Detailed Notes
Happy New Year, developers! As 2025 begins, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche, the voices behind the Building Better Developers podcast, bring you a special New Year’s Day episode. This isn’t the launch of a new season but a unique pause to reflect, reset, and ready ourselves for the year ahead. With a mix of humor, personal anecdotes, and practical insights, Rob and Michael discuss goal setting, incremental progress, and the importance of building habits that energize rather than drain us.
Read more... https://develpreneur.com/goal-setting-and-habits-the-keys-to-a-productive-new-year/
*Make Goal Setting Work for You*
Rob and Michael challenge listeners to take immediate action as they wrap up. Whether sending an email, starting a new project, or setting a single daily goal, small steps lead to significant changes.
Remember, 2025 isn’t about racing to the finish line; it’s about steady, sustainable growth. Follow their advice, and by this time next year, you’ll look back proudly on the progress you’ve made.
Here’s to building better developers—and better lives—in 2025. Happy New Year! 🎉
We invite you to join our community and share your coding journey with us. Whether you’re a seasoned developer or just starting, there’s always room to learn and grow together. Contact us at [email protected] with your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Together, let’s continue exploring the exciting world of software development.
*Additional Resources*
* Achieving Goals – Setting A Milestone And Hitting The Mark (https://develpreneur.com/achieving-goals-setting-a-milestone-and-hitting-the-mark/) * Use Accountability To Achieve Your Goals (https://develpreneur.com/use-accountability-to-achieve-your-goals/) * Setting Goals That Serve Others – Interview With Nicky Billou (https://develpreneur.com/setting-goals-that-serve-others-interview-with-nicky-billou/) * Use The Value of Steady Improvement to Achieve Big Goals (https://develpreneur.com/use-the-value-of-steady-improvement-to-achieve-big-goals/)
*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] well hello everybody we have hit record again as far as you know and we are continuing to get into this uh for ourselves for you guys this is brand new because it's a new year happy New Year hope you had a safe and happy one obviously it wasn't too bad because you're able to see this unless you're seeing this behind bars in which case that would probably not a very good time but I don't know how we are in the prison population so I don't I'm expecting there's not a lot of people that are trying to be better developers while they're fighting through that they've got other things to worry about I may digress a little bit so I think what we want to do though is this episode we wanted to talk about the year ahead is basically what are we going to do in 2025 and sort of you know getting into that and was there anything else particular on that it was basically yeah just goals goal setting I should have known that's what we do all the time and I think it's a good time for us to think about talk about that because it is the beginning of the year so we will dive into that anything any other thoughts on that before we start into the the audio portion of this so not just goal settings so looking ahead but one of the things kind of with our building better habits that we kind of talked about you know like the lists um might be a good kind of tie into this one as well is to not necessarily like playing too far ahead with list but at least kind of keep track of what you're doing shortterm medium-term long-term goals for the year something like that yeah I think that's always a good that goes into the whole uh GTD you know getting things done kind of approach of like trying to keep it uh functional trying not to basically something that you can actually you know actionable something that you can get to as opposed to eating the elephant entirely you know in one bite kind of thing so we'll get into our little to I got to figure out how to better like position My Little Numbers there well hello and welcome back and happy New Year it is 2025 wow that's like again this just sort of mindboggling to body like myself and uh we are back we are building better developers we are developing or this is a new year not a new season this is just a special episode we will get back into our building better habits episodes and wrapping up that season next episode first as you may have noticed uh once again that note to Michael that we've got a nice little like jingle at the front for the new year cheering it on because here we are we've made it into yet another year and as it being another year it is also a good time for us to as everybody does they look at New Year's resolutions and what are they going to do and what are what how am I going to set myself up so that when I get to 2026 January early January I'm in a lot better place than I am or at least a better place than I am this year and as always one of the things is we talk about like incremental steps and things like that so that's what's going to be our focus in this special episode but first i'm going to get all like self-focused and talk about myself a little bit I want to introduce myself I am Broadhead I one of the founders of develop andur also a founder of RB Consulting where we are we are Boutique Consulting kind of like operation where we go in and we help organizations do be business better based on the Technologies they have we help you leverage your technology avoid the the pain of Technology sprawl and find ways through simplification automation integration we find ways to allow you to Tool use your tools better be more of a a process driven you know lean kind an organization that is actually getting the most bang for their Buck out of their it infrastructure Investments good thing bad thing uh let's see good thing is uh I'll start with a bad thing because this one's just been frustrating me bad thing is merging code I hate sometimes merging code branches is a piece of cake and it's just like you click a button it's like boom everything's merged and sometimes you click a button and boom everything blows up in your face I am in the latter part of that hence the bad thing is I've just been like and it's been annoying little things and getting all of the merge tools to work right so I don't lose work that I've done and I have lost work I've done a couple times and had to like roll stuff back and go find it so not a lot of good there uh but a good thing for me is that I have even though like so you have to like roll it back a little bit because I'm currently before New Year's I know you guys had a great new years I am planning on right now having good news because we actually have New Year's plans we got all that kind of stuff set we have our reservations and all the thing so good thing is I got that stuff done before New Year's so when you're actually listening to this I'm probably hanging out going wow I had a great New Year's so that's my good thing looking ahead um actually I guess just looking across the the Internet it's time for me to go ahead and introduce Michael go ahead and introduce everybody hey everyone my name is name is Michael M I'm one of the founders of developer ner building better developers and I'm also the founder of Envision QA where we help companies build better software through test driven development approaches uh writing more unit testing integration testing and essentially driving development through testing so that you know that what your uh your code that you're writing is supposed to do before you do it that way when you write the code you can test the code it also helps companies improve their brand because when software Works customers are happy that is where we come in uh good and bad thing so similar to robs not so much with merges but my uh bad so to speak is people committing code without the proper testing involved so it's like oh yeah my code works I merge it I don't retest it I push it up and everything breaks don't like that uh on the good side of things though um if take that as a lessons learn we have worked with the developers to bring them back up to speed make sure you te check your code and we're implementing steps to ensure that doesn't happen you know that is where Envision QA comes in and kind of looking ahead for this year you know um post so as Rob mentioned we're doing this before New Year's plans so New Year's plans I'm hoping uh we've got some plans to get out to the river hopefully the weather will participate and when you see this we'll be uh hopefully enjoying some time on the river well now we have to go back to work though while we're looking towards the end towards these uh you know this holiday ahead of us where you guys are at where we will soon be is into the beginning of the year and we need to look at what are we going to do in the year ahead that's what's our Focus going to be for this uh this holiday special is we're going talk a little bit about setting goals now we we do this every year we've talked about setting goals for a long time and just to to reiterate there is a let's say there's like tiers of goals or you know like levels of goals that we we always want to focus on is that we have our our long-term like career roadmap lifetime goals and things like that and then we've got our you know a little more smaller usually then you drop down to like annual goals like what do I want to get done this year and then quarterly goals and then even within that you know monthly and then maybe even down to weekly and daily goals that they should all eventually roll up and we talked in last episode about doing things that make you happy doing the things that energize you versus the things that drain you and I think that's one of the things I really want to you hopefully have already started into setting some goals and working on those at this point but I want to make sure that you just sort of like revisit that and make sure like did I do a good job because this is a great time to adjust now the other thing is is you set these goals hopefully and you've got some goals as you step into this year and we talked so much about the incremental and we talk about actually in this season that we're in the middle of uh the podcast season not like you know that it's the middle of winter right here the podcast is we talk about building better habits this is a perfect time for you to build some better habits is to take a look at those goals that you you've set for yourself or you are setting for yourself as you start the year and try to start it right and everybody knows this but that's why everybody on like you know New Year's Day January 2nd January 3rd the like the gyms are filled because everybody like I'm gonna work out today and then like a day later like I'm not gonna get up this early or whatever it is and they skip it your the key is yeah you can miss one here and there but never miss two in a row I heard that when they were talking about micro habits and I think that is a a key is like yeah life life will interrupt but if you have to miss it for a day then come hell high water make it that next day is get yourself back on track now here this year it's a little bit weird because of where New Year's fell and you got a weekend and some stuff like that so it's actually a perfect time for you to really focus on uh as you're sort of coming out of this holiday season is focus on getting that getting those tasks done each day whatever those goals are that you've set is let's let's start chipping away at them even if it's something that feels like you so you're going to do the second half of the year maybe is like what do I need to do to position myself so when I get to that point that I get to that point that I'm able to to focus on it let's start taking a look at what is out there that we can do today and you don't have to do a lot it's not you have to spend half your day working on these goals but I think it is very useful to spend even 5 or 10 minutes working on these goals touching them moving them forward so that the tomorrow you're further ahead than you were today I think that's going to be more important than your whatever the goals are that you set is making sure that you have a you have yourself set up to be successful in those goals and that doesn't mean that you like lower your goals to a level that it's like okay I can just like fall out of bed and achieve this goal it is that you set yourself up for Success that you start moving forward you start making the the steps that you need to do do the work that is required to get there for example I have got lots of stuff ahead of me in the year there's like a lot of things that I need to do there's a lot of boxes I need to check off and most of those are things that are sort of like big tasks in themselves so I can't do it in one shot but what I am going to be doing is prepping for a lot of that is trying to make sure that I'm in a good position when I get to that point that I don't have other things are going to distract me that I've got all my ducks in a row that I've got all of the prerequisites taken care of and things like that and so I'm going to sit down one of the things I'm do is have my little road map like here's some of the things I need to do that's like here's the sort of my timeline and then I back that up and say okay if I'm going to get this done by this date then I need to have these things done by this date and I need to get these things done today to get myself moving towards that so I'm not effectively studying for the final exam all night night the day before the the final exam so it it more importantly than setting your goals and choosing your goals to me is getting yourself situated and getting yourself into that mindset that you can succeed with those goals and now my goal is to take another sip of tea and I'm going to pass that on to Michael because see right there very good incremental step I've made success nice segue yeah looking at this year especially for a lot of you listening or watching one of the biggest things we've talked about a lot with you know building better habits and even in the last episode you know taking small steps in incremental steps is a lot of the reasons why the whole idea of people you know joining gyms at the beginning of the year trying to lose weight a lot of the cultural mentality that has been driven into US is very quick reward you know we're looking for quick results to actions you know it's like oh I've got to lose 30 lounds let me hit the gym I should lose 30 lbs by the end of the week that is very unrealistic so as you are putting together your goals or you're planning to do something make sure that it is not just realistic but also something that's a little challenging so well yes you want to lose weight you may not lose 30 L PBS in a week but instead of losing half a pound a week you can try to lose two pounds a week you know set the goal that is a little reasonable but challenging because we want to challenge ourselves we don't want to get complacent the other problem with the whole idea of losing weight or you know not getting things done is we try to take off too much at one time or like I said you know with that losing weight it's like I want to lose 30 pounds by the end of the weight that's just not realistic if I want to lose uh half a pound okay so I cut back a little bit of food if I want to get lose more weight or get more done so you're going to have to do a eat a lot less food but don't starve yourself because if you starve yourself then you get other consequences essentially to your actions and the reason I started with that is in software development there are consequences to our actions as well as benefits so if we go into a product we set a goal that hey I want to learn like Amazon Cloud I want to get certified in that you need to make sure that you give yourself enough time to achieve this goal in a manner that you're not going to burn out you're not going to quit you're not going to just throw the rage quit throw that book across the room and never get certified you need to give yourself enough time now for me that may be like an hour a day for you it might be 15 minutes a day just reading a little bit at a time or going going online doing some sample questions things of that nature so what works for one doesn't necessarily work for the other but you need to pace yourself you need to kind of maybe put some checks and balances in place for your goal setting so that as you're going through it through the year through the months whatever that you are doing it in a way that is both mindful of your mental state and that you're still achieving that goal that you're still moving forward so that by the end you feel accomplished you've done it you've completed that goal and you're not seeing there at the end why the hell did I do this oh I'm never going to touch this again I hate this we have all been there you know I've run into that quite a bit you know I've rageed quit video games more than once and I've never gone back but that's what you want to avoid it's like check yourself maybe do it daily maybe write a list maybe set you know weekly reminders but as you're doing this as you're going through that journey of building better habits of working through your goals for the year make sure that you are keeping yourself healthy make one of your goals is to selfcheck make sure your mental state complies with what you're trying to do because if you start getting depressed you start getting angry you're not going to achieve those goals you're going to start going off track and probably quit so just be mindful of what you're trying to accomplish be mindful when things do go wrong and things can go wrong you know you may go on a bender and eat a dozen donuts one week and gain 10 pounds back that's okay that's just a setback setbacks are fine quitting is not fine getting yourself into a position where I think I can't do it because I'm telling myself I can't do it is different than hey whoops I had a bad day let me reset tomorrow get back on track and keep moving forward that whole incremental thing we've been talking about set your goal stick to it take small steps to achieve it but make sure you keep to it if you have a bad day that's okay keep moving forward yeah I think that I think that's the biggest thing is that under is going into this stuff we know there's going to be setbacks and so it's just allowing those setbacks to occur and just saying okay it was a setback reset and start moving forward again the next day and sometimes it it it can take a while sometimes it's going to be something where it's like you get setback and then you get another set back and you get another set back but you know cuz you're you're learning you're struggling there's you know there's something like that where but it's like find a way to get back to it and it is it's going to come down to determination it does even if you're walking into a wind as long as you're like still trying to move forward eventually the wind will die down and you'll be able to move forward again it's just you know that may not be a great analogy but it's one of those things where it's like we need that that incremental work and sometimes the incremental work that that you did today was that you found that here's you know maybe you're trying to solve a problem and you you have to incrementally work your way through it and maybe all you found today was that that's not a way to solve the problem and so you have to at least you have one less thing to try as you move forward it's finding a way to it really is to keep yourself sort of uh in check and also to keep yourself with a realistic kind of mindset of like well hey at least I did make some effort on this I got some work in it and maybe it didn't pay off as much as I wanted it to but at least it was I made the effort and I'm still like building the habits of doing that task whatever that happens to be or you know working towards whatever that goal is and definitely you we push and push and push and we talk about all the time about being better being better being better it it should not be exhausting to be better better every day it should be something that you can do in a in a way that is you just saying like hey here's a little thing that I'm going to try a little different or I'm going to do a little different or I'm going to just do it again because that will make me better you know simple things like maybe like doing 10 push-ups a day I'm just going to do 10 push-ups again tomorrow because then you know I did them yesterday I'm going to do 10 push-ups today and then maybe somewhere down the road now I can do 15 or I can do 20 or I suddenly realize that I can do 10 a lot faster and a lot easier than I used to it's just things like that sometimes just a rep competition itself is going to help so you don't have to necessarily like push yourself to do more sometimes doing the same over a period of time is going to end up helping you just like saving money if you save a dollar a day at the end of the week you're going to have $7 saved you if you try to push yourself and say well now I'm going to do $1 and then I'm going to do $2 next day and $3 next day yes you will advance faster but that may exhaust your budget so you want to make sure that you you know just like which is a I think pretty good analogy of it's like you only have you've got a limited resource of your energy your time and things like that so don't try to race to the end sometimes it's slow and steady wins a race and you need to just sit there and just allow your you know time to build momentum to build and your capabilities to build so that you can cross that finish line and and accomplish that goal one of the goals I think you should set is to send us an email just one just just send us an email email this year and you know what you could accomplish that right now you could go out there you could shoot an email out to info developer.com you could tell us hey guess what I just checked something off of my list this year I accomplished a goal you could even say it was a major goal because not a lot of people send us email more people could you you are in a select few you are one of the few one of the proud and we'll even send you reply back to to give you that maybe we'll figure out a way to like create your little certificate that was like Hey I sent an email okay that maybe is going too far that's maybe I crossed a line so I'm going to ratchet back that goal but you can also reach us by leaving us comments here leave us feedback you can check us out at developer.com you can follow us at developer or onx you can go out to our Facebook page and leave feedback there all of these different places that we are at you can also follow us you can see the latest episodes you can check out podcasts video stuff out on YouTube out developing our Channel and uh just you know tons and tons of content so if there's something out there that you're looking for I wouldn't be surprised if we haven't covered that at some point because I actually use our site more often than not to just go like you know oh yeah how did we do that and sure enough it's somewhere out there on a on a Blog article that being said we're going to wrap this one up and I want to wish you a happy New Year next episode we are right back into building better habits so enjoy your little like time off here before we're going to be like pound pound Pound let's get going forward again but we're going to try to do in a way that allows you to be energized and not drained we'll see how this works out that being said go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus thoughts on that so I had one additional thought so I mentioned you know rage quitting and like getting to the a mental state where you you're done you quit your goal sometimes the steps we take to accomplish a goal well we to us may seem like they make sense like that is how I need to accomplish that goal that may be the complete wrong direction or wrong path to get to that goal and that causes friction that Causes Chaos maybe a reset if you start feeling that you cannot accomplish this goal or what you're doing to accomplish that goal is not working don't quit the goal look at the processes that you're doing to get there and maybe you need to Pivot maybe you just need to try something slightly different to get there our goals are not necessarily um something that is well they could be live you know something that could be life or death but at the end of the day to get to that goal we should set oursel up for Success not failure so if we start seeing that we're going off track or what we're doing doesn't work we need to ask oursel is what am I doing wrong or what do I need to do different to get to that goal how can I pivot how can I change how can I improve to still get there without quitting I think that's very important is that it is it's this goes back to the why the the important thing in this case is the goal how you get there how you achieve it is not as important it's like it's getting to the goal now yes there are levels of like you know if you have to kill a person to get to the goal probably need to take another path things like that or if you're G to kill yourself getting to the goal you should take a different path there are things like that that we can I think sometimes too often maybe we get very focused on like this is the journey this is the path I have to take to this goal and it's not there are other options there are other ways to get there and sometimes it is a massaging of the goal itself maybe the goal needs to be reviewed and it's not really you need to refine what that is and that allows you to take a different path to change your focus and to allow you to get there and have the energy that you need to enjoy the Victory lap when you achieve that goal so that is very important is if you feel stuck one of the best ways to get unstuck is to step back a second and take a look and see like for example if you're like beating your head against the wall maybe if you step back you realize that you could just walk right around that wall you don't have to keep beating your head on it and yes that is like a figurative thing but a lot of times that is very much the essentially what we run into is we're just like I have to make this work and you realize that no you don't you actually could take make some adjustments and get to your goal maybe even better than what your original path is that being said it is time for us to wrap this one up it's time for us to go out and achieve all of our goals because we're back here in 20254 not 2025 so we got some goals to get to before we get to the end of the year so we got to get to work you guys have yourself a good one enjoy your year ahead we'll catch you next episode and talk to you later [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
well hello everybody we have hit record
again as far as you know and we are
continuing to get into this uh for
ourselves for you guys this is brand new
because it's a new year happy New Year
hope you had a safe and happy one
obviously it wasn't too bad because
you're able to see this unless you're
seeing this behind bars in which case
that would probably not a very good time
but I don't know how we are in the
prison population so I don't I'm
expecting there's not a lot of people
that are trying to be better developers
while they're fighting through that
they've got other things to worry about
I may digress a little bit so I think
what we want to do though is this
episode we wanted to talk about the year
ahead is basically what are we going to
do in 2025 and sort of you know getting
into that and was there anything else
particular on that it was basically yeah
just goals goal setting I should have
known that's what we do all the time and
I think it's a good time for us to think
about talk about that because it is the
beginning of the year so we will dive
into
that anything any other thoughts on that
before we start into the the audio
portion of this so not just goal
settings so looking ahead
but one of the things kind of with our
building better habits that we kind of
talked about you know like the
lists um might be a good kind of tie
into this one as well is to not
necessarily like playing too far ahead
with list but at least kind of keep
track of what you're doing shortterm
medium-term long-term goals for the year
something like
that yeah I think that's always a good
that goes into the whole uh GTD you know
getting things done kind of approach of
like trying to keep it uh functional
trying not to basically something that
you can actually you know actionable
something that you can get to as opposed
to eating the elephant entirely you know
in one bite kind of thing so we'll get
into our little
to I got to figure out how to better
like position My Little Numbers there
well hello and welcome back and happy
New Year it is 2025 wow that's like
again this just sort of mindboggling to
body like myself and uh we are back we
are building better developers we are
developing or this is a new year not a
new season this is just a special
episode we will get back into our
building better habits episodes and
wrapping up that season next episode
first as you may have noticed uh once
again that note to Michael that we've
got a nice little like jingle at the
front for the new year cheering it on
because here we are we've made it into
yet another year and as it being another
year it is also a good time for us to as
everybody does they look at New Year's
resolutions and what are they going to
do and what are what how am I going to
set myself up so that when I get to
2026 January early January I'm in a lot
better place than I am or at least a
better place than I am this year and as
always one of the things is we talk
about like incremental steps and things
like that so that's what's going to be
our focus in this special episode but
first i'm going to get all like
self-focused and talk about myself a
little bit I want to introduce myself I
am Broadhead I one of the founders of
develop andur also a founder of RB
Consulting where we are we are Boutique
Consulting kind of like operation where
we go in and we help organizations do be
business better based on the
Technologies they have we help you
leverage your technology avoid the the
pain of Technology sprawl and find ways
through simplification automation
integration we find ways to allow you to
Tool use your tools better be more of a
a process driven you know lean kind an
organization that is actually getting
the most bang for their Buck out of
their it
infrastructure
Investments good thing bad thing uh
let's see good thing
is uh I'll start with a bad thing
because this one's just been frustrating
me bad thing is merging code I
hate sometimes merging code branches is
a piece of cake and it's just like you
click a button it's like boom
everything's merged and sometimes you
click a button and boom everything blows
up in your face I am in the latter part
of that hence the bad thing is I've just
been like and it's been annoying little
things and getting all of the merge
tools to work right so I don't lose work
that I've done and I have lost work I've
done a couple times and had to like roll
stuff back and go find it so not a lot
of good there uh but a good thing for me
is that I have even though like so you
have to like roll it back a little bit
because I'm currently before New Year's
I know you guys had a great new years I
am planning on right now having good
news because we actually have New Year's
plans we got all that kind of stuff set
we have our reservations and all the
thing so good thing is I got that stuff
done before New Year's so when you're
actually listening to this I'm probably
hanging out going wow I had a great New
Year's so that's my good thing looking
ahead um actually I guess just looking
across the the Internet it's time for me
to go ahead and introduce Michael go
ahead and introduce
everybody hey everyone my name is name
is Michael M I'm one of the founders of
developer ner building better
developers and I'm also the founder of
Envision QA where we help
companies build better software through
test driven development approaches uh
writing more unit testing integration
testing and essentially driving
development through testing so that you
know that what your uh your code that
you're writing is supposed to do before
you do it that way when you write the
code you can test the code it also helps
companies improve their brand because
when software Works customers are happy
that is where we come in uh good and bad
thing so similar to robs not so much
with merges but my uh bad so to speak is
people committing code without the
proper testing involved so it's like oh
yeah my code works I merge it I don't
retest it I push it up and everything
breaks don't like that uh on the good
side of things though um if take that as
a lessons learn we have worked with the
developers to bring them back up to
speed make sure you te check your code
and we're implementing steps to ensure
that doesn't happen you know that is
where Envision QA comes
in and kind of looking ahead for this
year you know
um post so as Rob mentioned we're doing
this before New Year's plans so New
Year's plans I'm hoping uh we've got
some plans to get out to the river
hopefully the weather will participate
and when you see this we'll be uh
hopefully enjoying some time on the
river well now we have to go back to
work though while we're looking towards
the end towards these uh you know this
holiday ahead of us where you guys are
at where we will soon be is into the
beginning of the year and we need to
look at what are we going to do in the
year ahead that's what's our Focus going
to be for this uh this holiday special
is we're going talk a little bit about
setting goals now we we do this every
year we've talked about setting goals
for a long time and just to to reiterate
there is a let's say there's like tiers
of goals or you know like levels of
goals that we we always want to focus on
is that we have our our long-term like
career roadmap lifetime goals and things
like that and then we've got our you
know a little more smaller usually then
you drop down to like annual goals like
what do I want to get done this year and
then quarterly goals and then even
within that you know monthly and then
maybe even down to weekly and daily
goals that they should all eventually
roll up and we talked in last episode
about doing things that make you happy
doing the things that energize you
versus the things that drain you and I
think that's one of the things I really
want to you hopefully have already
started into setting some goals and
working on those at this point but I
want to make sure that you just sort of
like revisit that and make sure like did
I do a good job because this is a great
time to adjust now the other thing is is
you set these goals hopefully and you've
got some goals as you step into this
year and we talked so much about the
incremental and we talk about actually
in this season that we're in the middle
of uh the podcast season not like you
know that it's the middle of winter
right here the podcast is we talk about
building better
habits this is a perfect time for you to
build some better habits is to take a
look at those goals that you you've set
for yourself or you are setting for
yourself as you start the year and try
to start it right and everybody knows
this but that's why everybody on like
you know New Year's Day January 2nd
January 3rd the like the gyms are filled
because everybody like I'm gonna work
out today and then like a day later like
I'm not gonna get up this early or
whatever it is and they skip it your the
key is yeah you can miss one here and
there but never miss two in a row I
heard that when they were talking about
micro habits and I think that is a a key
is like yeah life life will interrupt
but if you have to miss it for a day
then come hell high water make it that
next day is get yourself back on track
now
here this year it's a little bit weird
because of where New Year's fell and you
got a weekend and some stuff like that
so it's actually a perfect time for you
to really focus on uh as you're sort of
coming out of this holiday season is
focus on getting that getting those
tasks done each day whatever those goals
are that you've set is let's let's start
chipping away at them even if it's
something that feels like you so you're
going to do the second half of the year
maybe is like what do I need to do to
position myself so when I get to that
point that I get to that point that I'm
able to to focus on it let's start
taking a look at what is out there that
we can do today and you don't have to do
a lot it's not you have to spend half
your day working on these goals but I
think it is very useful to spend even 5
or 10 minutes working on these goals
touching them moving them forward so
that the tomorrow you're further ahead
than you were today I think that's going
to be more important than your whatever
the goals are that you set is making
sure that you have a you have yourself
set up to be successful in those goals
and that doesn't mean that you like
lower your goals to a level that it's
like okay I can just like fall out of
bed and achieve this goal it is that you
set yourself up for Success that you
start moving forward you start making
the the steps that you need to do do the
work that is required to get there for
example I have got lots of stuff ahead
of me in the year there's like a lot of
things that I need to do there's a lot
of boxes I need to check off and most of
those are things that are sort of like
big tasks in themselves so I can't do it
in one shot but what I am going to be
doing is prepping for a lot of that is
trying to make sure that I'm in a good
position when I get to that point that I
don't have other things are going to
distract me that I've got all my ducks
in a row that I've got all of the
prerequisites taken care of and things
like that and so I'm going to sit down
one of the things I'm do is have my
little road map like here's some of the
things I need to do that's like here's
the sort of my timeline and then I back
that up and say okay if I'm going to get
this done by this date then I need to
have these things done by this date and
I need to get these things done today to
get myself moving towards that so I'm
not effectively studying for the final
exam all night night the day before the
the final
exam so it it more importantly than
setting your goals and choosing your
goals to me is getting yourself situated
and getting yourself into that mindset
that you can succeed with those goals
and now my goal is to take another sip
of tea and I'm going to pass that on to
Michael because see right there very
good incremental step I've made
success nice
segue yeah looking at this year
especially for a lot of you listening or
watching one of the biggest things we've
talked about a lot with you know
building better habits and even in the
last episode you know taking small steps
in incremental steps is a lot of the
reasons why the whole idea of people you
know joining gyms at the beginning of
the year trying to lose weight a lot of
the cultural mentality that has been
driven into US is very quick reward you
know we're looking for quick results to
actions you know it's like oh I've got
to lose 30 lounds let me hit the gym I
should lose 30 lbs by the end of the
week that is very
unrealistic so as you are putting
together your goals or you're planning
to do something make sure that it is not
just realistic but also something that's
a little challenging so well yes you
want to lose weight you may not lose 30
L PBS in a week but instead of losing
half a pound a week you can try to lose
two pounds a week you know set the goal
that is a little reasonable but
challenging because we want to challenge
ourselves we don't want to get
complacent the other problem with the
whole idea of losing weight or you know
not getting things done is we try to
take off too much at one time or like I
said you know with that losing weight
it's like I want to lose 30 pounds by
the end of the weight that's just not
realistic if I want to lose uh half a
pound okay so I cut back a little bit of
food if I want to get lose more weight
or get more done so you're going to have
to do a eat a lot less food but don't
starve yourself because if you starve
yourself then you get
other consequences essentially to your
actions and the reason I started with
that is in software
development there are consequences to
our actions as well as benefits so if we
go into a product we set a goal that hey
I want to learn like Amazon Cloud I want
to get certified in that you need to
make sure that you give yourself enough
time to achieve this goal in a manner
that you're not going to burn out you're
not going to quit you're not going to
just throw the rage quit throw that book
across the room and never get certified
you need to give yourself enough time
now for me that may be like an hour a
day for you it might be 15 minutes a day
just reading a little bit at a time or
going going online doing some sample
questions things of that nature so what
works for one doesn't necessarily work
for the other but you need to pace
yourself you need to kind of maybe put
some checks and balances in place for
your goal setting so that as you're
going through it through the year
through the months whatever that you are
doing it in a way that is both mindful
of your mental state and that you're
still achieving that goal that you're
still moving forward so that by the end
you feel accomplished you've done it
you've completed that goal and you're
not seeing there at the end why the hell
did I do this oh I'm never going to
touch this again I hate
this we have all been there you know
I've run into that quite a bit you know
I've rageed quit video games more than
once and I've never gone back but that's
what you want to avoid it's like check
yourself maybe do it daily maybe write a
list maybe set you know weekly reminders
but as you're doing this as you're going
through that
journey of building better habits of
working through your goals for the year
make sure that you are keeping yourself
healthy make one of your goals is to
selfcheck make sure your mental state
complies with what you're trying to do
because if you start getting depressed
you start getting angry you're not going
to achieve those goals you're going to
start going off track and probably quit
so just be mindful of what you're trying
to accomplish be mindful when things do
go wrong and things can go wrong you
know you may go on a bender and eat a
dozen donuts one week and gain 10 pounds
back that's okay that's just a setback
setbacks are fine quitting is not fine
getting yourself into a position where I
think I can't do it because I'm telling
myself I can't do it is different than
hey whoops I had a bad day let me reset
tomorrow get back on track and keep
moving forward that whole incremental
thing we've been talking about set your
goal stick to it take small steps to
achieve it but make sure you keep to it
if you have a bad day that's okay keep
moving
forward yeah I think that I think that's
the biggest thing is that under is going
into this stuff we know there's going to
be setbacks and so it's just allowing
those setbacks to occur and just saying
okay it was a setback reset and start
moving forward again the next day and
sometimes it it it can take a while
sometimes it's going to be something
where it's
like you get setback and then you get
another set back and you get another set
back but you know cuz you're you're
learning you're struggling there's you
know there's something like that where
but it's like find a way to get back to
it and it is it's going to come down to
determination it does even if you're
walking into a wind as long as you're
like still trying to move forward
eventually the wind will die down and
you'll be able to move forward again
it's just you know that may not be a
great analogy but it's one of those
things where it's like we need that that
incremental work and sometimes the
incremental work that that you did today
was that you found that here's you know
maybe you're trying to solve a problem
and you you have to incrementally work
your way through it and maybe all you
found today was that that's not a way to
solve the problem and so you have to at
least you have one less thing to try as
you move forward it's finding a way
to it really is to keep yourself sort of
uh in check and also to keep yourself
with a realistic kind of mindset of like
well hey at least I did make some effort
on this I got some work in it and maybe
it didn't pay off as much as I wanted it
to but at least it was I made the effort
and I'm still like building the habits
of doing that task whatever that happens
to be or you know working towards
whatever that goal
is and definitely you we push and push
and push and we talk about all the time
about being better being better being
better it it should not be exhausting to
be better better every day it should be
something that you can do in a in a way
that is you just saying like hey here's
a little thing that I'm going to try a
little different or I'm going to do a
little different or I'm going to just do
it again because that will make me
better you know simple things like maybe
like doing 10 push-ups a day I'm just
going to do 10 push-ups again tomorrow
because then you know I did them
yesterday I'm going to do 10 push-ups
today and then maybe somewhere down the
road now I can do 15 or I can do 20 or I
suddenly realize that I can do 10 a lot
faster and a lot easier than I used to
it's just things like that sometimes
just a rep competition itself is going
to help so you don't have to necessarily
like push yourself to do more sometimes
doing the same over a period of time is
going to end up helping you just like
saving money if you save a dollar a day
at the end of the week you're going to
have $7 saved you if you try to push
yourself and say well now I'm going to
do $1 and then I'm going to do $2 next
day and $3 next day yes you will advance
faster but that may exhaust your budget
so you want to make sure that you you
know just like which is a I think pretty
good analogy of it's like you only have
you've got a limited resource of your
energy your time and things like that so
don't try to race to the end sometimes
it's slow and steady wins a race and you
need to just sit there and just allow
your you know time to build momentum to
build and your capabilities to build so
that you can cross that finish line and
and accomplish that goal one of the
goals I think you should set is to send
us an email just one just just send us
an email email this year and you know
what you could accomplish that right now
you could go out there you could shoot
an email out to info developer.com you
could tell us hey guess what I just
checked something off of my list this
year I accomplished a goal you could
even say it was a major goal
because not a lot of people send us
email more people could you you are in a
select few you are one of the few one of
the proud and we'll even send you reply
back to to give you that maybe we'll
figure out a way to like create your
little certificate that was like Hey I
sent an email okay that maybe is going
too
far that's maybe I crossed a line so I'm
going to ratchet back that goal but you
can also reach us by leaving us comments
here leave us feedback you can check us
out at developer.com you can follow us
at developer or onx you can go out to
our Facebook page and leave feedback
there all of these different places that
we are at you can also follow us you can
see the latest episodes you can check
out podcasts video stuff out on YouTube
out developing our Channel
and uh just you know tons and tons of
content so if there's something out
there that you're looking for I wouldn't
be surprised if we haven't covered that
at some point because I actually use our
site more often than not to just go like
you know oh yeah how did we do that and
sure enough it's somewhere out there on
a on a Blog
article that being said we're going to
wrap this one up and I want to wish you
a happy New Year next episode we are
right back into building better habits
so enjoy your little like time off here
before we're going to be like pound
pound Pound let's get going forward
again but we're going to try to do in a
way that allows you to be energized and
not drained we'll see how this works out
that being said go out there and have
yourself a great day a great week and we
will talk to you next
time bonus thoughts on that so I had one
additional thought
so I mentioned you know rage quitting
and like getting to the a mental state
where you you're done you quit your
goal sometimes the steps we take to
accomplish a goal well we to us may seem
like they make sense like that is how I
need to accomplish that goal that may be
the complete wrong direction or wrong
path to get to that goal and that causes
friction that Causes Chaos maybe a reset
if you start feeling that you cannot
accomplish this goal or what you're
doing to accomplish that goal is not
working don't quit the goal look at the
processes that you're doing to get there
and maybe you need to Pivot maybe you
just need to try something slightly
different to get there our goals are not
necessarily um something that is well
they could be live you know something
that could be life or death but at the
end of the day to get to that goal we
should set oursel up for Success not
failure so if we start seeing that we're
going off track or what we're doing
doesn't work we need to ask oursel is
what am I doing wrong or what do I need
to do different
to get to that goal how can I pivot how
can I change how can I improve to still
get there without quitting I think
that's very important is that it is it's
this goes back to the why the the
important thing in this case is the goal
how you get there how you achieve it is
not as important it's like it's getting
to the goal now yes there are levels of
like you know if you have to kill a
person to get to the goal probably need
to take another path things like that or
if you're G to kill yourself getting to
the goal you should take a different
path there are things like that that we
can I think sometimes too often maybe we
get very focused on like this is the
journey this is the path I have to take
to this goal and it's not there are
other options there are other ways to
get there and sometimes it is a
massaging of the goal itself maybe the
goal needs to be reviewed and it's not
really you need to refine what that is
and that allows you to take a different
path to change your focus and to allow
you to get there and have the energy
that you need to enjoy the Victory lap
when you achieve that goal so that is
very important is if you feel stuck one
of the best ways to get unstuck is to
step back a second and take a look and
see like for example if you're like
beating your head against the wall maybe
if you step back you realize that you
could just walk right around that wall
you don't have to keep beating your head
on it and yes that is like a figurative
thing but a lot of times that is very
much the essentially what we run into is
we're just like I have to make this work
and you realize that no you don't you
actually could take make some
adjustments and get to your goal maybe
even better than what your original path
is that being said it is time for us to
wrap this one up it's time for us to go
out and achieve all of our goals because
we're back here in
20254 not 2025 so we got some goals to
get to before we get to the end of the
year so we got to get to work you guys
have yourself a good one enjoy your year
ahead we'll catch you next episode and
talk to you later
[Music]