Detailed Notes
Welcome back to “Building Better Developers” as we continue our journey through Season 23, focused on building better habits. In Episode 6, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche dive into the fundamental skill of planning and scheduling as a daily practice. This episode stresses the importance of structuring your day with a manageable, prioritized list of tasks. We will show you how doing this can improve productivity and mental clarity.
*Read More*... https://develpreneur.com/planning-and-scheduling-essential-habits-for-building-better-developers/
*Episode Challenge:* Daily Planning and Scheduling Challenge: Build Your Routine
For the next week, we challenge listeners to follow this structure daily, including on weekends. Whether it’s a workday or a day off, try to set a small list of three to five tasks each morning or the night before. On your off days, tasks might look different, but the practice of building a daily routine and setting priorities remains valuable. It’s this daily repetition that helps turn planning into a habit.
On top of setting the list, Rob recommends adding a bit of prioritization. The most dreaded task should go at the top, and any remaining tasks should be organized by importance and urgency. This approach helps build discipline in handling responsibilities and gradually reinforces a habit of proactive task management.
*Additional Resources*
* Essential Habits for Software Developers: Boosting Productivity and Career Growth (https://develpreneur.com/essential-habits-for-software-developers-boosting-productivity-and-career-growth/) * The Benefits Of Planning (https://develpreneur.com/the-benefits-of-planning/) * Be Intentional In Choosing Tasks For Career Growth (https://develpreneur.com/be-intentional-in-choosing-tasks-for-career-growth/) * Cleaning Your Task List (https://develpreneur.com/cleaning-your-task-list/)
*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] and we have just hit record so there's that all right let's see we talked last time about automating stuff and what else did we talk about uh skills oh yeah like adding to doing a daily skill thing that's right so we had daily skills and Automation and I'm trying to find a pencil here so I can like take a little scratch down a little note because I can't remember what it is and then what's something we want to what are some topics we want to think about here I thought we still had a few more out there let me pull up [Music] [Music] slack we things we want to do to get better now we already talked about security so I think we covered the list that we had want to talk a little bit about um how to do it basically scheduling and calendary type stuff as far as like putting things on your like planning planning your week a little bit putting like holders in place for stuff and then probably even touch a little bit on like the whole GTD thing of like how to get through a week and like make sure that you like make sure you get your crap done and making sure that you've got a good list for what you need to do the next time around stuff like that talk one that followed uh the pamor God why can't I say that right P Pomodoro Technique got it nailed it um we talked a little bit about it because we talked more about that was more about like just taking that 25 minutes and that was one I think we did talk about maybe going into that but we didn't follow up on it because we've done Pomodoro we've done security awareness automation do you have the list up yeah so it was uh security awareness uh Pomodoro kitchen sink Automation and improving code skills what was kitchen sink was building uh oh building like your own yeah like a a app or something like that building your your test app all right um so we could do I could do like a planning scheduling thing and that would kind of work good not just because we could even work that into like the Social Media stuff for your business and things of that nature like um oh what was that me uh memly or what were some of those uh sites we used to use uh to do social media blasts oh um uh what was the owly people uh yeah so of those guys so yeah I don't have to get into the tools CU I don't even remember what they are right now but that would be a good one um then even automate or you could we could even tie that into Automation and kitchen sink you know right your own script to automate your schedule or automate scheduling things and things of that nature that I think goes like six levels too far we want to do some of that's like bite-sized chunks so I'm thinking more along the lines of like for the next seven days have a list at the beginning of the day and a list and check it off at the end of the day or something along those lines something very simple and then putting it into your calendar of some sort you know and if you don't have a calendar of some sort like you know create a calendar of some sort um I'm thinking with that um I'm sort of thinking with that is sort of is do like a um a ticket tool kind of thing for personal use it's more like your own road map and things like that whether it's a whether it's a big to-do list or whatever it is but it's just basically like uh stepping into H I sort of want to do like an incremental though that's like a bigger thing so planning scheduling is a good daily um that's another it can do that would be a good daily one that's not too bad though I guess we could do something like that that it's more of like transitioning that into a jira board or you know jira and and doing personal Sprints or use Trello or one of the billions of tools that are out there to just basically sort of like keep track of your stuff and put things in essentially have your own backlog as well so maybe do like uh tickets tasks yeah I was saying can trolo um something along that line or like even like Microsoft notes have has that like task list or checklist exactly yeah something like that so you just like knowing where you are so the first sort of like one is like planning and scheduling but then within that sort of have that followup is like okay well where we are today what am I doing today what did I get done what do I need to move yada y those kinds of things yeah I think on that briefly for the end of last season but I don't think we really got into it at all this season yet yeah I mean we have we're barely into it so we we haven't really talked about we definitely have not talked about like having a daily we got to figure out a challenge between now and when we get to that point and what is our daily task going to be so this one's gonna be fun uh we'll start with the planning scheduling thing and my favorite three two Uno well hello and welcome back we are continuing our season we are building better developers we're continuing the season of building better habits and this episode we're going to talk about a habit of the habits I guess of planning we're going to sort of get into one Focus this time and the next episode we're actually going to follow up and have almost like a two for one kind of combo Little miniseries within this so this episode we're going to look at that about planning scheduling and actually doing something besides just sitting there and saying hey I've got a crapload of of stuff to do before you get into all that I have a crap load of like introduction stuff to do which is hey I am Rob Broadhead I'm one of the founders of developing or building better developers also a founder of RB Consulting where we take all of that crap that's out there and all of that overwhelm and that technology sprawl and we help you understand what you've got where you need to be and how to get there so how to through automation simplification integration take all that stuff and turn it into something that is actually useful for you good thing bad thing in the world of good thing bad thing I have like a my favorite of the good things is I had some customers that were a little slow on paying and they finally paid I finally like got them over the hump so that's a very good thing related to that and a bad thing is that I had a vendor that had not invoice for a while and I'd totally forgotten that they needed to invoice me so now I've got to like go make sure I do that and get all of that pushed through and build out to the appropriate people I want to add something we're going to add in this season let talk a little bit about what we have been going through with some of our past challenges and so the two that I there two really I want to talk about is one is the coding challenge that I talked about I have continued to do that and it has been a very uh very helpful for me to have something that won uh what I did is I just like hey I want to get into an area of programming that I've heard about it's it's a buzzy typ you know buzzword kind of thing but it's something that I don't know a ton about and I want to know more about it so I go into a little deeper dive and it has allowed me to like one learn more about this thing that everybody would you know is talking about and two it's actually a little different from my day job kind of stuff some of the stuff I'm working on a day-to-day basis so it's actually refreshing to be able to change gears and do something that's not you know like under the gun or anything like that the other one I want to talk about is a pomodoro went through my first week of pomodoros and struggled a little with with them with them basically because I would get to the 25 minutes and I really usually needed about another 10 or 15 but I've kept this going and I've gone from on my to-do list which we'll talk a little bit about this later on my to-do list every day I had one Pomodoro and now I have two pomodoros which is sort of like which I think is a really interesting approach to grow it is just that every day I'm going to have one that is a we'll call it my day job Pomodoro and then I have my side hustle Pomodoro so it could be working in your business Pomodoro working on your business Pomodoro things like that so it is making sure that I have at least you know a half an hour each day of these two things that are you know the driving forces of of what I want to do career-wise between side hustle and you know main hustle and and things like that so those are my challenges and the follow-up Challen all for me is to now hand this over to Michael so he can introduce himself so go ahead and introduce yourself Mr Michael hey everyone my name is Michael malash I'm one of the co-founders of developer ner building better developers also the founder of Invision QA where we help small to midsize businesses automate come up with testing software and other solutions to help improve their business uh software good and bad uh good um I've actually you were mentioned our challenges I've actually made quite a bit of progress on uh kind of revamping my kitchen sink Gap adding some new tools and some new features that I've kind of been laxs and updating for a while uh the bad side I didn't realize that some of the tools and things I had were um not necessarily outdated but they were broken with some of the latest operating system updates so I went through a bit of paino trying to Google to figure out how the heck to fix command line environment issues again which is always a pain in the ass uh although with the challenges though I've been doing really good like you I kind of did the daily Pomodoro uh biggest problem I have is if I tried to sit down in the evenings in blout time I totally lose track of time like I sat down one night had was going to work for just 35 minutes next thing I know it's three hours later so I I've got to really get a little bit better with my timers uh especially once I found out that after a certain time my phone is set to evening or so-called bedtime hours and it turns off all your alert alerts so I wasn't getting notified so I just kept on working that does happen all right so we talk about I'm talk about planning and scheduling and this is something that I have found um a lot of developers not a lot there is probably a split of developers that struggle with this because they would rather just get in and get going and do stuff and they don't really they're just some of us are just too scatterbrained or whatever that we don't really you know sit down and think through some of the details and the bullet points that we probably need to be thinking through but then there's the other side that that is part of what we love because it is more of like mathematical kind of stuff where it's like you put a bullet D you put a bullet Point down you get to check it off when it's done you know things like that when you get into a day now there's we can talk about long you know longer term stuff but I want to really talk more about habitual type stuff the kinds of things that are daily types of habit with your planning and scheduling there are whole like libraries of books written on productivity and tools and approaches and you know the probably the the one that I think most most to some extent would apply to this would be GTD getting things done the way he does it is way beyond anything I've ever done but it may be something that's a very good fit for you because it does attack both daily stuff and then longer term things on The Daily stuff I think the easiest way to start is to pick pick a number probably like three to five somewhere like that you know you may be as small as three or maybe you're an overachiever and you're going to say like five but every day have a to-do list and you can either do it at the beginning of the day or you can write your to-do list for tomorrow at the end of the day and put three to five items on there don't like don't go to like 10 or 15 because you're going to overwhelm and you're never going to get it done and if you only have one or two then you're probably just like you're underselling yourself so somewhere in there and these are like these aren't things like brush your teeth make your bed and make a cup of coffee you're like hey I got them all done before I got up like 5 minutes after I was I rolled out of bed it's not that kind of stuff these are things that you want to accomplish in the day now one of the things that you want it should be actually at the top is the thing that you least want to do you need to get it done but you just don't you dread it you do not look forward to it it's called eating the Frog and it is you will thank yourself if you can regularly find a chore a task a Todo item for your day that you don't want to do but you need to get it done because just like day in and day out getting that thing those things knocked out is amazing how satisfying that is and it doesn't sometimes take too long before you're like there's not really anything out there that I've dread and so your day suddenly becomes sunshine and Roses until the next Dreadful task appears so you want to sit down and you want to take these tasks and you want to think of them um when you're when you're putting them in your mind sort of when you're designing the task or defining the task is it's probably something that's going to take you you know a couple hours maybe typically if you're going to do three to five items the item should be no more than roughly one to two hours a piece or maybe if there's a bigger one that's going to take you half a day then the other two pick some smaller tasks the goal in doing this is to have a an amount of things to do that are comprehensible to you that are easy for you to keep in mind ideally you create your list and you can you can off the top of your head you know that list the rest of the day because it's a small number it's not 15 items it's it's like a it's a shopping list except for when you're just going to grab like a couple of things for that recipe that you need that's why we write them down because we know if you've ever done that you have forgotten one of the items at least on the recipe that you need and you have to go back out I digress what you want is to have that thing that you really dread doing and then you want a couple of things that are well defined so you know when you're done you don't want something where it's like ah it could take a couple of days and if it is if it's something that isn't going to have a well-defined stopping point then Define it down to a well-defined stopping point so instead of uh for example like I need to create a class to um deal with customers and all of their account stuff well like what can you get done today so think of it more like okay I'm going to do the the basic structure of that and a couple of Getters and Setters or something like that you know adjust your to-do list because your goal and this is for your we'll say for your work day basically now it may be that your workday is like for example a hustle and a side hustle you can tack on maybe you know one or two extra tasks where it's that three to five tasks for your primary day your eight hour we'll call your eight hour workday and then one or two that are your half day or whatever it is that you do after that now the key to this is those tasks that you define for your day if it's an eight hour day they should probably be aiming for about a six-h hour day that you could get them done in six hours if you try to fill it to that eight hours you're almost always going to miss you're going to end up stressed you're going to have all kinds of stuff because stuff happens life gets in your way you end up over sleeping you spend too much time at lunch whatever it is get yourself a manageable list and I'll save what the the challenge is with this but like as I'm going to pass this over to Michael as be thinking start like thinking about that as like what does that kind of thing look like and it's it's something that you probably will struggle with a little bit initially because I think we we under and overestimate ourselves all the time we we overestimate what we can do we underestimate and overestimate what tasks we take particularly the ones we hate I don't know how many times the things that I dreaded forever because I was like that's going to take me a day took me half an hour and I was like why did I wait so long to do that now I'm G to allow you guys to wait so long while I pass this over M I let you talk a little bit about task and your approach to this and then we'll come back and talk about the challenge for this episode sure so in the past incidentally we've I've kind of mentioned this before so in my daily routine what I typically like to do is I'll take a sheet of paper and fold it five or six times still it's about the little little bit smaller than an index card and I'll sit down and I will write down what I need to get done for the next day or for that day if I didn't get to it the day before by doing it this way it forces me to keep a small list of things to do so I don't overfill my day the other key to that is don't write small write normal you're only looking for four or five tasks that you want to get done in the day now these tasks could be multiple tasks in one and by that I mean one of the things Rob mentions is always try to get that thing out of the way that you least like to do well one of the things I least like to do is pay bills or deal with financial information I just that's not my cup of tea so what I've actually done is in the past I found myself constantly checking my bank statements daily so now what I've done is not only have I organized this down into a daily task but what I've done now is I've batched it and like every Friday on my to-do list is reconcile my accounts so I go out I check all the registers so now in instead of a task that took me 5 10 15 minutes a day I now moved it to the end of the week it takes me maybe half an hour and I can do it all at once it's the least thing I like to do I know it's one day a week and I knock it out quickly the other thing as Rob mentioned is if you have these large tasks or these large projects that you're working on one of the things you need to be careful of is breaking them up in such a way so that you don't leave them in progress when you end your day or you're at the end of the day and oh I think I can get it done and you work into the night because you're stuck working on a task when you get to the end of your day or the end last task on your list make sure you are at a stopping point make sure that you are done for the day one of the biggest problems I have is if I have not reached that point and I'm at like an indeterminate State on a problem I may carry that with me when I walk away from the computer it gets stuck in your mind it's like oh I really need to get that done what do I need you don't want that so that's one of the things about keeping track of this to-do list that you can do to really not only simplify your daily task and keep it organized but you also lower your stress level because if you get rid of those tasks that you least like to do quickly as Rob said it's a Snowball Effect then it's like oh that's out of the way cool now I can get back into the things I like to do and I actually find it fun sometimes to kind of stagger your tasks so start out with the you know the worst thing that the thing that you really don't want to do and then do something you want to do next like something that you really like to do but maybe it's a small task and then you do kind of a medium task in between that and then maybe another easy task maybe another larger task so it's not not just a matter of stacking what you need to get done in a day it's also how you order your to-do list for how you're going to accomplish this the last thing I want to mention is as you're organizing or as you're listing out these tasks make sure that like I said before you put common tasks together so you kind of batch these uh common threads of work because by doing that you're also stay in the same mindset as you're working through your tasks so like if you're working on building a particular component of an application one task could be okay build the database second piece add the repository piece to your application to talk to the database so you kind of stagger the order of operations of things by doing that you really make it easier because you start out in the right path whereas if you start out with the front end here build the gooey for it oh I'm missing all these uh things I didn't think about because I didn't have the database yet you've doubled your work so also look through your tasks as how you're putting them together to make sure that you're doing them in the right order so you're not having to go back and do double work there's a couple things there um the first one is actually I just lost both of them so the first one is always pay attention to what you are focused on for what you what the the thing that you're going to do don't look down this is is a good example do your tasks synchron asynchronously or I'm sorry synchronously like serialize one two three not in parallel not asynchronous and make sure that you know how to speak before you do like a speaking task like I don't know do a podcast or something like that um the breaking stuff down I think that's one of the best benefits of besides just the endorphins of like hey I got something done and being able to say I'm done when you get your stuff which is a challenge but it is actually very important for example if you go to a place and eat dinner and you have a they give you a plate of food and you finish your plate you are done if you end up in a place that's in all you can eat and you keep going back and adding stuff you are going to eat too much most most likely it's sort of the same thing it's like let's make sure that we are right sizing our tasks for our day and I think it's a like it is it goes back to that whole idea of like doing them in order thinking about those and enough that you're like okay this is sort of this is roughly what I'm going to do and how long the time block I'm going to take is going to force you to think about a little bit so if you're like well I'm just going to start on my new app well you're going to have to take a minute or two to say well what does starting on my new app look like am I going to build a database am I going to write a user story am I going to build out a am I do a a clickable demo am I going to do you know HTML page am I going to build CSS whatever it is what is it I'm gonna am I just going to go register u a code repository and do a first commit those things it it allows you it forces you and allows you to step into your day not in chaos because now you're not Improv iing it you have a plan and yes it takes a little bit of time but it's really not much it's like 5 or 10 minutes maybe to sit through there and think through it I go every day like crank through my stuff I can do it in I don't know I I probably spend less than a minute and there are my tasks that are important and then there's all these other little ancillary things like oh yeah I got to do this it's it's the the laundry list stuff of like oh yeah don't forget to yeah don't forget to send this email don't forget to do that thing they're not really the tasks they are tasks in themselves but they're all those little tiny things that were like oh yeah don't forget to pay the bill or something like that that I knew if I vamped long enough I would come back to one of points the there is a different thing that we can look at that is how he handled his bills and it's actually honestly it's exactly the same way I do it um it is uh Tim Ferris when he talks about getting mail that's how he does it there are certain things that you don't need to do every day and those things may be better candidates for a different approach like a weekly list or something like that I don't want to get out of the scope of this but that's one of the things we probably will talk about actually I know we will talk about later is more like the longer term stuff this is very tactical and so we're talking about your day so challenge wise for the next seven days because that's how challenges work here I want you each day to start whether it's again whether it's the beginning of the day or the end of the day before put down three to five tasks I would challenge you to pick a number and do that number of tasks each time for the next seven days put the one and you can you can prioritize them which would be even better let's like that's bonus points we'll send you a uh a virtual smiley face or whatever the heck it is when you do that because you want to have the thing that you dread the most the thing that's on look at the items on your list and the one that you least want to do boom put that to number one I don't care and they may all be pretty close but whatever you want at least put that at the top because when you get that done the rest of your day is going to be better because the crap you didn't want to do you already got it done so it's like hey smooth sailing after here do that for the next seven days and I do mean seven days not just business days because I think it is very valuable for us to take this same skill and approach into our personal days now I'm assuming that you work five days a week and you take two days off if you work seven days a week sucks to be you there's not much we can do about that but if you take you know six days you got a day off on your off days when you are off when you're not working your main job or whatever it is still do this because it it may be stuff that's like I don't know mow the yard or get a haircut or whatever the heck it is but keep that same the momentum of building that habit and also it is practice it is really good practice because you start figuring out a little bit more assessing things better like what kind of a task is this how should I break this task up some of those skills that are actually very valuable particularly if you're starting out and you're moving into you as you move into a senior a mid-level senior Advanced architect type role in the software world you have to be able to do these mental exercises another mental exercise you have to do is you have to put down send an email to info@ developer.com because you need to give us feedback because we love to hear that particularly you can make that at the like that last day maybe that's your first priority on day seven is to send an email that says I have gotten into my seventh day and I got six days in a row behind this where I and this is now my seventh day I've completed my list because that means you're well on your way to starting a habit and that coincidentally is exactly what this season is all about so shoot us an email if not that you can reach out to us you can leave us comments on wherever you get your podcast on YouTube you can go out to velop or.com you can leave we've got a contact form we got all kinds of crap out there all these ways for you to get a hold of us and also to take a look at all of the content that we have out there whether it's past episodes of this the podcast itself blog articles Mentor class all kinds of stuff that we've done over the years it's all out there it's not super easy but if you do like a couple little searches you can find the topic you need most likely that being said I'm going to let you get on to that go get that list made go out there have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so one of the things I challenge you not to do is do not go list happy do not pick up an app and just go here I'm going to use this apps for to-do list are good want to have good habits in place for using them more often than not I see people pick a to-do list and they just fill it up with hundreds of things and it's like and next day it's like oh my God I have too much to do no keep your list small and for now for this initial task write it on a sheet of paper little not card whatever keep it short once you get those habits established then move on to more technology-wise apps that are out there and the other thing I'd throw out there is as you're working through these tasks figuring out what your to-do list is going to be keep an eye if you see any patterns so if you find that like I I said if you end up like checking your bank statements or reconcile five days a week if you find you're spending 10 20 30 minutes doing that and then you go to something else and you got to come back and try to figure out what you're doing try doing it maybe every other day or twice a week batch it up a little bit and see if that doesn't improve your processes a little bit and also keep your mind focused on what you're doing and all this content shifting back and forth I guys those are good points and and great things for our bonus material I'm going to actually throw a little curveball on this and say that what you could do is for your technology challenge of where you're trying to build something where you're trying to like automate something is you could create yourself like a little spreadsheet or little like super simple like you know I don't know an access app or or something like that something where it's and it really should be like Michael said don't make it too easy for you yourself to just blow out a huge list of tasks ideally this may be something I maybe a product idea I have that comes to that is like where you you can only put X number of of items there every day and then you look at them when they're done and you can even set something up that rolls it over the next day or something like that you can you know there's a lot of stuff you can do there that I think would be useful for a technology kind of challenge cuz it's a very simple app and you could do it in whatever you wanted to do it in as an example I did almost the exact thing of this couple years ago when I wanted to play around with react so I created a react app and it was all for keeping track of tasks and stuff like that the other thing is is what Michael sort of alluded to is automation is that maybe as you're going through these tasks these building these tasks each day may be help ful for you to do that automation challenge that we talked about because now you have a a road map you have a history you have an audit trail of what did you do and you can look back at it and go where did I spend my time or why do I keep doing this and maybe find an automation uh solution to that that being said we're going to wrap it up for this one we will come right back as far as you know uh actually I guess not as far as you know as far as we know we're going to come right back as far as you know it may take years before you come back to this but please don't because that's a long time to work on that challenge as always check us out every Tuesday and Thursday we drop new episodes we are going to continue to do this for quite a while I think we're about four five episodes in and we've got a long way to go in this season so as always if you have some suggestions recommendations since you're watching this you know that we wing it we step right into that we're like what the heck are we going to talk about so the door is wide open for recommendations from all of you guys feel free to throw that out there if there's a a habit that you would either that you have created created and that you would love for us to like share that with the greater developing world or if there's a habit that you want to work on that you would love for us to like throw some sort of a challenge out that is awesome as well so go out there and have a good one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
and we have just hit record so there's
that all right let's see we talked last
time about automating stuff
and what else did we talk
about uh
skills oh yeah like adding to doing a
daily skill
thing that's right so we had daily
skills and Automation and I'm trying to
find a pencil here so I can like take a
little scratch down a little note
because I can't remember what it is and
then
what's something we want to what are
some topics we want to think about here
I thought we still had a few more out
there let me pull up
[Music]
[Music]
slack we
things we want to do to get
better now we already talked about
security so I think we covered the list
that we
had want to talk a little bit about
um how to do it basically scheduling and
calendary type stuff as far as
like putting things on your like
planning planning your week a little bit
putting like holders in place for stuff
and then probably even touch a little
bit on like the whole GTD thing of
like how to get through a week and like
make sure that you like make sure you
get your crap done and making sure that
you've got a good list for what you need
to do the next time around stuff like
that talk one that followed uh the
pamor God why can't I say that right P
Pomodoro Technique got it nailed
it um we talked a little bit about
it because we talked more about that was
more about like just taking that 25
minutes and that was one I think we did
talk about maybe going into that but we
didn't follow up on it because we've
done Pomodoro we've done security
awareness
automation do you have the list up yeah
so it was uh security awareness uh
Pomodoro kitchen sink Automation and
improving code
skills what was kitchen sink
was building uh oh building like your
own yeah like a a app or something like
that building your your test
app all right um so we could do I could
do like a planning
scheduling
thing and that would kind of work good
not just because we could even work that
into like the Social Media stuff for
your business and things of that nature
like um oh what was that me uh memly or
what were some of those uh sites we used
to use uh to do social media
blasts oh
um uh what was the owly people uh yeah
so of those guys so yeah I don't have to
get into the tools CU I don't even
remember what they are right now
but that would be a good one
um then even automate or you could we
could even tie that into Automation and
kitchen sink you know right your own
script to automate your schedule or
automate scheduling things and things of
that nature that I think goes like six
levels too far we want to do some of
that's like bite-sized
chunks so I'm thinking more along the
lines of
like for the next seven days have a list
at the beginning of the day and a list
and check it off at the end of the day
or something along those lines something
very simple and then putting it into
your calendar of some sort you know and
if you don't have a calendar of some
sort like you know create a calendar of
some sort
um I'm thinking with
that um I'm sort of thinking with that
is sort of is do like
a um a ticket tool kind of thing for
personal use it's more like your own
road map and things like that whether
it's a whether it's a big to-do list or
whatever it is but it's just basically
like uh stepping
into H I sort of want to do like an
incremental though that's like a bigger
thing so planning scheduling is a good
daily
um that's another it can do that would
be a good daily
one that's not too bad though I guess we
could do something like that that it's
more of like transitioning that into a
jira board or you know jira and and
doing personal Sprints or use Trello or
one of the billions of tools that are
out there to just basically sort of like
keep track of your stuff and put things
in essentially have your own backlog as
well so maybe do like uh tickets
tasks yeah I was saying can trolo um
something along that line or like even
like Microsoft notes have has that like
task list or
checklist
exactly yeah something like that so you
just
like knowing where you are so the first
sort of like one is like planning and
scheduling but then within that sort of
have that followup is like okay well
where we are today what am I doing today
what did I get done what do I need to
move yada y those kinds of things yeah I
think on that briefly for the end of
last season but I don't think we really
got into it at all this season yet yeah
I mean we have we're barely into it so
we we haven't really talked about we
definitely have not talked about like
having a daily we got to figure out a
challenge between now and when we get to
that point and what is our daily task
going to be so this one's gonna be fun
uh we'll start with the planning
scheduling
thing and my favorite three two Uno well
hello and welcome back we are continuing
our season we are building better
developers we're continuing the season
of building better habits and this
episode we're going to talk about a
habit of the habits I guess of planning
we're going to sort of get into one
Focus this time and the next episode
we're actually going to follow up and
have almost like a two for one kind of
combo Little miniseries within this so
this episode we're going to look at that
about planning scheduling and actually
doing something besides just sitting
there and saying hey I've got a crapload
of of stuff to do before you get into
all that I have a crap load of like
introduction stuff to do which is hey I
am Rob Broadhead I'm one of the founders
of developing or building better
developers also a founder of RB
Consulting where we take all of that
crap that's out there and all of that
overwhelm and that technology sprawl and
we help you understand what you've got
where you need to be and how to get
there so how to through automation
simplification integration take all that
stuff and turn it into something that is
actually useful for you good thing bad
thing in the world of good thing bad
thing I have like a my favorite of the
good things is I had some customers that
were a little slow on paying and they
finally paid I finally like got them
over the hump so that's a very good
thing related to that and a bad thing is
that I had a vendor that had not invoice
for a while and I'd totally forgotten
that they needed to invoice me so now
I've got to like go make sure I do that
and get all of that pushed through and
build out to the appropriate
people I want to add something we're
going to add in this season let talk a
little bit about what we have been going
through with some of our past challenges
and so the two that I there two really I
want to talk about is one is the coding
challenge that I talked about I have
continued to do that and it has been a
very uh very helpful for me to have
something that won uh what I did is I
just like hey I want to get into an area
of programming that I've heard about
it's it's a buzzy typ you know buzzword
kind of thing but it's something that I
don't know a ton about and I want to
know more about it so I go into a little
deeper dive and it has allowed me to
like one learn more about this thing
that everybody would you know is talking
about and two it's actually a little
different from my day job kind of stuff
some of the stuff I'm working on a
day-to-day basis so it's actually
refreshing to be able to change gears
and do something that's not you know
like under the gun or anything like that
the other one I want to talk about is a
pomodoro
went through my first week of pomodoros
and struggled a little with with them
with them basically because I would get
to the 25 minutes and I really usually
needed about another 10 or 15 but I've
kept this going and I've gone from on my
to-do list which we'll talk a little bit
about this later on my to-do list every
day I had one Pomodoro and now I have
two pomodoros which is sort of like
which I think is a really interesting
approach to grow it is just that every
day I'm going to have one that is a
we'll call it my day job Pomodoro and
then I have my side hustle Pomodoro so
it could be working in your business
Pomodoro working on your business
Pomodoro things like that so it is
making sure that I have at least you
know a half an hour each day of these
two things that are you know the driving
forces of of what I want to do
career-wise between side hustle and you
know main hustle and and things like
that so those are my challenges and the
follow-up Challen all for me is to now
hand this over to Michael so he can
introduce himself so go ahead and
introduce yourself Mr Michael hey
everyone my name is Michael malash I'm
one of the co-founders of developer ner
building better developers also the
founder of Invision QA where we help
small to midsize businesses
automate come up with testing software
and other solutions to help improve
their business uh software good and bad
uh good um I've actually you were
mentioned
our challenges I've actually made quite
a bit of progress on uh kind of
revamping my kitchen sink Gap adding
some new tools and some new features
that I've kind of been laxs and updating
for a while uh the bad side I didn't
realize that some of the tools and
things I had were um not necessarily
outdated but they were broken with some
of the latest operating system updates
so I went through a bit of paino trying
to Google to figure out how the heck to
fix command line environment issues
again which is always a pain in the ass
uh although with the challenges though
I've been doing really good like you I
kind of did the daily Pomodoro uh
biggest problem I have is if I tried to
sit down in the evenings in blout time I
totally lose track of time like I sat
down one night had was going to work for
just 35 minutes next thing I know it's
three hours later so I I've got to
really get a little bit better with my
timers uh especially once I found out
that after a certain time my phone is
set to evening or so-called bedtime
hours and it turns off all your alert
alerts so I wasn't getting notified so I
just kept on
working that does happen all right so we
talk about I'm talk about planning and
scheduling and this is something that I
have found
um a lot of developers not a lot there
is probably a split of developers that
struggle with this because they would
rather just get in and get going and do
stuff and they don't really they're
just some of us are just too
scatterbrained or whatever that we don't
really you know sit down and think
through some of the details and the
bullet points that we probably need to
be thinking through but then there's the
other side that that is part of what we
love because it is more of like
mathematical kind of stuff where it's
like you put a bullet D you put a bullet
Point down you get to check it off when
it's done you know things like
that when you get into a day now there's
we can talk about long you know longer
term stuff but I want to really talk
more about habitual type stuff the kinds
of things that are daily types of habit
with your planning and
scheduling there
are whole like libraries of books
written on productivity and tools and
approaches and you know the probably the
the one that I think most most to some
extent would apply to this would be GTD
getting things done the way he does it
is way beyond anything I've ever done
but it may be something that's a very
good fit for you because it does attack
both daily stuff and then longer term
things on The Daily stuff I think the
easiest way to start is to pick pick a
number probably like three to five
somewhere like that you know you may be
as small as three or maybe you're an
overachiever and you're going to say
like five but every day have a to-do
list and you can either do it at the
beginning of the day or you can write
your to-do list for tomorrow at the end
of the day and put three to five items
on there don't like don't go to like 10
or 15 because you're going to overwhelm
and you're never going to get it done
and if you only have one or two then
you're probably just like you're
underselling
yourself so somewhere in there and these
are like these aren't things like brush
your teeth make your bed and make a cup
of coffee you're like hey I got them all
done before I got up like 5 minutes
after I was I rolled out of bed it's not
that kind of stuff these are things that
you want to accomplish in the day now
one of the things that you want it
should be actually at the top is the
thing that you least want to do you need
to get it done but you just don't you
dread it you do not look forward to it
it's called eating the Frog and it is
you will thank yourself if you can
regularly find a chore a task a Todo
item for your day that you don't want to
do but you need to get it done because
just like day in and day out getting
that thing those things knocked out is
amazing how satisfying that is and it
doesn't sometimes take too long before
you're like there's not really anything
out there that I've dread and so your
day suddenly becomes sunshine and Roses
until the next Dreadful task
appears so you want to sit down and you
want to take these tasks and you want to
think of them um when you're when you're
putting them in your mind sort of when
you're designing the task or defining
the task is it's probably something
that's going to take you you know a
couple hours maybe typically if you're
going to do three to five items the item
should be no more than roughly one to
two hours a piece or maybe if there's a
bigger one that's going to take you half
a day then the other two pick some
smaller tasks the goal in doing
this is to have
a an amount of things to do that are
comprehensible to you that are easy for
you to keep in mind ideally you create
your list and you can you can off the
top of your head you know that list the
rest of the day because it's a small
number it's not 15 items it's it's like
a it's a shopping list except for when
you're just going to grab like a couple
of things for that recipe that you need
that's why we write them down because we
know if you've ever done that you have
forgotten one of the items at least on
the recipe that you need and you have to
go back out I
digress what you want is to have that
thing that you really dread doing and
then you want a couple of things that
are well defined so you know when you're
done you don't want something where it's
like ah it could take a couple of days
and if it is if it's something that
isn't going to have a well-defined
stopping point then Define it down to a
well-defined stopping point so instead
of uh for example like I need to create
a class to um
deal with customers and all of their
account stuff well like what can you get
done today so think of it more like okay
I'm going to do the the basic structure
of that and a couple of Getters and
Setters or something like that you know
adjust your to-do list because your goal
and this is for your we'll say for your
work day basically now it may be that
your workday is like for example a
hustle and a side hustle you can tack on
maybe you know one or two extra tasks
where it's that three to five tasks for
your primary day your eight hour we'll
call your eight hour workday and then
one or two that are your half day or
whatever it is that you do after that
now the key to this is those tasks that
you define for your day if it's an eight
hour day they should probably be aiming
for about a six-h hour day that you
could get them done in six hours if you
try to fill it to that eight hours
you're almost always going to miss
you're going to end up stressed you're
going to have all kinds of stuff because
stuff happens
life gets in your way you end up over
sleeping you spend too much time at
lunch whatever it
is get yourself a manageable
list and I'll save what the the
challenge is with this but like as I'm
going to pass this over to Michael as be
thinking start like thinking about that
as like what does that kind of thing
look like and it's it's something that
you probably will struggle with a little
bit initially because I think we we
under and overestimate ourselves all the
time we we overestimate what we can do
we underestimate and overestimate what
tasks we take particularly the ones we
hate I don't know how many times the
things that I dreaded forever because I
was like that's going to take me a day
took me half an hour and I was like why
did I wait so long to do
that now I'm G to allow you guys to wait
so long while I pass this over M I let
you talk a little bit about task and
your approach to this and then we'll
come back and talk about the challenge
for this
episode sure so in the past
incidentally we've I've kind of
mentioned this before so in my daily
routine what I typically like to do is
I'll take a sheet of paper and fold it
five or six times still it's about the
little little bit smaller than an index
card and I'll sit down and I will write
down what I need to get done for the
next day or for that day if I didn't get
to it the day
before by doing it this way it forces me
to keep a small list of things to do so
I don't overfill my day the other key to
that is don't write small write normal
you're only looking for four or five
tasks that you want to get done in the
day now these tasks could be multiple
tasks in one and by that I mean one of
the things Rob mentions is always try to
get that thing out of the way that you
least like to do well one of the things
I least like to do is pay bills or deal
with financial information I just that's
not my cup of tea so what I've actually
done is in the past I found myself
constantly checking my bank statements
daily so now what I've done is not only
have I organized this down into a daily
task but what I've done now is I've
batched it and like every Friday on my
to-do list is reconcile my accounts so I
go out I check all the registers so now
in instead of a task that took me 5 10
15 minutes a day I now moved it to the
end of the week it takes me maybe half
an hour and I can do it all at once it's
the least thing I like to do I know it's
one day a week and I knock it out
quickly the other thing as Rob
mentioned is if you have these large
tasks or these large projects that
you're working on one of the things you
need to be careful of is breaking them
up in such a way so that you don't leave
them in progress when you end your day
or you're at the end of the day and oh I
think I can get it done and you work
into the night because you're stuck
working on a task when you get to the
end of your day or the end last task on
your list make sure you are at a
stopping point make sure that you are
done for the day one of the biggest
problems I have is if I have not reached
that point and I'm at like an
indeterminate State on a problem
I may carry that with me when I walk
away from the computer it gets stuck in
your mind it's like oh I really need to
get that done what do I need you don't
want that so that's one of the things
about keeping track of this to-do list
that you can do to really not only
simplify your daily task and keep it
organized but you also lower your stress
level because if you get rid of those
tasks that you least like to do quickly
as Rob said it's a Snowball Effect then
it's like oh that's out of the way cool
now I can get back into the things I
like to do and I actually find it
fun sometimes to kind of stagger your
tasks so start out with the you know the
worst thing that the thing that you
really don't want to do and then do
something you want to do next like
something that you really like to do but
maybe it's a small task and then you do
kind of a medium task in between that
and then maybe another easy task maybe
another larger task so it's not not just
a matter of stacking what you need to
get done in a day it's also how you
order your to-do list for how you're
going to accomplish this the last thing
I want to mention is as you're
organizing or as you're listing out
these tasks make sure that like I said
before you put common tasks together so
you kind of batch these uh common
threads of work because by doing that
you're also stay in the same mindset as
you're working through your tasks so
like if you're working on building a
particular component of an application
one task could be okay build the
database second piece add the repository
piece to your application to talk to the
database so you kind of stagger the
order of operations of things by doing
that you really make it easier because
you start out in the right path whereas
if you start out with the front end here
build the gooey for it oh I'm missing
all these uh things I didn't think about
because I didn't have the database yet
you've doubled your work so also look
through your tasks as how you're putting
them together to make sure that you're
doing them in the right order so you're
not having to go back and do double
work there's a couple things there um
the first one
is actually I just lost both of them so
the first one is always pay attention to
what you are focused on for what you
what the the thing that you're going to
do don't look down this is is a good
example do your tasks synchron
asynchronously or I'm sorry
synchronously like serialize one two
three not in parallel not
asynchronous and make sure that you know
how to speak before you do like a
speaking task like I don't know do a
podcast or something like that
um the breaking stuff down I think
that's one of the best benefits of
besides just the endorphins of like hey
I got something done and being able to
say I'm done when you get your stuff
which is a challenge but it is actually
very important for example if you go to
a place and eat dinner and you have a
they give you a plate of food and you
finish your plate you are
done if you end up in a place that's in
all you can eat and you keep going back
and adding stuff you are going to eat
too much most most likely it's sort of
the same thing it's like let's make sure
that we are right sizing our tasks for
our day
and I think it's a like it is it goes
back to that whole idea of like doing
them in order thinking about those and
enough that you're like okay this is
sort of this is roughly what I'm going
to do and how long the time block I'm
going to take is going to force you to
think about a little bit so if you're
like well I'm just going to start on my
new app well you're going to have to
take a minute or two to say well what
does starting on my new app look like am
I going to build a database am I going
to write a user story am I going to
build out a am I do a a clickable demo
am I going to do you know HTML page am I
going to build CSS whatever it is what
is it I'm gonna am I just going to go
register u a code repository and do a
first commit those
things it it allows you it forces you
and allows you to step into your day not
in chaos because now you're not Improv
iing it you have a plan and yes it takes
a little bit of time but it's really not
much it's like 5 or 10 minutes maybe to
sit through there and think through it I
go every day like crank through my stuff
I can do it in I don't know I I probably
spend less than a minute and there are
my tasks that are important and then
there's all these other little ancillary
things like oh yeah I got to do this
it's it's the the laundry list stuff of
like oh yeah don't forget to yeah don't
forget to send this email don't forget
to do that thing they're not really the
tasks they are tasks in themselves but
they're all those little tiny things
that were like oh yeah don't forget to
pay the bill or something like that that
I knew if I vamped long enough I would
come back to one of
points the there is a different thing
that we can look at that is how he
handled his bills and it's actually
honestly it's exactly the same way I do
it um it is uh Tim Ferris when he talks
about getting mail that's how he does it
there are certain things that you don't
need to do every day and those things
may be better candidates for a different
approach like a weekly list or something
like that I don't want to get out of the
scope of this but that's one of the
things we probably will talk about
actually I know we will talk about later
is more like the longer term stuff this
is very tactical and so we're talking
about your day so challenge wise for the
next seven days because that's how
challenges work here I want you each day
to start whether it's again whether it's
the beginning of the day or the end of
the day
before put down three to five tasks I
would challenge you to pick a number and
do that number of tasks each time for
the next seven
days put the one and you can you can
prioritize them which would be even
better let's like that's bonus points
we'll send you a uh a virtual smiley
face or whatever the heck it is when you
do that because you want to have the
thing that you dread the most the thing
that's on look at the items on your list
and the one that you least want to do
boom put that to number one I don't care
and they may all be pretty close but
whatever you want at least put that at
the top because when you get that done
the rest of your day is going to be
better because the crap you didn't want
to do you already got it done so it's
like hey smooth sailing after here do
that for the next seven days and I do
mean seven days not just business days
because I think it is very valuable for
us to take this same skill and approach
into our personal days now I'm assuming
that you work five days a week and you
take two days off if you work seven days
a week sucks to be you there's not much
we can do about that but if you take you
know six days you got a day off on your
off days when you are off when you're
not working your main job or whatever it
is still do this because it it may be
stuff that's like I don't know mow the
yard or get a haircut or whatever the
heck it is
but keep that same the momentum of
building that habit and also it is
practice it is really good practice
because you start figuring out a little
bit more assessing things better like
what kind of a task is this how should I
break this task up some of those skills
that are actually very valuable
particularly if you're starting out and
you're moving into you as you move into
a senior a mid-level senior Advanced
architect type role in the software
world you have to be able to do these
mental exercises another mental exercise
you have to do is you have to put down
send an email to info@ developer.com
because you need to give us feedback
because we love to hear that
particularly you can make that at the
like that last day maybe that's your
first priority on day seven is to send
an email that says I have gotten into my
seventh day and I got six days in a row
behind this where I and this is now my
seventh day I've completed my list
because that means you're well on your
way to starting a habit and that
coincidentally is exactly what this
season is all about so shoot us an email
if not that you can reach out to us you
can leave us comments on wherever you
get your podcast
on YouTube you can go out to velop
or.com you can leave we've got a contact
form we got all kinds of crap out there
all these ways for you to get a hold of
us and also to take a look at all of the
content that we have out there whether
it's past episodes of this the podcast
itself blog articles Mentor class all
kinds of stuff that we've done over the
years it's all out there it's not super
easy but if you do like a couple little
searches you can find the topic you need
most likely that being said I'm going to
let you get on to that go get that list
made go out there have yourself a great
day a great week and we will talk to you
next time bonus
material so one of the
things I challenge you not to do is do
not go list happy do not pick up an app
and just go here I'm going to use this
apps for to-do list are good want to
have good habits in place for using them
more often than not I see people pick a
to-do list and they just fill it up with
hundreds of things and it's like and
next day it's like oh my God I have too
much to do no keep your list
small and for now for this initial task
write it on a sheet of paper little not
card whatever keep it short once you get
those habits established then move on to
more technology-wise apps that are out
there and the other thing I'd throw out
there is as you're working through these
tasks figuring out what your to-do list
is going to
be keep an eye if you see any patterns
so if you find that like I I said if you
end up like checking your bank
statements or reconcile five days a week
if you find you're spending 10 20 30
minutes doing that and then you go to
something else and you got to come back
and try to figure out what you're doing
try doing it maybe every other day or
twice a week batch it up a little bit
and see if that doesn't improve your
processes a little bit and also keep
your mind focused on what you're doing
and all this content shifting back and
forth I guys those are good points and
and great things for our bonus material
I'm going to actually throw a little
curveball on this and say that what you
could do is for your technology
challenge of where you're trying to
build something where you're trying to
like automate something is you could
create yourself like a little
spreadsheet or little like super simple
like you know I don't know an access app
or or something like that something
where it's and it really should be like
Michael said don't make it too easy for
you yourself to just blow out a huge
list of tasks ideally this may be
something I maybe a product idea I have
that comes to that is like where you you
can only put X number of of items there
every day and then you look at them when
they're done and you can even set
something up that rolls it over the next
day or something like that you can you
know there's a lot of stuff you can do
there that I think would be useful for a
technology kind of challenge cuz it's a
very simple app and you could do it in
whatever you wanted to do it in as an
example I did almost the exact thing of
this couple years ago when I wanted to
play around with react so I created a
react app and it was all for keeping
track of tasks and stuff like that the
other thing is is what Michael sort of
alluded to is automation is that maybe
as you're going through these tasks
these building these tasks each day may
be help ful for you to do that
automation challenge that we talked
about because now you have a a road map
you have a history you have an audit
trail of what did you do and you can
look back at it and go where did I spend
my time or why do I keep doing this and
maybe find an automation uh solution to
that that being said we're going to wrap
it up for this one we will come right
back as far as you know uh actually I
guess not as far as you know as far as
we know we're going to come right back
as far as you know it may take years
before you come back to this but please
don't because that's a long time to work
on that challenge
as always check us out every Tuesday and
Thursday we drop new episodes we are
going to continue to do this for quite a
while I think we're about four five
episodes in and we've got a long way to
go in this season so as always if you
have some suggestions recommendations
since you're watching this you know that
we wing it we step right into that we're
like what the heck are we going to talk
about so the door is wide open for
recommendations from all of you guys
feel free to throw that out there if
there's a a habit that you would either
that you have created created and that
you would love for us to like share that
with the greater developing world or if
there's a habit that you want to work on
that you would love for us to like throw
some sort of a challenge out that is
awesome as well so go out there and have
a good one and we will talk to you next
time
[Music]