Detailed Notes
In this episode of Building Better Developers with AI, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche discuss how developers can prevent burnout and enhance productivity by striking a balance in software development. Discover the importance of pausing with purpose, pivoting when necessary, and cultivating sustainable work habits in the tech industry.
⏱️ Topics Covered: • The myth of hustle culture • Micro and macro pauses • When and how to pivot • Tools for sustainable dev work • Weekly reflection and asynchronous communication
🎧 Listen to the full podcast: https://develpreneur.com/finding-balance-in-software-development
#softwaredevelopment #developerproductivity #worklifebalance #pausingandpivoting #burnoutprevention
Transcript Text
[Music] Boom. We just clicked record again as far as we know. And we're moving along. Uh, I need to actually throw this into AI. So, we're going to be doing finding balance. The importance of pausing and pivoting in text in tech, not text. Let's see what this see. Let's see. back here. It's thinking. Absolutely. So, let's see how this one goes. And we can just dive right back in. Not a lot of preamble. Sorry guys, we got stuff to do. Three, two, well, hello and welcome back. We are developing our podcast. We are building better developers. We are here to help you with AI this time around where we were using uh some episode topics from two seasons back and we were throwing it at AI and we're seeing what it spits out and discussing that and having some really good uh discussion. It's like having a guest on every single episode talking about prior episodes. Uh, and this guest is very kind and uh, effusive in its praise as we will talk about as we get there. But first, I have to talk about myself because that's what good branding and marketing apparently is. My name is Rob Bride. I happen to be one of the founders of developing, also the founder of RV Consulting, where we are a consulting company that helps you wrangle your technology. You got that technology sprawl, that technology drunk drawer that needs to be cleaned up or you're trying to figure out what does your technology stack look like? You don't even know what a stack is. Maybe you're starting your business or you're making a pivot and you're like, "Okay, I need to figure out how to use technology to how to leverage that to do this better." That's why we're here. We'll sit down. will talk to you, walk through what your business plans are, where you are, where you're at, what kind of industry you're in, all that kind of goodness. And then we will help you craft a uh actually we will craft for you probably a technology roadmap. And we can even help you implement it as needed. Whether it's through simplification, integration, automation, even innovation. You got something that's like this thing is going to, you know, win the world. It's better than sliced bread. We can help you build that. Check us out at rb-sns.com. We got plenty of stuff there and plenty more coming. Good thing, bad thing. Um, continuing in the I'm I'm in a uh, you know, remote digital war uh, digital nomad road warrior kind of uh, phase here and stuff like that. Good thing is I'm able to work anywhere. Uh, I was able to sit down the other day, just like grabbed a a local Panera, sat down, spent several hours, got a lot done because I just had headphones on, was able to focus. Uh, bad thing about some of these places is that the power structures that they have are not quite enough to charge a higherend laptop such as I have. So, sometimes you're going to end up there and you're plugged in for hours and yet your battery is still slowly draining to a slow death. So keep an eye on such things and make sure you've got like some, you know, rechargeables and stuff like that. And especially if you're going to go out and do something, you're going to be out for the day or something, wherever you can, make sure all your devices get all, you know, charged up to 100% if possible so you're ready for that day away from a, you know, a good power source. But right now, you don't have to worry about being charged up because he's because he's going to do it for you. Michael, introduce yourself. Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malashsh. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the owner of Envision QA where we help startups and growing companies launch better products faster. That means fewer bugs, software customers, uh smoother customer experiences and less wasted time and money. We take care of the behind-the-scenes quality of work so teams can focus on building and scaling. Learn more at envisionqa.com. envisionqa.com. Good thing, bad things. Uh good thing. Uh been cranking on some work lately. Just going heads down, getting a lot of stuff done. You know, the get done approach doing well. Uh bad thing I just have not had a lot of time for anything else lately. Uh so I'm just need to uh looking forward to the holidays coming up and just going to take some time and get a little RNR. The holidays. See, people talk about holidays. I'm going to be a little bit I'm going to sidetrack this a little bit. And it's like Fortune Live to me is not like holidays. It's it's a three-day weekend. Yes, it is an opportunity to get yourself like a little bit back on track, but it's not like, you know, I'm not going to be able to get that far. Maybe it's because me I'm going to be just like I'm still like scrambling to just do catchup, you know, of any sort, much less get some of the things done that I want to get done. However, right now, I do want to get back on track this time around. the last uh the episode that we threw into chat GPT is finding balance the importance of pausing and pivoting in tech. And so we asked chat GPT and it said absolutely here's a tailored podcast episode outline for it. Subtitle it gave us is avoid burnout avoiding burnout and building better developers through strategic stops which sounds uh pretty good. It gave me a prompt a postprompting. So let's talk through this one real quick. Welcome to the Developer Podcast, where we don't just build better software, we build better developers. Today's episode explores something that doesn't get enough attention in the fast-paced world of tech. When to pause and when to pivot. Heck moves fast, but moving fast in the wrong direction just gets you lost quicker. Whether you're stuck in a job, a project, or even a mindset, sometimes the smartest move isn't to power through, but to pause. Wow, that is actually a really good little intro there. A little bit of that white space thing. Segment one, the myth of constant hustle. Oh, I'm already pumped about this one. Talking points. The always grinding culture is glorified in tech, but it's often unhealthy. Burnout isn't just emotional. It leads to bugs, bad decisions, and missed opportunities. Signs that you might need pause. Irritability, tunnel vision, declining quality and code or communication. Productivity isn't about motion. It's about momentum in the right direction. Ah, my favorite word, momentum in the right direction. Even if it's little bit incremental small steps I I cannot say enough about that. This is like in itself is exactly like in a nutshell one of the things that I wish more of us would embrace that I have found actually the key to life the secret to happy life or whatever is some of this kind of piece in particular that always grinding always working late all that kind of stuff and this isn't work life balance that's actually a different thing we have a limit to what we can do the what we do as developers in particular Even if you're in a design mode or anything like that is taxing. Uh it is a there it is a an artistic as well as a a thought and a scientific pursuit. And most of you know this if you've ever like taken that pause when you get to the end of a day, the end of a especially the end of like a long coding session where you're just like I need to you know unplug for a minute. I need to take a walk or something like that. And we don't often because there's that there's that thing ahead of us like, hey, if I sit down and do this for another 30 minutes, I can solve another problem. I can get something else checked off my list. I can add another feature. You know, things like that. We need to keep in mind that when we go into that next phase that we probably are not going to be, yeah, it may be very fun, it may be very rewarding, but we're probably not going to be as good doing it as we were the first time around. It's just like if you go play a sport, let's say you're a basketball player, you go play a game and you win and it's great and now you can go play another game. Well, great, but you're you're not going to be as fresh as you were for the first one and so on. Now, maybe you're young and you can do a bunch of those, but you know, there's going to be limits to that. I think that there is too much um I think there's and this this is where I struggle as a consultant actually as I'll get a little bit under the into the weeds is that we often set things up to bill by the hour. The working hour that we do is how we get paid. We're trading time for money. And that really is not a good model for software development because it's really not about time as much as it should be about features and things like that. Now, that does not mean I'm a fan of fixed price, you know, bids and things like that. However, if you do it right, there are ways to do it. I've seen sprintbased models where people are just sp paid x amount per sprint and every sprint you go through, here's the cost, and then you move forward. That's actually seems to be a pretty good approach because it's like, yes, it's fixed, but it's in a fixed mode that sort of works for both sides. You're, you know, if you want to go another round and add more features, great. But you also get to like tweak stuff each sprint along the way. That is why we need to like we need to focus on what did we accomplish as opposed to hey I had to stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning to get that thing done. And honestly if you find yourself in a point where you feel like you're going to have to stay up till 2 or 3 in the morning. Don't. You're going to be far better off. Get some decent sleep. Step away. Go do something else. cuz it is amazing how often we've talked about like the pomodoros and stuff like that. That little bit of focus time and then walking away and then coming back is so much more valuable than just like plowing through it. Those are some thoughts I have. How about yourself, Michael? Yeah. So, it those are all great ideas and talking points, especially, you know, if you find yourself working late into the evening. But the problem is, and you've run into this as much as I have, we have deadlines. we have to get code done. You know, there is a finite amount of time in most projects and budgets for getting things done. And you do want to constantly keep moving the ball forward. But the problem is uh unless you're doing one project or working for one company, a lot of us have side hustles or businesses that we're trying to run and typically you'll have more than one customer and you're going to have to juggle unfortunately between the two and keep things moving. So sometimes you do fall into that pitfall where you are at 60, 70, 80 hours a week, but the problem is you need to take the break, but you're going to get push back from your team, your boss, your manager if you do. So you have to find that balance. Um it's not always going to be easy and there's going to be times where you either need to go find another job, another line of business or another customer. That's, you know, when we talk about, you know, maybe it's time to fire that customer, free up your time, eliminate the time wasters or quote unquote the stressors that are costing you money because they're eating up your time. Uh, other things, you know, finding balance and, you know, the declining productivity, that's probably the biggest one. I like your idea. You know, you get done, it's late, maybe you can knock out one more thing. I find the flip side of that. Sometimes it's better to knock out a bunch of small things than try to knock out the one big thing, but it's like eating the frog like you talk about from time to time. Sometimes it's better to take that big thing, do it first. Yes, it may be a slog at the beginning, but then maybe that means you can take a smaller, you know, a longer break and take on a few smaller tasks for a while to kind of give you that little pause and mentality between tasks. Thoughts on that? Um definitely I I do want to step back first to the idea of you know if you you have a lot of projects and you're doing a lot of stuff and it's just sometimes you need to you're spread too thin to be able to touch all the projects in the way you need to. Now in that case you need to either say no to projects as Michael said you could also maybe fire a customer too if they're sucking up too much of your time. Uh you can also farm it out. Go hire, you know, hire other people, things like that. Scale up yourself. If you're constantly, which and honestly, this is a part I work with a lot is I get my schedule a point where I'm constantly working more than I really want to do and realize that I could do this for a while, then it's like, okay, now it's good time to bring somebody else on, whether it's uh bring somebody else as a contractor or maybe even as an employee that I can bring them on and say, okay, now we can handle this bigger workload. There are obviously challenges involved in that, but uh somewhere along the way, it's like if you do if you're spread too thin, you have to recognize that you're spread too thin and figure out where you need to make some changes. And sometimes it includes, you know, walking away. Uh as far as whether it's a, you know, a small task or a big task, I think it is very important to find your rhythm and what you are comfortable with. You're probably not comfortable with 16 hours a day. I'm just going to tell you that most people are I I love to do I can do 14 hours of coding a day every day and I'm awesome about it. You're probably not. That's you know what Bill Gates used to like when he got married the first time I remember them saying or I guess it's the only time um he cut his hours back to like cut them back to 14 hours a day, seven days a week. That was what the married life changed for him. Uh and we've seen how many bugs and issues Windows has. Maybe that's a maybe there's a link there. don't want to show shade, but you know that's and I think all of us have been there where we know that that project everybody was not sleeping the last week and it got out the door but you know there are bugs and their mistakes and yeah we get yelled at for them or whatever but it's one of those things it's like yeah you've got to you've got to figure out where to push that back and and where to stand your ground and where to understand what your limits are. Moving along. Uh, pausing with purpose. The power of stepping back. How pauses can provide clarity. Revisiting while you're working on a feature at all. Checking if you're still aligned with the problem you're solving. Looking at the bigger picture, architecture, user needs, team dynamics. Pausing equals recharging plus re re-evaluating. Micro pauses. Pomodoro breaks. Stepping away from a screen. Macro pauses. Sabbaticals. Time off or stepping back from a toxic environment. Um, there's a lot here. So, first off with your posit your pauses where it talks about revisiting what you're working on and and why are you working on it? Particularly if you're beating your head against the wall, if you got something where you're like, "This solution is just not working. Uh, I'm struggling with this bug or this thing's not coming out right." I highly recommend when you get into those situations where you're starting to get that feel of like, I'm just beating my head against the wall. before you knock yourself out from beating your head against the wall, step back and think through like go back to like the drawing board a little bit and say, "Okay, well, what am I trying to do? How do I get there?" Try to like divorce yourself from your current solution and just sort of like walk through again. Give yourself as best you can a second set of eyes. And this is great to do when you're not looking at it is to just walk away and essentially like redesign the solution you're trying to figure through again because there's a lot of times that that will help you find a path that you didn't do earlier. Uh a possibility that you haven't tried or maybe you look at it and go why am I this is doesn't make any sense at all. I shouldn't be doing this. This does not this is not a feature that adds anything. How did I get here? I don't know but I get to stop. Things like that. Um the other thing is the whole macro pauses. I think that we too often do not take a you know take a day and actually more than a day like take a weekend or a long weekend and get away from stuff. I think it is very helpful. Uh I say this is somebody that will like start twitching and stuff like that as I get away from some of these things but they are also very helpful. Um, it is good to like go, you know, go and not open your electronic devices for a couple of days. Go put your, you know, set your phone somewhere that you've, you don't even remember where it is. Um, shut down, you know, get away from emails and things like that. Just go for a walk, go for um, and really think the idea of like sbaticals and stuff like that. Go spend a day at the lake or at a pool or reading a book or doing whatever you do, you know, doing your hobby, working in the yard. uh maybe a couple of days of that. It is amazing how much that stuff will re re-energize you. It gives you an opportunity to get out of your your mental rut. Sometimes you'll solve some problems while you're doing it. And if you're like me, you're almost always going to be itching to just like get back to work and it like gives you a little more motivation when you come back. Sort of a a morale booster in itself. Uh how about yourself, Michael? Yeah. So, I'll touch on two things here. So, the first, you know, pausing with purpose. uh those micro breaks. If you're using code repositories, commit your code, walk away, come back and do a self-code review of what you just did versus your problem. Or if you find yourself and you're thinking you're going down the rabbit hole, stop, walk away, take a break, come back, and just start over with the problem. Ask yourself, what is the why? What am I trying to do? What am I trying to accomplish? then go back and look at the code. Sometimes just reviewing the problem, resetting the problem, and revisiting that why will help get you back on track and hopefully reset you enough to say, "Ah, okay, this is what I need to be doing." The macro, uh, I I'm horrible at this. Uh, you know, we just talked recently, last episode, about my wedding anniversary. The day before that, I literally was pacing because I was afraid of being away from my computer, you know, things on fire, things of that nature. That is a bad sign. That is a sign that you need those macro breaks. Take them, but don't take them and just literally sit in front of another screen. Uh, you know, don't go from a computer screen to a TV screen for 12 hours. Take a break from technology. You have to kind of get away from the same, I guess, set of tools uh and things that basically got you there in the first place. Get away from the screens, rest your eyes, go for a walk, read a book, go watch a movie. Movies are not blue screen. They are big projectors. You know, you might get some good popcorn out of it, might have bad popcorn. The biggest thing I like about going to a movie theater is it's two and a half hour two to two and a half hours. You have to silence your phone or you're going to get, you know, yelled at, popcorn thrown at you. So, basically, because of the social norms, you should turn off your phone. You should be taking that break for two and a half hours or better yet, go to a high-end restaurant and talk on your phone. You're going to get thrown out. That's another way to kind of reconnect with the people around you. Yeah, I think those are all those are all great uh suggestions and I think with that I'm not going to I have nothing to add. So, let's move on to the next one. Uh, segment three they've would be pivoting knowing when it's time to shift. Key talking points. Pivots aren't failure, they're strategic redirection. Personal pivots, changing roles, specialties, or work styles. Project pivots, killing a feature, switching tech stacks, redefining success criteria. Ask, is this still serving the goal or just the sunk costs? uh in tech your willingness to adapt often matters more than your original plan. Uh that's a really good quote. I think the sunk cost fallacy is one of the biggest challenges that we have in technology. Uh there is definitely uh it is real. There is definitely a uh a cost a loss maybe moving from one solution to another from one platform to another. Uh but there are ways sometimes to regain that. Now I think for ourselves I think um you know changing changing roles I think we as depending on where we're at changing technology is huge. It is uh very to me at least it is much more fulfilling to uh it's like a it's a reset to go you know launch into a new technology or even a new line of business or a new application that you know that we haven't dealt with before area that we haven't maybe worked with. Um similarly our roles it's worth it anyways early on you should be trying get as many different roles as you can whether you're uh early on it's going to be hard to get like a lead or a mentor kind of role but as you get you know even a few years in you can find like senior and lead roles that you can ro be a part of even if it's in just your little uh you know little pond of technology that you're working in. Um definitely look at you know some of the things out there if you've got an opportunity to talk to maybe like a manager or project managers uh the architects uh things like that the your build team your CI/CD people configuration management all those people testing yes even QA and the different areas you know front end backend middle tier uh your graphic designers all that kind of stuff is figure out some of these things talk to people get yourself at least if you're not in that role in that job to help you shift that mindset a little bit. I think it's very helpful to uh not only solve your problems but also to like you know regenerate and and get yourself away from that thing that is you know draining you a little bit too much. Uh we talk so often about doing regular you know probably twice a year uh particularly we talk about at the beginning and the end or at the end of a year and then also a lot of times around mid year is the whole like reviewing what you're doing where we at is my schedule something that I should change is my work style I think this is something that I have benefited from greatly over the years is adjusting style from and that is everywhere from where you work to how you work to when you work uh to who you work with to what kind of lighting do you have? What kind of machines do you have? Do you work on a laptop? Do you work on a desktop? Do you have a big screen, a little screen, multiple screens? All of those things are useful to make you better where you're at. It helps you figure out where are you comfortable, what works best for you, and also honestly helps you when you're thrown into a situation that's maybe not ideal, at least you've been there before, and you're prepared for it. So, it's things like, hey, I'm going to be on a train trip for the next 3 days, but I still have to get work done. Okay, I know that these certain devices and chargers and stuff like that I need because I'm not going to be able to get work done otherwise. Um, there's a lot in this one. So, what are some of your thoughts, sir? Yeah. So, one of the the funny thing is when I hear pivot, the first thing that comes to my mind is multitasking. And when we try to do jobs, we are constantly having to pivot, change focus to get things done. And a lot of people are like, "Oh, good. I'm good at multitasking." That's not the type of pivot we're talking about here. The type of pivot we want to talk about is I'm doing this challenge. I'm stuck on this. I need to get away from this. I need to pivot to something else to clear my head, to take a break. The Pomodoro technique is great for this. Things like this are the the types of pivots you want are the pivots to take your mind off what it is that you're stuck on or the problem that you're dealing with. If you're dealing with a bad customer, try to get them off the phone, take a short break, come back and maybe revisit the problem the next day or say, "Hey, let's pick this back up in a little bit. Let's, you know, walk away. Let me look into this some more." try to diffuse the situation, not increase the um stress or the temperament of the current problem that you're dealing with. Take a break, pivot, look for something else to do uh to kind of reset your mindset and keep things moving. It does all boil down to the old question we often say, ask yourself, are you being busy or are you being productive? you know, because you can sit there and you can bang your head against stuff all day long and a lot of times you're going to end up actually in a far better situation by taking a break, step away from it, come back to it as opposed to trying to power your way through it. And particularly now when we have remote work and stuff like that is very easy to go do things very useful like you can go change the load of laundry, do some dishes, mow your yard, whatever. There's other things you can do to detach and get away for a little bit and then come back and be productive. That will wrap this one up. We're running into it from our time. We don't want to go too long. So, as always, um, shoot us an email infodelvelopeneur.com. Check us out on Facebook at developer. You can hit us up on x at developer. Uh, obviously the development world. Obviously, I guess if you're listening to this, but if you're watching this, the developer channel out on YouTube if you're watching this, you can also listen to this on podcast. Wherever you listen to your podcast, we are there. As always, appreciate your time. We are not done. We've got plenty of with AI episodes ahead of us. Go out there and have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Bonus material from you. So, finding balance. One of the biggest things you can do here is make a list, prior prioritize your day, and stick to your calendar. You know it don't once in a while may be fine but don't get in the habit of always saying yes I can do more try to stick within a eight hour work window how even at 1 hour work window break it down to say okay I'm going to work for 15 minutes I'm going to take a 15-minute break do something to break it up to change your habits and get into a better structure of where you feel more relaxed you have a better work life balance balance and you start to enjoy what you're doing again. Even if you do enjoy it, you may find that this little break, you might find other things to enjoy or you might find taking the break makes you come back to this even you get even uh happier, you know, it makes you excited again. It recharges you to go back to doing what you were doing. Yeah. the uh I think the value of like the pomodoros and stuff like that is the time boxing is getting yourself something say okay I'm going to work for x amount and then I'm going to stop so that we're not working to finish the problem as much as we're working to like let's make some progress let's try to get it done and then let's move on to something else uh for the other bonus I'm going to go ahead and give the uh final talking points and some balance tools for devs that it suggests u you don't have to say yes to every opportunity or fire balance is discipline know your limits and priorities use intent ional pauses and thoughtful pivots to stay aligned with your values and your goals. Uh balance tools, weekly journaling or standown sessions, asynchronous uh asynchronous communication over constant meetings, environment cues, set up workspaces for focus versus ideiation. Uh just real briefly, I'm going to throw a couple things on top of those. I think anytime that you do some sort of journaling or uh even just like checking your list particularly if you start with one day at the beginning of the day and how did you get there at the end of the day uh keeping up with that over you know the period of several days weeks and things like that. It just like anything else is we're going to see patterns and we're going to see where maybe we can make some adjustments that we you know we are overloading ourselves or we're doing too much of something at a certain time. Uh switch it up even if you've got multiple projects. One of the things I found is that it is very helpful for me to you like maybe if I'm going to work on one project uh first thing in the day and then another thing at the end of the day then maybe a couple days later I'm going to switch it so that the one that I was going to do at the end I do at the beginning. There's some things like that and it does allow us to figure out where are if you don't know where is your most productive uh time period and and how do you maybe line some of those projects up so that the transition works uh to your advantage. Asynchronous communication over constant meetings I I love it. I am a huge fan of asynchronous communication. I love you know using like a Slack emails things like that. I am not a fan of scheduling meetings. Uh even standups, my team for the longest time, we did Slack standups. We just I had a big block of time. They said, "I just need you. Make sure you get your information there. We'll have some feedback." And it's really helped. Granted, my team is uh time diverse. We have all kinds of different hours that they're working. But it allows that to happen. And it allows us to tackle the things we need to tackle it. Yes, it does allow the opportunity sometimes for things to fall beneath the cracks, but that's a a discipline and a habit is making sure that we are, you know, checking all the places that we need to check to make sure that we get our things done. That being said, I'm ready to wrap this one. Oh, last thing I do want to talk about environment cues real quick. There is definitely for me and maybe for you, there's a difference on where I work as far as what I am productive doing. there's a very big difference if I want to sit down and write code versus if I need to sit down and design something or gather requirements versus if I'm doing documentation um versus just you know blue sky and and you know green field type uh stuff. So maybe like yourself that's if you're the same way then try different places and styles of working to see what works best for you. You'd be amazed at the difference it can make in your productivity just by, you know, maybe sitting on a chair across the room as opposed to the one that you're in right now. We are going to go sit on different chairs. Maybe, maybe not. But we will be in a different place. I at least definitely will be in a different place next time around. We will wrap this one up. Appreciate your time. As always, all the places that you can reach out to us, do so. Leave us comments, leave us feedback. We'd love to hear it. and we will talk to you next time. [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
Boom. We just clicked record again as
far as we know. And we're moving along.
Uh, I need to actually throw this into
AI. So, we're going to be doing finding
balance. The importance of pausing and
pivoting in text in tech, not text.
Let's see what this
see. Let's see.
back here.
It's thinking. Absolutely.
So,
let's see how this one goes. And we can
just dive right back in. Not a lot of
preamble. Sorry guys, we got stuff to
do. Three, two,
well, hello and welcome back. We are
developing our podcast. We are building
better developers. We are here to help
you with AI this time around where we
were using uh some episode topics from
two seasons back and we were throwing it
at AI and we're seeing what it spits out
and discussing that and having some
really good uh discussion. It's like
having a guest on every single episode
talking about prior episodes. Uh, and
this guest is very kind and uh, effusive
in its praise as we will talk about as
we get there. But first, I have to talk
about myself because that's what good
branding and marketing apparently is. My
name is Rob Bride. I happen to be one of
the founders of developing, also the
founder of RV Consulting, where we are a
consulting company that helps you
wrangle your technology. You got that
technology sprawl, that technology drunk
drawer that needs to be cleaned up or
you're trying to figure out what does
your technology stack look like? You
don't even know what a stack is. Maybe
you're starting your business or you're
making a pivot and you're like, "Okay, I
need to figure out how to use technology
to how to leverage that to do this
better." That's why we're here. We'll
sit down. will talk to you, walk through
what your business plans are, where you
are, where you're at, what kind of
industry you're in, all that kind of
goodness. And then we will help you
craft a uh actually we will craft for
you probably a technology roadmap. And
we can even help you implement it as
needed. Whether it's through
simplification, integration, automation,
even innovation. You got something
that's like this thing is going to, you
know, win the world. It's better than
sliced bread. We can help you build
that. Check us out at rb-sns.com.
We got plenty of stuff there and plenty
more coming. Good thing, bad thing. Um,
continuing in the I'm I'm in a uh, you
know, remote digital war uh, digital
nomad road warrior kind of uh, phase
here and stuff like that. Good thing is
I'm able to work anywhere. Uh, I was
able to sit down the other day, just
like grabbed a a local Panera, sat down,
spent several hours, got a lot done
because I just had headphones on, was
able to focus. Uh, bad thing about some
of these places is that the power
structures that they have are not quite
enough to charge a higherend laptop such
as I have. So, sometimes you're going to
end up there and you're plugged in for
hours and yet your battery is still
slowly draining to a slow death. So keep
an eye on such things and make sure
you've got like some, you know,
rechargeables and stuff like that. And
especially if you're going to go out and
do something, you're going to be out for
the day or something, wherever you can,
make sure all your devices get all, you
know, charged up to 100% if possible so
you're ready for that day away from a,
you know, a good power source.
But right now, you don't have to worry
about being charged up because he's
because he's going to do it for you.
Michael, introduce yourself.
Hey everyone, my name is Michael
Malashsh. I'm one of the co-founders of
developer building better developers.
I'm also the owner of Envision QA where
we help startups and growing companies
launch better products faster. That
means fewer bugs, software customers, uh
smoother customer experiences and less
wasted time and money. We take care of
the behind-the-scenes quality of work so
teams can focus on building and scaling.
Learn more at envisionqa.com.
envisionqa.com.
Good thing, bad things. Uh good thing.
Uh been cranking on some work lately.
Just going heads down, getting a lot of
stuff done. You know, the get done
approach doing well. Uh bad thing I just
have not had a lot of time for anything
else lately. Uh so I'm just need to uh
looking forward to the holidays coming
up and just going to take some time and
get a little RNR.
The holidays. See, people talk about
holidays. I'm going to be a little bit
I'm going to sidetrack this a little
bit. And it's like Fortune Live to me is
not like holidays. It's it's a three-day
weekend. Yes, it is an opportunity to
get yourself like a little bit back on
track, but it's not like, you know, I'm
not going to be able to get that far.
Maybe it's because me I'm going to be
just like I'm still like scrambling to
just do catchup, you know, of any sort,
much less get some of the things done
that I want to get done. However, right
now, I do want to get back on track this
time around. the last uh the episode
that we threw into chat GPT is
finding balance the importance of
pausing and pivoting in tech. And so we
asked chat GPT and it said absolutely
here's a tailored podcast episode
outline for it. Subtitle it gave us is
avoid burnout avoiding burnout and
building better developers through
strategic stops which sounds uh pretty
good. It gave me a prompt a
postprompting. So let's talk through
this one real quick. Welcome to the
Developer Podcast, where we don't just
build better software, we build better
developers. Today's episode explores
something that doesn't get enough
attention in the fast-paced world of
tech. When to pause and when to pivot.
Heck moves fast, but moving fast in the
wrong direction just gets you lost
quicker. Whether you're stuck in a job,
a project, or even a mindset, sometimes
the smartest move isn't to power
through, but to pause. Wow, that is
actually a really good little intro
there. A little bit of that white space
thing.
Segment one, the myth of constant
hustle. Oh, I'm already pumped about
this one. Talking points. The always
grinding culture is glorified in tech,
but it's often unhealthy. Burnout isn't
just emotional. It leads to bugs, bad
decisions, and missed opportunities.
Signs that you might need pause.
Irritability, tunnel vision, declining
quality and code or communication.
Productivity isn't about motion. It's
about momentum in the right direction.
Ah, my favorite word, momentum in the
right direction. Even if it's little bit
incremental small steps
I I cannot say enough about that. This
is like in itself is exactly like in a
nutshell one of the things that I wish
more of us would embrace that I have
found actually
the key to life the secret to happy life
or whatever is some of this kind of
piece in particular that always grinding
always working late all that kind of
stuff and this isn't work life balance
that's actually a different thing
we have a limit to what we can do the
what we do as developers in particular
Even if you're in a design mode or
anything like that is taxing. Uh it is a
there it is a an artistic as well as a a
thought and a scientific pursuit. And
most of you know this if you've ever
like taken that pause when you get to
the end of a day, the end of a
especially the end of like a long coding
session where you're just like I need to
you know unplug for a minute. I need to
take a walk or something like that. And
we don't often because there's that
there's that thing ahead of us like,
hey, if I sit down and do this for
another 30 minutes, I can solve another
problem. I can get something else
checked off my list. I can add another
feature. You know, things like that.
We need to keep in mind that when we go
into that next phase that we probably
are not going to be, yeah, it may be
very fun, it may be very rewarding, but
we're probably not going to be as good
doing it as we were the first time
around. It's just like if you go play a
sport, let's say you're a basketball
player, you go play a game and you win
and it's great and now you can go play
another game. Well, great, but you're
you're not going to be as fresh as you
were for the first one and so on. Now,
maybe you're young and you can do a
bunch of those, but you know, there's
going to be limits to that.
I think that there is too much um I
think there's and this this is where I
struggle as a consultant actually as
I'll get a little bit under the into the
weeds is that we often set things up to
bill by the hour. The working hour that
we do is how we get paid. We're trading
time for money. And that really is not a
good model for software development
because it's really not about time as
much as it should be about features and
things like that. Now, that does not
mean I'm a fan of fixed price, you know,
bids and things like that. However, if
you do it right, there are ways to do
it. I've seen sprintbased models where
people are just sp paid x amount per
sprint and every sprint you go through,
here's the cost, and then you move
forward. That's actually seems to be a
pretty good approach because it's like,
yes, it's fixed, but it's in a fixed
mode that sort of works for both sides.
You're, you know, if you want to go
another round and add more features,
great. But you also get to like tweak
stuff each sprint along the way.
That is why we need to like we need to
focus on what did we accomplish as
opposed to hey I had to stay up till 2
or 3 in the morning to get that thing
done. And honestly if you find yourself
in a point where you feel like you're
going to have to stay up till 2 or 3 in
the morning. Don't. You're going to be
far better off. Get some decent sleep.
Step away. Go do something else. cuz it
is amazing how often we've talked about
like the pomodoros and stuff like that.
That little bit of focus time and then
walking away and then coming back is so
much more valuable than just like
plowing through it. Those are some
thoughts I have. How about yourself,
Michael?
Yeah. So, it
those are all great ideas and talking
points, especially, you know, if you
find yourself working late into the
evening. But the problem is, and you've
run into this as much as I have, we have
deadlines. we have to get code done. You
know, there is a finite amount of time
in most projects and budgets for getting
things done. And you do want to
constantly keep moving the ball forward.
But the problem is uh unless you're
doing one project or working for one
company, a lot of us have side hustles
or businesses that we're trying to run
and typically you'll have more than one
customer and you're going to have to
juggle unfortunately between the two and
keep things moving. So sometimes you do
fall into that pitfall where you are at
60, 70, 80 hours a week, but the problem
is you need to take the break, but
you're going to get push back from your
team, your boss, your manager if you do.
So you have to find that balance. Um
it's not always going to be easy and
there's going to be times where you
either need to go find another job,
another line of business or another
customer. That's, you know, when we talk
about, you know, maybe it's time to fire
that customer, free up your time,
eliminate the time wasters or quote
unquote the stressors that are costing
you money because they're eating up your
time. Uh, other things, you know,
finding balance and, you know, the
declining productivity, that's probably
the biggest one. I like your idea. You
know, you get done, it's late, maybe you
can knock out one more thing. I find the
flip side of that. Sometimes it's better
to knock out a bunch of small things
than try to knock out the one big thing,
but
it's like eating the frog like you talk
about from time to time. Sometimes it's
better to take that big thing, do it
first. Yes, it may be a slog at the
beginning, but then maybe that means you
can take a smaller, you know, a longer
break and take on a few smaller tasks
for a while to kind of give you that
little pause and mentality between
tasks. Thoughts on that?
Um definitely I I do want to step back
first to the idea of you know if you you
have a lot of projects and you're doing
a lot of stuff and it's just sometimes
you need to you're spread too thin to be
able to touch all the projects in the
way you need to. Now in that case you
need to either say no to projects as
Michael said you could also maybe fire a
customer too if they're sucking up too
much of your time. Uh you can also farm
it out. Go hire, you know, hire other
people, things like that. Scale up
yourself. If you're constantly, which
and honestly, this is a part I work with
a lot is I get my schedule a point where
I'm constantly working more than I
really want to do and realize that I
could do this for a while, then it's
like, okay, now it's good time to bring
somebody else on, whether it's uh bring
somebody else as a contractor or maybe
even as an employee that I can bring
them on and say, okay, now we can handle
this bigger workload. There are
obviously challenges involved in that,
but uh somewhere along the way, it's
like if you do if you're spread too
thin, you have to recognize that you're
spread too thin and figure out where you
need to make some changes. And sometimes
it includes, you know, walking away. Uh
as far as whether it's a, you know, a
small task or a big task, I think it is
very important to find your rhythm and
what you are comfortable with. You're
probably not comfortable with 16 hours a
day. I'm just going to tell you that
most people are I I love to do I can do
14 hours of coding a day every day and
I'm awesome about it. You're probably
not. That's you know what Bill Gates
used to like when he got married the
first time I remember them saying or I
guess it's the only time um he cut his
hours back to like cut them back to 14
hours a day, seven days a week. That was
what the married life changed for him.
Uh and we've seen how many bugs and
issues Windows has. Maybe that's a maybe
there's a link there. don't want to show
shade, but you know that's and I think
all of us have been there where we know
that that project everybody was not
sleeping the last week and it got out
the door but you know there are bugs and
their mistakes and yeah we get yelled at
for them or whatever but it's one of
those things it's like yeah you've got
to you've got to figure out where to
push that back and and where to stand
your ground and where to understand what
your limits are. Moving along. Uh,
pausing with purpose. The power of
stepping back. How pauses can provide
clarity. Revisiting while you're working
on a feature at all. Checking if you're
still aligned with the problem you're
solving. Looking at the bigger picture,
architecture, user needs, team dynamics.
Pausing equals recharging plus re
re-evaluating. Micro pauses. Pomodoro
breaks. Stepping away from a screen.
Macro pauses. Sabbaticals. Time off or
stepping back from a toxic environment.
Um, there's a lot here. So, first off
with your posit your pauses where it
talks about revisiting what you're
working on and and why are you working
on it? Particularly if you're beating
your head against the wall, if you got
something where you're like, "This
solution is just not working. Uh, I'm
struggling with this bug or this thing's
not coming out right." I highly
recommend when you get into those
situations where you're starting to get
that feel of like, I'm just beating my
head against the wall. before you knock
yourself out from beating your head
against the wall, step back and think
through like go back to like the drawing
board a little bit and say, "Okay, well,
what am I trying to do? How do I get
there?" Try to like divorce yourself
from your current solution and just sort
of like walk through again. Give
yourself as best you can a second set of
eyes. And this is great to do when
you're not looking at it is to just walk
away and essentially like redesign the
solution you're trying to figure through
again because there's a lot of times
that that will help you find a path that
you didn't do earlier. Uh a possibility
that you haven't tried or maybe you look
at it and go why am I this is doesn't
make any sense at all. I shouldn't be
doing this. This does not this is not a
feature that adds anything. How did I
get here? I don't know but I get to
stop. Things like that. Um
the other thing is the whole macro
pauses. I think that we too often do not
take a you know take a day and actually
more than a day like take a weekend or a
long weekend and get away from stuff. I
think it is very helpful. Uh I say this
is somebody that will like start
twitching and stuff like that as I get
away from some of these things but they
are also very helpful. Um, it is good to
like go, you know, go and not open your
electronic devices for a couple of days.
Go put your, you know, set your phone
somewhere that you've, you don't even
remember where it is. Um,
shut down, you know, get away from
emails and things like that. Just go for
a walk, go for um, and really think the
idea of like sbaticals and stuff like
that. Go spend a day at the lake or at a
pool or reading a book or doing whatever
you do, you know, doing your hobby,
working in the yard. uh maybe a couple
of days of that. It is amazing how much
that stuff will re re-energize you. It
gives you an opportunity to get out of
your your mental rut. Sometimes you'll
solve some problems while you're doing
it. And if you're like me, you're almost
always going to be itching to just like
get back to work and it like gives you a
little more motivation when you come
back. Sort of a a morale booster in
itself. Uh how about yourself, Michael?
Yeah. So, I'll touch on two things here.
So, the first, you know, pausing with
purpose. uh those micro breaks.
If you're using code repositories,
commit your code, walk away, come back
and do a self-code review of what you
just did versus your problem. Or if you
find yourself and you're thinking you're
going down the rabbit hole, stop, walk
away, take a break, come back, and just
start over with the problem. Ask
yourself, what is the why? What am I
trying to do? What am I trying to
accomplish? then go back and look at the
code. Sometimes just reviewing the
problem, resetting the problem, and
revisiting that why will help get you
back on track and hopefully reset you
enough to say, "Ah, okay, this is what I
need to be doing." The macro, uh, I I'm
horrible at this. Uh, you know, we just
talked recently, last episode, about my
wedding anniversary. The day before
that, I literally was pacing because I
was afraid of being away from my
computer, you know, things on fire,
things of that nature.
That is a bad sign. That is a sign that
you need those macro breaks. Take them,
but don't take them and just literally
sit in front of another screen. Uh, you
know, don't go from a computer screen to
a TV screen for 12 hours. Take a break
from technology. You have to kind of get
away from the same,
I guess, set of tools uh and things that
basically got you there in the first
place. Get away from the screens, rest
your eyes, go for a walk, read a book,
go watch a movie. Movies are not blue
screen. They are big projectors. You
know, you might get some good popcorn
out of it, might have bad popcorn.
The biggest thing I like about going to
a movie theater is it's two and a half
hour two to two and a half hours. You
have to silence your phone or you're
going to get, you know, yelled at,
popcorn thrown at you. So, basically,
because of the social norms, you should
turn off your phone. You should be
taking that break for two and a half
hours or better yet, go to a high-end
restaurant and talk on your phone.
You're going to get thrown out. That's
another way to kind of reconnect with
the people around you.
Yeah, I think those are all those are
all great uh suggestions and I think
with that I'm not going to I have
nothing to add. So, let's move on to the
next one. Uh, segment three they've
would be pivoting knowing when it's time
to shift. Key talking points. Pivots
aren't failure, they're strategic
redirection. Personal pivots, changing
roles, specialties, or work styles.
Project pivots, killing a feature,
switching tech stacks, redefining
success criteria. Ask, is this still
serving the goal or just the sunk costs?
uh in tech your willingness to adapt
often matters more than your original
plan. Uh that's a really good quote.
I think the sunk cost fallacy is one of
the biggest challenges that we have in
technology. Uh there is definitely uh it
is real. There is definitely a uh a cost
a loss maybe moving from one solution to
another from one platform to another. Uh
but
there are ways sometimes to regain that.
Now I think for ourselves
I think um you know changing changing
roles I think we as depending on where
we're at changing technology is huge. It
is uh very to me at least it is much
more fulfilling to uh it's like a it's a
reset to go you know launch into a new
technology or even a new line of
business or a new application that you
know that we haven't dealt with before
area that we haven't maybe worked with.
Um similarly our roles it's worth it
anyways early on you should be trying
get as many different roles as you can
whether you're uh early on it's going to
be hard to get like a lead or a mentor
kind of role but as you get you know
even a few years in you can find like
senior and lead roles that you can ro be
a part of even if it's in just your
little uh you know little pond of
technology that you're working in. Um
definitely look at you know some of the
things out there if you've got an
opportunity to talk to maybe like a
manager or project managers uh the
architects uh things like that the your
build team your CI/CD people
configuration management all those
people testing yes even QA
and the different areas you know front
end backend middle tier uh your graphic
designers all that kind of stuff is
figure out some of these things talk to
people get yourself at least if you're
not in that role in that job to help you
shift that mindset a little bit. I think
it's very helpful to uh not only solve
your problems but also to like you know
regenerate and and get yourself away
from that thing that is you know
draining you a little bit too much. Uh
we talk so often about doing regular you
know probably twice a year uh
particularly we talk about at the
beginning and the end or at the end of a
year and then also a lot of times around
mid year is the whole like reviewing
what you're doing where we at is my
schedule something that I should change
is my work style I think this is
something that I have benefited from
greatly over the years is adjusting
style from and that is everywhere from
where you work to how you work to when
you work uh to who you work with to what
kind of lighting do you have? What kind
of machines do you have? Do you work on
a laptop? Do you work on a desktop? Do
you have a big screen, a little screen,
multiple screens? All of those things
are useful to make you better where
you're at. It helps you figure out where
are you comfortable, what works best for
you, and also honestly helps you when
you're thrown into a situation that's
maybe not ideal, at least you've been
there before, and you're prepared for
it. So, it's things like, hey, I'm going
to be on a train trip for the next 3
days, but I still have to get work done.
Okay, I know that these certain devices
and chargers and stuff like that I need
because I'm not going to be able to get
work done otherwise. Um, there's a lot
in this one. So, what are some of your
thoughts, sir?
Yeah. So, one of the
the funny thing is when I hear pivot,
the first thing that comes to my mind is
multitasking.
And when we try to do jobs, we are
constantly having to pivot, change focus
to get things done. And a lot of people
are like, "Oh, good. I'm good at
multitasking." That's not the type of
pivot we're talking about here. The type
of pivot we want to talk about is
I'm doing this challenge. I'm stuck on
this. I need to get away from this. I
need to pivot to something else to clear
my head, to take a break. The Pomodoro
technique is great for this. Things like
this are the the types of pivots you
want are the pivots to take your mind
off what it is that you're stuck on or
the problem that you're dealing with. If
you're dealing with a bad customer, try
to get them off the phone, take a short
break, come back and maybe revisit the
problem the next day or say, "Hey, let's
pick this back up in a little bit.
Let's, you know, walk away. Let me look
into this some more." try to diffuse the
situation, not increase the um stress or
the temperament of the current problem
that you're dealing with. Take a break,
pivot, look for something else to do uh
to kind of reset your mindset and keep
things moving.
It does all boil down to the old
question we often say, ask yourself, are
you being busy or are you being
productive? you know, because you can
sit there and you can bang your head
against stuff all day long and a lot of
times you're going to end up actually in
a far better situation by taking a
break, step away from it, come back to
it as opposed to trying to power your
way through it. And particularly now
when we have remote work and stuff like
that is very easy to go do things very
useful like you can go change the load
of laundry, do some dishes, mow your
yard, whatever. There's other things you
can do to detach and get away for a
little bit and then come back and be
productive.
That will wrap this one up. We're
running into it from our time. We don't
want to go too long. So, as always, um,
shoot us an email infodelvelopeneur.com.
Check us out on Facebook at developer.
You can hit us up on x at developer. Uh,
obviously the development world.
Obviously, I guess if you're listening
to this, but if you're watching this,
the developer channel out on YouTube if
you're watching this, you can also
listen to this on podcast. Wherever you
listen to your podcast, we are there. As
always, appreciate your time. We are not
done. We've got plenty of with AI
episodes ahead of us. Go out there and
have yourself a great day, a great week,
and we will talk to you next time.
Bonus material from you. So, finding
balance. One of the biggest things you
can do here is
make a list, prior prioritize your day,
and stick to your calendar. You know it
don't
once in a while may be fine but don't
get in the habit of always saying yes I
can do more try to stick within a eight
hour work window how even at 1 hour work
window break it down to say okay I'm
going to work for 15 minutes I'm going
to take a 15-minute break do something
to break it up to change your habits and
get into a better structure of where
you feel more relaxed you have a better
work life balance balance and you start
to enjoy what you're doing again. Even
if you do enjoy it, you may find that
this little break, you might find other
things to enjoy or you might find taking
the break makes you come back to this
even you get even uh happier, you know,
it makes you excited again. It recharges
you to go back to doing what you were
doing.
Yeah. the uh I think the value of like
the pomodoros and stuff like that is the
time boxing is getting yourself
something say okay I'm going to work for
x amount and then I'm going to stop so
that we're not working to finish the
problem as much as we're working to like
let's make some progress let's try to
get it done and then let's move on to
something else uh for the other bonus
I'm going to go ahead and give the uh
final talking points and some balance
tools for devs that it suggests u you
don't have to say yes to every
opportunity or fire balance is
discipline know your limits and
priorities use intent ional pauses and
thoughtful pivots to stay aligned with
your values and your goals. Uh balance
tools, weekly journaling or standown
sessions, asynchronous uh asynchronous
communication over constant meetings,
environment cues, set up workspaces for
focus versus ideiation. Uh just real
briefly, I'm going to throw a couple
things on top of those.
I think anytime that you do some sort of
journaling or uh even just like checking
your list particularly if you start with
one day at the beginning of the day and
how did you get there at the end of the
day uh keeping up with that over you
know the period of several days weeks
and things like that. It just like
anything else is we're going to see
patterns and we're going to see where
maybe we can make some adjustments that
we you know we are overloading ourselves
or we're doing too much of something at
a certain time. Uh switch it up even if
you've got multiple projects. One of the
things I found is that it is very
helpful for me to you like maybe if I'm
going to work on one project uh first
thing in the day and then another thing
at the end of the day then maybe a
couple days later I'm going to switch it
so that the one that I was going to do
at the end I do at the beginning.
There's some things like that and it
does allow us to figure out where are if
you don't know where is your most
productive uh time period and and how do
you maybe line some of those projects up
so that the transition works uh to your
advantage.
Asynchronous communication over constant
meetings I I love it. I am a huge fan of
asynchronous communication. I love you
know using like a Slack emails things
like that. I am not a fan of scheduling
meetings. Uh even standups, my team for
the longest time, we did Slack standups.
We just I had a big block of time. They
said, "I just need you. Make sure you
get your information there. We'll have
some feedback." And it's really helped.
Granted, my team is uh time diverse. We
have all kinds of different hours that
they're working. But it allows that to
happen. And it allows us to tackle the
things we need to tackle it. Yes, it
does allow the opportunity sometimes for
things to fall beneath the cracks, but
that's a a discipline and a habit is
making sure that we are, you know,
checking all the places that we need to
check to make sure that we get our
things done.
That being said, I'm ready to wrap this
one. Oh, last thing I do want to talk
about environment cues real quick. There
is definitely for me and maybe for you,
there's a difference on where I work as
far as what I am productive doing.
there's a very big difference if I want
to sit down and write code versus if I
need to sit down and design something or
gather requirements versus if I'm doing
documentation
um versus just you know blue sky and and
you know green field type uh stuff. So
maybe like yourself that's if you're the
same way then try different places and
styles of working to see what works best
for you. You'd be amazed at the
difference it can make in your
productivity just by, you know, maybe
sitting on a chair across the room as
opposed to the one that you're in right
now. We are going to go sit on different
chairs. Maybe, maybe not. But we will be
in a different place. I at least
definitely will be in a different place
next time around. We will wrap this one
up. Appreciate your time. As always, all
the places that you can reach out to us,
do so. Leave us comments, leave us
feedback. We'd love to hear it. and we
will talk to you next time.
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