a lot of that organized for me one of the interesting things you can do especially with modern browsers is a lot of them have bookmark managers so you can create folders you can export your bookmarks and import them into other structures at least once a quarter I export my bookmark uh man all my bookmarks to a file and I store that out in Dropbox this works for two advantages one if I go work for an organization that has the system locked down I can't log in to say my Gmail to sync my bookmarks I can import that bookmark file and boom I have all my bookmarks in my new system the other thing that's interesting about it is if you export these or you actually look at the book Mark manager you can organize your bookmarks like you can a file structure so you can have all these nice drop downs everything gets organized and if you get in the habit of doing that you start structuring your bookmarks so as you're work looking at stuff online as you're doing your project say Java you go oh hey this is a great topic for Java I'll save it to my Java bookmarks folder so now you don't necessarily have to always go Google you can just go click your book book marks okay where are my Java topics oh okay here's the one I'm looking for boom you're off and running it's also good to put those into readme files in projects or even document those in your code as you're working on projects there's been many times where I found this interesting solution to a problem I've had six months down the road it's like well how did I fix that where did I find that and then you spend another hour or two or a day trying to find that solution again if you find an answer and it's online include that link in your code it doesn't necessarily show that hey you had to go borrow from someone else's site it's like hey you found the solution this is where it is this is how it works don't reinvent the wheel include a link a short description move on also that gets stored in your Source control so when you commit the code it's like boom hey this is when we found it this is where it is and you can also find it through things like um you know the get repository or bit bucket you don't have to go into the code you could actually just um or check out the code I mean you can go into the code and there's the link you can click the link and now you can go to the site so it makes searching for uh code and solutions within your own projects faster another thing to think about um real quick is books so we've talked about you know documentation working in your business I have a lot of technical uh books articles things of that nature that I use all the time I had a problem keeping track of them like I had e-readers I would drop them on e-readers I basically have that with me all the time I then started carrying them on thumb drives so I could read them on my iPad the problem I ran into is it's very hard from a file name to tell what a book is or what the book's about if you download a program called calibra it will actually take that file or that file library and import all the metadata for all those books for you so now all you have to do is open up calibra and it's essentially a file structure organizer of all your digital books so if you have like an iPad or things like that you can still import them into those but you can do it all from this program called calibra and it works for both Windows and Mac rob it looked like you had something to jump in so I'll pass it back to you yeah I was actually there's a bunch of little points there that I was as I was singing through this some others and you you touched on some things that are some other things that are very valuable in us having a good um storage structure particularly in the E world in the in the digital sense one of the things I think about was all right I guess the first thing to think about is that being a an e hoarder of some sort or an e packrat is not really necessarily a bad thing because you're not taking up generally speaking you're not taking up a ton of space and space is cheap so you can easily have a um particularly if you go beyond like the most basic stuff you everybody has a Google Drive effectively and you can have a Google Google Drive attached to I think every single Gmail account you have and it's like a terabyte or something I it's a huge amount of space right now so there's for free you already have access to huge amount of storage space that's cloud storage if you're okay with cloud storage and for the most part there's really nothing wrong with it I don't think but Google's got it mic off's got it part of their uh their one drive stuff if you've got uh Office 365 obviously there's you know box and Dropbox and all these other places that are out there that are really good storage not to mention just spin up your like you can go get an AWS light server and store stuff there you know it's not it's going to cost you a little bit but not a ton or you could even use like their S3 and use that to push uh you know some of these documents that you're never going to touch again basically but just put them out there that way You' an opportunity to get to them so it's it's not as the the risk reward the cost and the benefit of being an e packrat is not the same as in in real life because we have a lot bigger it's like we have a it'd be like being a packrat when you've got a huge Global Warehouse that you can pack rat your stuff into and digital stuff if you set it up even halfway right you can go searching for it may take a little bit but that goes into one of the things that if you do this preemptively like Michael mentioned like you don't want to be looking for it when you really need it right now you want to be able to just get that quick you don't want to be having to restructure stuff to go find that thing you need when you need it right now so instead if you think this through and you have a strategy it's like he said if like you got like hey I've got a Java folder where I'm going to put all my Java links when you see one you don't have to think it's just it becomes habitual that you're going to be like Oh I'm going to throw that in my Java folder I'm going to throw that in my Oracle folder I'm going to that in my Microsoft folder whatever it is it just makes that whole process much cleaner and it really doesn't cost you anything anymore so it becomes a it's it's part of building up a good habit one of the things that you can do that are that is a value of this and Michael sort of brushed up against this is the idea of holding also um binaries and older files there's a lot of times that I've had environments that were spun up there's there's software I built 20 years ago that I could go still run I think 100% I haven't tried in a while but if I needed to I could actually go like run that because I have the exact version of all of the softwares there behind now you know things do age out and stuff like that but particularly within a probably like a three to five year you know window you may have like for example Java's one that they're just there's always new versions new versions new versions new versions and then the tools around them there's new versions new versions new versions new versions so if you wanted to go spin up an environment the development environment you used two years ago it may take you quite a while to find that stuff on the internet because those people are going to be archiving stuff off if you have your own archive then you can control that last thing I wanted to throw out there was Michael was talking about like do a regular you know it's it's that regular Locker cleanout and we haven't talked too much about the getting things done style of stuff but GT getting things done is really it really is file system based when you and if you spend any time you realize how much it's it's beyond what I do but one of the things that I found is a really good GTD Habit to get into and I've got like right on my my wall on my desk because it's one of those things I've been I've gotten away from it and this is where I need to get back to it but he he says basically every week there's three things you should do you should set aside some time regardless of what you whether you're an entrepreneur whether you bake cakes whatever it is in the GTD approach is you you essentially once a week because you're working on sort of weekly Sprints or schedules is first thing he says get clear which is basically like clean off your desk like figure out what it what is sitting here that I need to do something with I need either like if it's only going to take a minute I need to do it or if it's something I need to file I need to file it and then it's get current so it's like what does now that I've sort of shifted that stuff off all right where am I at what am I doing what have I got to get done what have I got to get done next week and then once you've sort of got the the critical stuff for the high priority stuff then it's the get creative where it's like okay let's think a little bit about what am I doing next week or what do I want to do a week from now or you know two weeks from now or what is it that I've done a lot of that I want to automate you know it's where do I want to work you know be more uh a little more efficient maybe in what I do or more find ways to improve my productivity so it's a really simple just make sure you have a regular time whether it's and it works best on a weekly basis it may be Monday morning when you get in or it may be Friday before you leave work or you shut down for work depending on you know if you're remote it's a little different but it's still set yourself some time I would say put it on your schedule just like schedule some time probably at least a half hour probably an hour every week where you're just like okay this is my my wrap up effectively is I and it's you know I'm wrapping up the week behind the week I've what I've just done what are the couple things I've got to get like what do I have to get done now get it done and then it's planning for the the week ahead and if you're if you're somebody where your week just gets out of control and you need more than an hour then take more than an hour but it's really it's just so that you are not stressing because you're trying to find stuff and figure out what you're supposed to do instead you've got a very you know in front of you this is what I'm doing this is what I need to get done here's what my priorities are final thoughts yeah along those lines you we really talked a lot about the infrastructure side of things today working on your business uh and working in your business the things we didn't get too technical on but if you go back to some past conversations we've had uh especially around the automation of your uh what you're working on so if you see a lot of competitive as you're going through this process you can automate some of this approach uh for instance Rob mentioned you know he was building those Linux servers um for his uh applications the trick with that you could essentially go in and do the history and pull out all the scripts or all the command lines that you ran store that in a Wicky so next time you can say okay if I'm under this environment here are the commands I ran or even say that as a script so these are some other things you can do to help streamline the process and organize your thoughts going forward and I would not it's I it may be a little more an advanced topic kind of thing but I think the idea of like platform is code and stuff like that particularly um really like Docker environments are really not that hard once you it's going to take little investment and byy a little I mean probably maybe a couple of days I would say almost at most to just sort of get comfortable with Docker and Docker compos and some of the particularly if you're in very typically the same kind of environment getting your environment spun up because once you do then you just you know basically copy and paste that script maybe you have to change a couple names maybe you don't you know or maybe change a couple port numbers or something like that and then boom you've got another environment up and that can really speed your um your ability to like jump into a new project that being said you can really speed our opportunity and our ability to jump into a new season if you throw some some suggestions out there we do have some ideas trying to figure out where we want to go but we are always open for whether it's a uh whether it's one episode whether it's a season maybe you want some like multi-season Arc or some kind of thing that that it's like hey this would be really cool for you guys to cover for the next six years we'll see how that goes but things that are shorter definitely uh we're always looking for feedback we're always looking to just find the better the ways that we can better help you become better help you help us help you a lot of helping the the point is like let's just get moving forward and grow because that's how we do these things as we it's just like this just like your folder structure if you can clean that up and make a couple of changes and it can help you be more productive it frees up more time it allows you to do more stuff and then hopefully at some point allows you to spend a little more time circling back to reamp and you know I'll automate again simplify or integrate or automate your your system your filing your your processes that being said I'm going to let you process this for a little bit we're going to go process some more caffeine and go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time uh any bonus material that you wanted on this one uh just wanted to again touch on automation so as you're reviewing your file structure so to speak or your organization skills Rob mentioned a couple uh applications you can use you know the online storage companies you can use Monday uh email just one of the biggest things that I find myself and a lot of good organized people do is look at your tests look at what you do daily see if you do anything repetitive that you could streamline through automation through be an application be you write a script or you just write a batch file that you could click a link and boom it opens up all your stuff for your day or even runs a bunch of applications for you to organize files even to that extent for instance what we're doing here with the podcast I'm even looked at using applications to help streamline our process for editing videos so you could even write an application that could look for key words and then it would cut your video so these are little things or organizational skills that you can do to make your life a lot easier I think I would say one thing I would like to add too to this is that automation does not have to require code or even really technology I think the first thing I automated in my when I was starting out my career to get my uh to improve my processes and just speed my ability and and improve you know from week to week to week was I had just a I had one of those old uh was it the cvy planners I had a day planner it was a Runner I guess the knockoff of it and each week I each day I had sort of my to-do list each week I had some you know like a I want to get stuff done and then at the at the next week when I would flip over to you know the next Sunday to Saturday then I could basically look at my prior week and then I could roll stuff over that I didn't do but I also looked at sort of the general structure of things that I've done or you know two weeks back or three weeks back or four weeks back it would be stuff like hey do I need to go get an oil change again and some of that is like okay I need to schedule this out or it would be stuff like um you know I know to put on an order for this or I need to renew that those kinds of things and you can use like your little Post-it notes that he's he's throwing there or you can be like me and like i' I also like the the physical writing piece of it it helps me remember stuff and things like that and it's just I don't know there's some geek in me that enjoys having that so you you just write your you know you write your stuff down and then you can you have now a a structure you know whether it's like a lot of people use notepads you know just use like actual you know um Journal type notepads and stuff and take notes in there and and put markings around it and things so that you can flip back and you can find it that doesn't require any code and sometimes is a really good first step because you do that manually and then at some point you get to the point where you go to like a like say you're using uh you know written journals you say hey I'm going to go try evern out or something like or I'm going to go to wiki Pages or I'm going to go to this or that or the other that is really the digital form of what we do in the in the physical world and it start with like everything else Define your process and then you can refine it and then eventually you can automate it and replicate it because you want that process solid because if it's a crappy process and you do it a whole lot you just created a whole big pile of crap but if it's a really you know solid process then running it a bunch of times theoretically will you know improve things and make things better you'll get more done faster so even though we always lean towards because that's who we are we lead towards the technology and the code kind of side of stuff you don't really have to go that far if if you're freaking out you're like I don't know where I'd go it's too many tools and all that kind just take a deep breath cleansing breath do something simple start you know maybe it's just like a as simple as your process is I'm going to list the three tasks I'm G to get done each day and do that for a while until you realize that there's tasks that turn up on a regular basis or there's all these other tasks I think I got to do each that I forget that don't go on my list but then those become tasks that I do every day so that being said I think our task is right now I'm going to go get more caffeine and we're going to wrap this one up and uh try to see how our our time goes but you we'll come back we will as far as you're concerned we'll come back next episode just like we always have been and we're going to go into our actually I think it's going to be our final episode of this season and wrap up season 21 of the podcast and we're going to go into Season 22 and we'll sort of see where this goes but guys have a good one thank you so much for for hanging out with us as always info developer.com for emails checkout developer.com there's a contact us there's a lot of material out there feel that's something that we need to at some point speaking of organizing we need to get that organized some we would love to do that we've sort of started but it's it's one of those we waited too long so don't be us organized today before you get a huge pile of stuff that you got to go spend some time to sort through have a good one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
hello everybody we are back and my first
complaint today we're not going to have
a whole episode on this because it's
really like two seconds is I cannot for
the life of me find the recording button
for Zoom it's like every time I I go and
it's because it's one of these it's like
a window that you can expand out and it
adds all the little menu items but then
if you go smaller which is what I tend
to do when I do this instead of full
screen that button disappears all right
rant ended there you go the more you
know it's just I guess have a big screen
that's just always the way to do it have
some big know 80 foot wide screen and
then then it's never that
issue now um you've got Mac right of
course soow Zoom you suggest it would be
well I guess it could be Linux so that
no offense to everybody that's in
Windows but yes offense to everybody
that's in the windows World um if you
look at the top you should see a little
Zoom text yep if you click that the
record options right there oh yes it is
it's always up there this is why I like
looked at cuz if all these buttons and
then they've got your little like yeah
the regular controls wow thanks now I
feel small all right just start right
out it's like okay I obviously have no
technical
skills no we just haven't had enough
coffee to start that would be it maybe
it's because it's a little early and I
had a late night and so I was like
uh um I do like the organization thing I
think that's where we're going to go
with on this because it's a it's funny
cuz a how you describe it is also what I
run into is it's sort of like it's one
of these things that we have things that
they get out of hand it's like we you
you let it go on autopilot or whatever
and if you don't have your autopilot set
right the next thing you know it's like
that's a freaking mess and it's it's
funny because I was just talking about
some other things um actually one that's
much more near and dear to everybody's
heart uh just like finances stuff I've
had so much stuff automated that it's
like I just have forgotten I just like
it's just it just
happens and that's not a good thing to
do because then you need to go check
back because you'll find stuff where
it's like what the heck why are they
charging me for this or where did this
come out or what is this thing doing and
it's it had gotten out of hand for you
know part of the reason is because I was
tired of chasing down because we had all
these different varying varying medical
bills for varying organizations and
varying kids and me and all this kind of
other stuff that was going out it was
just a little here and it was always odd
just like a little here a little there
and it was something was like okay well
I'll just go put this on some automated
payment and that on an automated payment
all that long story short short story
long depending on how you look at it it
was basically one of these that the next
day no I'm like God there's all this
money moving around and I'm I'm not even
paying attention to it
anymore and you know I think if we take
it into the uh it's the other one like I
think you know you mentioned your
folders in your file structure or your
files in your folder structure uh I
think that and then emails is another
one you know we've talked about email
before but I think it's another good it
is a an extension of that conversation
and then there's a there's a lot of
stuff around that so I think that's um
you know just like I think we talked
about like using your history and stuff
like that if you're on a on a Unix box
some of these things that we can keep
track of like you what have we done what
is the work that we're doing where you
know what is that thing that I solved
yesterday or that document I created
last week and finding it it's
also along the conversation we've had in
the past where you know there's working
in your business and working on your
business and I think this kind of falls
into that you know working on your
business because you know organization
is a key part of keeping things smooth
because if you can't find what you're
looking for you can't find that bill or
you can't find that document you created
you know that could impact your business
and that's honestly that's a lot of what
we're selling to everybody is it's like
you know that's what it is supposed to
give to you as an easier way to find
your document read your document scan
your document search your stuff organize
your data report on your data and all of
that so I think that is perfect I think
this will be the organization episode or
something along those
lines so hello and welcome back we are
continuing our series our season season
21 we're actually wrapping up I think
probably this one and maybe one more
episode and then we will have a maybe a
surprise uh topic for Season 22 I know
it'll be a surprise to us maybe it won't
be a surprise to everybody else but uh
this episode we're going to talk about
organization
as we're talking through just some of
the things that we run into on a regular
basis going through our professional
lives one of the things that is a is
it's always a balance or trying to find
the right balance as an entrepreneur and
I think it goes Way Beyond being uh
Technical and being in a technical
industry but also just entrepreneurs in
general because it does come up a lot
it's the idea of working on your
business or in your business you have to
do both but you know you're you're
trying to figure out the best balance to
building your brand your business to
going out and finding customers and
working with them versus doing the work
that they're paying you to do so you
have a couple of of things that sort of
work against each other but we don't
work against each other my name is Rob
Broadhead I am one of the founders of
develop and building better developers
and on the other side I'm going to
actually give you two names to start
this time so I'm like really spoon
feeding them as we have Michael M over
on the other side say hi to everybody
hey everyone I'm mikae MOS one of the
co-founders of developing ner and also
founder of Envision
QA so we started in the in the pregame
here that you could see out on YouTube
we started talking about this a little
bit and it feels like it's a good
subject for us because it's just uh for
one it is something that you have to do
periodically and two as we're recording
this we're hitting about a mid year you
know the middle of the year and it seems
like everybody does this stuff at the in
the new year everybody's in this like
hey I'm going to change stuff up I'm
going to do all this blah blah blah blah
blah and then you sometimes have like
spring cleaning bests in the you know
sometimes as part of cleaning everything
else maybe you're like throwing some
documents out and cleaning some stuff up
particularly if you are close to or
involved in any sort of that educational
Rhythm where you know kids are kids
adults and stuff like that are like
graduating from a they're finishing up a
semester and they're wrapping up maybe
for a summer break and so it's easy to
just you know clear out effectively
clear out your locker and throw out all
the crap you don't want which usually is
really almost everything that was in
your locker now as we get older we don't
have those rhythms as much we have to
make sure that we create those and we do
have them I think from a technology
point of from a software development
point of view I think one of the great
things that we good markers is that we
typically will have like a project or a
a release or something like that and so
there those are good contained
parameters around stuff around our
documentation and our notes and our code
and all those kinds of things now we've
talked before the code that you're
creating if you're a software developer
should be sitting in Version Control
somewhere and that should be just like
easy to search through pag stuff
branches all that different
topic the other material is where we run
into I think it's easier for us to lose
track of it that other material being
emails which we've talked about many
times but now it's it's in the past it's
been email in documents like did we put
together like stat even just status
reports um we may have design and
requirements documents that we're
working on we may have had some sort of
write up that we did for a demo or you
know or code review things like that me
that we want to they do have a value to
us moving forward because they're uh
either a template or they are reference
material that we can go back to and say
hey we you know we wrote this thing up
and this is something we can refer back
to to help us through our tasks a good
example in my most recent
stuff and we've mentioned this uh before
as well is like we constantly just we're
constantly spinning up servers and and
setting stuff up whether for a new
project or promoting something out to
production and in the last few days once
again I got myself into a pickle will
say because I was I was pushing a uh
putting a a Django python server behind
a Pachi getting that thing rolled out
and I've done this now I don't know
dozens of times in the last couple years
but it seems like every single time I do
it it's a it's a slightly different
Linux variant it's a slightly different
Library it's always going to be a
slightly different version of python and
Django and they're it's very sensitive
it's very fragile and so I end up having
like digging my way through all this and
plus that and getting like your making
sure SL SSL certificate is in the right
place and making sure those are up to
date and they all match and short story
long
again one of the reasons that I can do
that or at least jump start it is I have
all my notes from the prior time now two
things there is like I need to know
where my notes are I actually could I
organize those fairly well because I
have a Confluence page and then within
that it's just a link of how-tos it's a
almost every and have it from almost
every customer I've had it'll be you
know how to set up the initial
development environment or how to
connect to their servers or how to uh
you know what are their maybe it's like
what are their development standards and
some things like that it's you it's it's
a sort of like a a one-page cheat
sheet how do I get a hold of that person
it's like a one-pager for for that c for
that company for that project so you've
got that now we've got these wikis as
well as our documents and our folders
and if you're like us Michael and I in
particular I think running this a lot
where you've got and if you're a side
Hustler you're going to run into this is
you've got your work work and then you
got your side hustle work and then you
probably got your family stuff and then
you've got things that cross all of
these and figuring out where to put
stuff is very important one because then
that way you're going to be find it
easier to find it uh and also it's
making sure that you keep that up to
date particular is you shift maybe from
when you're working more in a a certain
mode for your job versus your side
hustle it maybe that you're in a lot of
like let's say you're in a lot of
marketing mode for your side hustle for
a while and then that comes up later in
your business well you want to make sure
that you say oh yeah I did that before
but I Did It For My Side hustle and not
for my business so before I pass it over
him it's just like a I think that it's
it's really it's about to me it's about
rules of thumb in a sense it's just like
so set stuff up that you're comfortable
with
one find a tool that works for you is
and it it can be there there's just so
many tools out there is find something
that works for you whether you want to
do a uh a one-size fits-all like um a
clickup or Monday or some of these other
tools that are out there that sort of
they have everything they'll a lot of
them are CRM now like HubSpot really
started out this and has gotten more CRM
where they will a lot of them they'll
you can routee your email through there
you can have all your documents there
you can have you know email campaigns
like your mail chimps and stuff like
that can go out of there so you can have
like a One siiz fits-all dashboard but
you may also be like me you have
different levels of stuff is you got
your like the documents that you know
you're going to use over and over again
and you want those to be pristine or
close enough like hopefully you your
resume over your career you're probably
going to like you know keep touching
that again and updating it and tweaking
it and cleaning it up you're also
probably going to have hopefully if
you're smart you're going to have temp
it's like heyy whenever I write this
kind of document like me whenever I
write a proposal I've got a proposals
folder that has got 20 years back of
varying proposals and so I can go back
and pick them um in various places and
say like oh yeah I did this how did I do
that save you a little bit of
time and then you also have like uh
slack conversations or chats or stuff
like that where you want to just pull
that information or raw like console
sessions where I was cracking through
and trying to install something and get
all the right libraries in and stuff
like that so make sure that whatever it
is that you use that it works for you
and then you're going to have to spend
some time with it that's a probably the
hardest part you have to invest some
time this is actually the in versus on
your business part of this is working on
your business is getting your
infrastructure together so that you know
where things are coming in and where
things are going and as a if you're like
us and you have any you know technology
pieces to it to your to your skill set
and honestly now even if you don't there
are a lot of automation tools out there
there are a lot of ways for you to
figure out your your general structure
and then automate things to put those in
the right places you can look at like
iftt if this then
that.com um you can look at there's make
there's a bunch of other tools out there
now that are sites that are built for
Automation and they're built to help
those that are not as technical or that
want a low or zero code approach to
their automation help them figure out
what you know everything needs to have a
place and then making that automation
put those things in their
place that was a lot so I'm going to
take a deep breath for a long time and
and so what are where where are you and
and maybe talk a little bit about your
struggles recently because I know this
is now during here near and dear to your
heart because you've just gone through a
documentation uh cleanse of some sort
yeah so one of the so you've really
touched on kind of the whole
organization and approach you know you
talked about wikis you talked about you
know working in your business working on
your business the problem we run into as
entrepreneurs doing side hustles or even
in our day-to-day jobs is we get busy we
go out we have to look up things on the
internet we have to download things we
write up documentation like Rob said and
we get our job done but the problem is a
lot of times we're under such pressure
to start the next piece to jump onto the
next job the problem is we don't reflect
on what we just did and and of course
you know with Source control we can
commit that code but all those websites
we went to all that research we did
unless you take a step back and go write
up a Wiki or write up a document and
keep track of all that information
or put it in a read me you're going to
lose it because if you just continue to
go on to the next project to the next
project to the next project you're
basically either going to have one heck
of a downloads folder where everything's
sticking in there and you have no idea
where anything is or you're going to
print out stuff it's going to sit on
your desk it's going to clutter things
up so you need to take a
pause at a certain
point like we've discussed with the
email you don't necessarily have to have
zero
email in your inbox but there are rules
and structures you can put in place to
organize things so you can write up
rules that oh I get this email from this
person it goes into this
folder you can essentially do the same
thing with your documentation as you
work through the week maybe do a daily
maybe every Wednesday or every Friday
spend a few minutes look at your
downloads folder what did I download for
the week do I need to keep any of this
and if so where does it
belong the other problem I've run across
is while I do have a decent file folder
uh file cabinet structure online the
problem I'm running into at the moment
is I just shifted companies so I have my
old Mage Consulting that is now Invision
QA one of the problems I just recently
ran into is I was still storing
documents into Mage Consulting that
really need to be in en Vision QA so I
actually misfiled information that I
really needed so when I went looking for
it I couldn't find it which
unfortunately then I had to spend an
hour or two digging through all my
documents to find where the heck this
file was finally found it but that is a
level of anxiety you don't want you want
to make sure that you do this sooner
than later now like Rob was I like the
analogy you gave of the students you
know you're at the end of the semester
you basically clean out your locker and
you keep what you want which really most
of us just throw all of our stuff away
and we just move on to the next course
unless it's something like calculus one
calculus 2 things of that fun nature
even then it's like do I really need
that if you're like me I'm a little more
of a packrat when it comes to
documentation I'm always worried I will
need that document or I'll need that
link to that website so I have put
structures in place to kind of protect
myself and keep a lot of that organized
for
me one of the interesting things you can
do especially with modern browsers is a
lot of them have bookmark managers so
you can create folders you can export
your bookmarks and import them into
other
structures at least once a quarter I
export my bookmark uh man all my
bookmarks to a file and I store that out
in
Dropbox this works for two advantages
one if I go work for an organization
that has the system locked down I can't
log in to say my Gmail to sync my
bookmarks I can import that bookmark
file and boom I have all my bookmarks in
my new system the other thing that's
interesting about it is if you export
these or you actually look at the book
Mark manager you can organize your
bookmarks like you can a file structure
so you can have all these nice drop
downs everything gets organized and if
you get in the habit of doing that you
start structuring your bookmarks so as
you're work looking at stuff
online as you're doing your project say
Java you go oh hey this is a great topic
for Java I'll save it to my Java
bookmarks folder so now you don't
necessarily have to always go Google you
can just go click your book book marks
okay where are my Java topics oh okay
here's the one I'm looking for boom
you're off and running it's also good to
put those into readme files in projects
or even document those in your code as
you're working on projects there's been
many times where I found this
interesting solution to a problem I've
had six months down the road it's like
well how did I fix that where did I find
that and then you spend another hour or
two or a day trying to find that
solution again if you find
an answer and it's online include that
link in your code it doesn't necessarily
show that hey you had to go borrow from
someone else's site it's like hey you
found the solution this is where it is
this is how it works don't reinvent the
wheel include a link a short description
move on also that gets stored in your
Source control so when you commit the
code it's like boom hey this is when we
found it this is where it is and you can
also find it through things like um you
know the get repository or bit bucket
you don't have to go into the code you
could actually just um or check out the
code I mean you can go into the code and
there's the link you can click the link
and now you can go to the site so it
makes searching for uh code and
solutions within your own projects
faster another thing to think about um
real quick is books so we've talked
about you know documentation working in
your business I have a lot of technical
uh books articles things of that nature
that I use all the time I had a problem
keeping track of them like I had
e-readers I would drop them on e-readers
I basically have that with me all the
time I then started carrying them on
thumb drives so I could read them on my
iPad the problem I ran into is it's very
hard from a file name to tell what a
book is or what the book's about if you
download a program called calibra it
will actually
take that file or that file library and
import all the metadata for all those
books for you so now all you have to do
is open up calibra and it's essentially
a file structure organizer of all your
digital books so if you have like an
iPad or things like that you can still
import them into those but you can do it
all from this program called calibra and
it works for both Windows and Mac rob it
looked like you had something to jump in
so I'll pass it back to you yeah I was
actually there's a bunch of little
points there that I was as I was singing
through this some others and you you
touched on some things that are some
other things that are very valuable in
us having a good um storage structure
particularly in the E world in the in
the digital sense one of the things I
think about
was all right I guess the first thing to
think about is that being a an e hoarder
of some sort or an e packrat is
not really necessarily a bad thing
because you're not taking up generally
speaking you're not taking up a ton of
space and space is cheap so you can
easily have a um particularly if you go
beyond like the most basic stuff you
everybody has a Google Drive effectively
and you can have a Google Google Drive
attached to I think every single Gmail
account you have and it's like a
terabyte or something I it's a huge
amount of space right now so there's for
free you already have access to huge
amount of storage space that's cloud
storage if you're okay with cloud
storage and for the most part there's
really nothing wrong with it I don't
think but Google's got it mic off's got
it part of their uh their one drive
stuff if you've got uh Office
365 obviously there's you know box and
Dropbox and all these other places that
are out there that are really good
storage not to
mention just spin up your like you can
go get an AWS light server and store
stuff there you know it's not it's going
to cost you a little bit but not a ton
or you could even use like their S3 and
use that to push uh you know some of
these documents that you're never going
to touch again basically but just put
them out there that way You' an
opportunity to get to them so
it's it's not as the the risk reward the
cost and the benefit of being an e
packrat is not the same as in in real
life because we have a lot bigger it's
like we have a it'd be like being a
packrat when you've got a huge Global
Warehouse that you can pack rat your
stuff into and digital stuff if you set
it up even halfway right you can go
searching for it may take a little bit
but that goes into one of the things
that
if you do
this preemptively like Michael mentioned
like you don't want to be looking for it
when you really need it right now you
want to be able to just get that quick
you don't want to be having to
restructure stuff to go find that thing
you need when you need it right now so
instead if you think this through and
you have a strategy it's like he said if
like you got like hey I've got a Java
folder where I'm going to put all my
Java links when you see one you don't
have to think it's just it becomes
habitual that you're going to be like Oh
I'm going to throw that in my Java
folder I'm going to throw that in my
Oracle folder I'm going to that in my
Microsoft folder whatever it is it just
makes that whole process much cleaner
and it really doesn't cost you anything
anymore so it becomes a it's it's part
of building up a good habit one of the
things that you can do that are that is
a value of this and Michael sort of
brushed up against this is the idea of
holding
also um binaries and older files there's
a lot of times that I've had
environments that were spun up there's
there's software I built 20 years ago
that I could go still run I think 100% I
haven't tried in a while but if I needed
to I could actually go like run that
because I have the exact version of all
of the softwares there behind now you
know things do age out and stuff like
that but particularly within a probably
like a three to five year you know
window you may have like for example
Java's one that they're just there's
always new versions new versions new
versions new versions and then the tools
around them there's new versions new
versions new versions new versions so if
you wanted to go spin up an environment
the development environment you used two
years ago it may take you quite a while
to find that stuff on the internet
because those people are going to be
archiving stuff off if you have your own
archive then you can control that last
thing I wanted to throw out there was
Michael was talking about like do a
regular you know it's it's that regular
Locker cleanout and we haven't talked
too much about the getting things done
style of stuff but GT
getting things done is really it really
is file system based when you and if you
spend any time you realize how much it's
it's beyond what I do but one of the
things that I found is a really good
GTD Habit to get into and I've got like
right on my my wall on my desk because
it's one of those things I've been I've
gotten away from it and this is where I
need to get back to it but he he says
basically every week there's three
things you should do you should set
aside some time regardless of what you
whether you're an
entrepreneur whether you bake cakes
whatever it is in the GTD approach is
you you essentially once a week because
you're working on sort of weekly Sprints
or schedules is first thing he says get
clear which is basically like clean off
your desk like figure out what it what
is sitting here that I need to do
something with I need either like if
it's only going to take a minute I need
to do it or if it's something I need to
file I need to file it and then it's get
current so it's like what does now that
I've sort of shifted that stuff off all
right where am I at what am I doing what
have I got to get done what have I got
to get done next week and then once
you've sort of got the the critical
stuff for the high priority stuff then
it's the get creative where it's like
okay let's think a little bit about what
am I doing next week or what do I want
to do a week from now or you know two
weeks from now or what is it that I've
done a lot of that I want to automate
you know it's where do I want to work
you know be more uh a little more
efficient maybe in what I do or more
find ways to improve my productivity so
it's a really
simple just make sure you have a regular
time whether it's and it works best on a
weekly basis it may be Monday morning
when you get in or it may be Friday
before you leave work or you shut down
for work depending on you know if you're
remote it's a little different but it's
still set yourself some time I would say
put it on your schedule just like
schedule some time probably at least a
half hour probably an hour every week
where you're just like okay this is
my my wrap up effectively is I and it's
you know I'm wrapping up the week behind
the week I've what I've just done what
are the couple things I've got to get
like what do I have to get done now get
it done and then it's planning for the
the week ahead and if you're if you're
somebody where your week just gets out
of control and you need more than an
hour then take more than an hour but
it's really it's just so that you are
not stressing because you're trying to
find stuff and figure out what you're
supposed to do instead you've got a very
you know in front of you this is what
I'm doing this is what I need to get
done here's what my priorities are final
thoughts yeah along those lines you we
really talked a lot about the
infrastructure side of things today
working on your business uh and working
in your business the things we didn't
get too technical on but if you go back
to some past conversations we've had uh
especially around the automation of your
uh what you're working on so if you see
a lot of competitive as you're going
through this process you can automate
some of this approach uh for instance
Rob mentioned you know he was building
those Linux servers um for his uh
applications the trick with that you
could essentially go in and do the
history and pull out all the scripts or
all the command lines that you ran store
that in a Wicky so next time you can say
okay if I'm under this environment here
are the commands I ran or even say that
as a script so these are some other
things you can do to help streamline the
process and organize your thoughts going
forward and I would not it's I it may be
a little more an advanced topic kind of
thing but I think the idea of like
platform is code and stuff like that
particularly um really like Docker
environments are really not that hard
once you it's going to take little
investment and byy a little I mean
probably maybe a couple of days I would
say almost at most to just sort of get
comfortable with Docker and Docker
compos and some of the particularly if
you're in very typically the same kind
of environment getting your environment
spun up because once you do then you
just you know basically copy and paste
that script maybe you have to change a
couple names maybe you don't you know or
maybe change a couple port numbers or
something like that and then boom you've
got another environment up and that can
really speed your um your ability to
like jump into a new project that being
said you can really speed our
opportunity and our ability to jump into
a new season if you throw some some
suggestions out there we do have some
ideas trying to figure out where we want
to go but we are always open for whether
it's a uh whether it's one episode
whether it's a season maybe you want
some like multi-season Arc or some kind
of thing that that it's like hey this
would be really cool for you guys to
cover for the next six years we'll see
how that goes but things that are
shorter definitely uh we're always
looking for feedback we're always
looking to just find the better the ways
that we can better help you become
better help you help us help you
a lot of helping the the point is like
let's just get moving forward and grow
because that's how we do these things as
we it's just like this just like your
folder
structure if you can clean that up and
make a couple of changes and it can help
you be more productive it frees up more
time it allows you to do more stuff and
then hopefully at some point allows you
to spend a little more time circling
back to reamp and you know I'll automate
again simplify or integrate or automate
your your system your filing your your
processes that being said I'm going to
let you process this for a little bit
we're going to go process some more
caffeine and go out there and have
yourself a great day a great week and we
will talk to you next
time uh any bonus material that you
wanted on this one uh just wanted to
again touch on automation so as you're
reviewing your file structure so to
speak or your organization skills Rob
mentioned a couple uh applications you
can use you know the online storage
companies you can use Monday uh
email just one of the biggest things
that I find myself and a lot of good
organized people do is look at your
tests look at what you do daily see if
you do anything repetitive that you
could streamline through automation
through be an application be you write a
script or you just write a batch file
that you could click a link and boom it
opens up all your stuff for your day or
even runs a bunch of applications for
you to organize
files even to that extent for instance
what we're doing here with the podcast
I'm even looked at using applications to
help streamline our process for editing
videos so you could even write an
application that could look for key
words and then it would cut your video
so these are little things or
organizational skills that you can do to
make your life a lot easier I think I
would say one thing I would like to add
too to this is that
automation does not have to require code
or even really technology I think the
first thing I automated in my when I was
starting out my career to get my uh to
improve my processes and just speed my
ability and and improve you know from
week to week to week was I had just a I
had one of those old uh was it the cvy
planners I had a day planner it was a
Runner I guess the knockoff of it and
each week I each day I had sort of my
to-do list each week I had some you know
like a I want to get stuff done and then
at the at the next week when I would
flip over to you know the next Sunday to
Saturday then I could basically look at
my prior week and then I could roll
stuff over that I didn't do but I also
looked at sort of the general structure
of things that I've done or you know two
weeks back or three weeks back or four
weeks back it would be stuff like hey do
I need to go get an oil change again and
some of that is like okay I need to
schedule this out or it would be stuff
like um you know I know to put on an
order for this or I need to renew that
those kinds of things and you can use
like your little Post-it notes that he's
he's throwing there or you can be like
me and like i' I also like
the the physical writing piece of it it
helps me remember stuff and things like
that and it's just I don't know there's
some geek in me that enjoys having that
so you you just write your you know you
write your stuff down and then you can
you have now a a structure you know
whether it's like a lot of people use
notepads you know just use like actual
you know um Journal type notepads and
stuff and take notes in there and and
put markings around it and things so
that you can flip back and you can find
it that doesn't require any code and
sometimes is a really good first step
because you do that manually and then at
some point you get to the point where
you go to like a like say you're using
uh you know written journals you say hey
I'm going to go try evern out or
something like or I'm going to go to
wiki Pages or I'm going to go to this or
that or the other that is really the
digital form of what we do in the in the
physical world and it start with like
everything
else Define your process and then you
can refine it and then eventually you
can automate it and replicate it because
you want that process solid because if
it's a crappy process and you do it a
whole lot you just created a whole big
pile of crap but if it's a really you
know solid process then running it a
bunch of times theoretically will you
know improve things and make things
better you'll get more done faster so
even though we always lean towards
because that's who we are we lead
towards the technology and the code kind
of side of stuff you don't really have
to go that far if if you're freaking out
you're like I don't know where I'd go
it's too many tools and all that kind
just take a deep breath cleansing breath
do something simple start you know maybe
it's just like a as simple as your
process is I'm going to list the three
tasks I'm G to get done each day
and do that for a while until you
realize that there's tasks that turn up
on a regular basis or there's all these
other tasks I think I got to do each
that I forget that don't go on my list
but then those become tasks that I do
every day so that being said I think our
task is right now I'm going to go get
more caffeine and we're going to wrap
this one up and uh try to see how our
our time goes but you we'll come back we
will as far as you're concerned we'll
come back next episode just like we
always have been and we're going to go
into our actually I think it's going to
be our final episode of this season and
wrap up season 21 of the podcast and
we're going to go into Season 22 and
we'll sort of see where this goes but
guys have a good one thank you so much
for for hanging out with us as always
info developer.com for emails checkout
developer.com there's a contact us
there's a lot of material out there feel
that's something that we need to at some
point speaking of organizing we need to
get that organized some we would love to
do that we've sort of started but it's
it's one of those we waited too long so
don't be us organized today before you
get a huge pile of stuff that you got to
go spend some time to sort through have
a good one and we will talk to you next
time
[Music]