Detailed Notes
In the latest episode of our podcast focused on the developer journey, we explore the critical topic of good and bad habits that can significantly impact a software developer's career and overall productivity. As we're midway through the year, it's an opportune time to reflect on our practices and consider areas for improvement.
Read More... https://develpreneur.com/essential-habits-for-software-developers-boosting-productivity-and-career-growth
Feel free to share your thoughts and tell us about the habits that have impacted your career. What are some of the good or bad habits you’ve experienced? Your insights could help others in their journey to becoming better developers.
Stay Connected: Join the Developreneur Community
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
* Productivity Habits To Start Your Day Right (https://develpreneur.com/productivity-habits-to-start-your-day-right/)
* The 21-Day Habit Building Challenge (https://develpreneur.com/the-21-day-habit-building-challenge/)
* 3 Habits For Every Day and a Happier Life (https://develpreneur.com/3-habits-for-every-day-and-a-happier-life/)
* Code Reviews – Build Habits And Best Practices (https://develpreneur.com/code-reviews-build-habits-and-best-practices/)
Transcript Text
[Music] and we just hit record so welcome back and we are figuring out talking through what is our topic today because that's how much ahead of the game we are uh you threw a couple things out there let's see habits good and bad share some of our Dev Journey habits cutting the Clutter sorry I'm moving stuff around on my screens here when to walk away and take a break oh those are all sort good actually it's funny clutter is something in my life I'm going through right now because I've got like some and daughter are moving out in like the next few weeks and so they're trying to figure out what they're what they're taking with them and what they're stay leaving here we're doing the same to try to like just simplify some crap and just you know get things organized again so that's a pretty good one but I sort of like the just from a general discussion point of view I think habits good and bad would be a good little like almost like a roundt kind of thing as we'll just sort of like come up with a couple of good habits talk through them you know sort of bounce that back and forth so I was like hey I can throw one you can throw one we can go back and forth yeah I thought that was a good one because I know we've talked about habits a little bit we talked like best practices kind of things and I thought this would be just kind of a good one where we're at within this series to kind of throw that one out sounds good so that means that's what we'll do uh once I get everything situated a little bit here and hello and welcome back we are continuing our season we're talking about the developer Journey this time around we are Developer or we are focused on building better developers I just realized that my you don't see this on the audio but my background is totally flipped because that's one of those bonuses that you can do on your video so I'm working on this while I introduced myself my name is Rob Broadhead and I am a founder of develop anur and also a founder of RB Consulting we do software development and solutions providing our focus is on automation integration and simplification so we go out there and we find ways to basically make you get help you get more out of your technology investment you can also invest a little time here as my co-host Michael will introduce himself go for it hey everyone my name is mikaeel Mage I'm one of the co-founders of developing Nur and I am the founder of Envision QA so if you need any custom software built where the people to come to or if you need software assessments and one of our key features is we also uh spend a lot of time building quality tests integration test system tests for environments that don't have those or for new systems so this episode we're going to look at habits good and bad we this like a good part I think in the developer Journey where we we've talked about more focused on like getting started sort of like early things and and some of it is all so side hustles and things where it's maybe where you're restarting or you're you're stepping into a new phase maybe not the beginning of your career but it is a new Step you know a new phase in your career so here's a point where I think it's not a bad idea to talk about and particularly because right now it's sort of mid year and stuff like that good and bad habits so we'll just do a little bit of some of the things that we've done that have have impacted us um over you know over time the first one I want to the one I want to bring up first is status reporting effect essentially it's communication when I started out it was one of these things it was just a total pain it was just every time I had to do any sort of status it just stroke me nuts it was like it took me out of my groove and all of that kind of good stuff however over time I found that that is actually an incredibly good habit to have if you look at the agile approach and you look at Daily standups even though standup isn't really a status report just the practice of on a daily basis at least actually you know definitely although I know we may do weekly status but on a daily basis spend a lot of time looking at what did you do yesterday what are you g to do today and then maybe some blockers or anything like that which is very much I know that's very much the standup approach what you get done what are you going to do What's blocking you but if you take that from a a a status point of view and you add a little context around that so it's like what did I work on yesterday oh yeah I worked on writing this function that does this thing and here's a couple of things that I went through here's some this is why you know it took me all day to do it here's the the good and the bad of what I did yesterday sort of like a a mini retrospective on what you did and then it's okay what am I going to do today and this is excellent to do if you've got like a little daily planner if you've got a Blog there's like all kinds of different ways to do it whether you want to do old school pencil and paper you want to do something more modern and have like maybe Evernote or something like that where you've got u a digital record of of what you're working on I find it very it's very useful not only at the end of the week or the end of the month to go back and look at what did I get done or if you're one of these people that like you know maybe you've been working for a while you know years or two and now you're looking at a different job you need to do a resume update you may want to go back and look at what are some of the things that I've done but at more tactical type of approach much like the getting things done GTD approach of knowing what is on my plate what is it I'm going to tackle it's like a it's that whole biblical idea of just like focus on the problems for today that's what it is what are my problems today what is the problem I'm going to solve today and it works very well in a there's a lot of people reference different ways to do it I think the I don't remember if it's Tim Ferris start was one of the first ones but I think he stole it from somebody else I don't know how far it goes back but it's the idea of like picking you know three maybe five things you're going to get done today and the one that you want to do the least make that the first and maybe that's like I'm going to get this done before I go to lunch or something like that doing that process doing that daily status kind of thing and then particularly if you can communicate that either daily or weekly to your boss or your customers it is amazing how much that helps keep you focused on what's in scope what's a priority what has changed maybe and just generally keep yourself each day being productive as opposed to busy or spinning your wheels there's my first one how about you what's why don't you throw something out there so actually I kind of wanted to tack on to that a little bit and I'll kind of carry on with that so so that approach you just discussed is very useful however it can also be misused so there are some you have to kind of be a little uh restrictive with this process so as you're doing it daily and that and as you're writing down these tasks that you're going to be working on you want to make sure that you don't have a page long list you know you don't want a list that's G to keep you working till 11 o'clock at night you want to make sure that while you're working on the things that you need to do or the things you're working on try to keep that list small and concise that way you're not being busy like Rob mentioned you're constantly moving that needle forward you're constantly getting that work done on top of that I'd like to add on to that a little bit so one of the habits that I struggled with years ago that I found very beneficial was partially what you talked about there with the list like taking the standup and doing the weekly status I actually take it back a little bit further and do daily status or daily check list of things that I do and it's actually funny I take a sheet of paper and I fold it uh five or six times basically to about the size of an index card if I don't have index cards handy and I try to write down no more than four things that need to be done that day now that doesn't include the meetings that you typically have to go to but this is stuff that you actually work on that you have control over try to keep that list small concise and then you're going to find that if you do that as you follow your daily statuses and your weekly statuses those should line up if they're not lining up then why so now you can kind of do a like Rob said a retrospective of yourself as to okay why am I not getting what I say I need to get done done be careful with this approach because a lot of people especially in today's world of apps we like to get things like little to-do apps or task apps be careful with that you don't want to scope creep Yourself by adding more additional tasks that's why I used a sheet of paper it's fixed I can only write so many things on it and it keeps me focused so that's kind of my first habit um what do you think of that Rob I think that it's a nice followup is that it is and that goes back to like making it uh bite-sized chunks and it's you know so you what you're doing today but it does help you keep productive and that's thinking about agile and the Sprint approach you know let's say you've got you know you got a two or three week Sprint you know that there's things that you want to get done during that Sprint maybe you haven't pulled all of them out but you want you these items need to be worked on and I know this is going to take a day this is going to take three days things like that when you have that which is sort of a bonus is your uh your tasks plus an estimate of what are those task going to take then that really helps you be able to assess okay I thought it was going to take a day did I get it done in a day if I didn't why not if I got it done faster then why did I and those things may all be there may be very valid reasons for all of them but I think taking those into account are going to help you estimate in the future and also keep you on track because it's it's very easy if you get to the end of a day and you have you know whatever it is three five even just one item if that didn't get touched then you know something went wrong you knew you know your day went off the rails now you may know your day went off the rails anyways but there is this um it's almost like it's just one of the things it's almost like a a fallacy that we have is that I know that I do it a lot wife talks about it I know other people I think I think this is everybody runs into it where you have a day that you felt like it went totally off the rails but you realize you were productive say you can look at your list and you can say well crap I got everything done on my list it felt like the day got out of control but obviously it didn't because I got things done and so that's maybe to give yourself a little you know pat on the back to say hey I had a lot of interruptions or a lot of things went off out of you know out of order but I still got it done and I think that's a key another habit that uh you sort of touched on is when you're done you're done is getting yourself in that basically it's that Rhythm it's it's like running a marathon if you set a pace and you just like you know you you can it's a little bit of a downhill slope so you're just like you just cranking and cranking cranking and then it's an uphill slope and you're just sort of walking and slogging your way through it and you don't have a steady Pace then the rise and fall is going to blow you up when you're going to get to the end you're going to be tired what you want to be able to do is run solidly all the way through and this is how you're going to avoid burnout this is how you're going to avoid U just not getting you know not getting enough done is make sure that you you look at your schedule think about what are the hours you're going to work in a day and try to work towards that don't try to work towards you know if it's a this is it was easier when you went into an office but even if you're in a you know a remote situation is have office hours and your goal should be that if you know if you start your day at 8 and you have an hourong lunch break and you end your day at 5 then you should start your day at 8 every day and you should try to end your day at 5 every day if you get done at 4:45 okay if you get done at three then okay you can like pull something in but getting yourself that this is particularly in a in the remote world or when you're you know when you've got Flex schedules and stuff like that is still find a schedule that works for you and stick to that get yourself into the rhythm of when you work and this goes back to a lot of stuff we've talked about in the past if you're a night owl then maybe you do maybe you start your day very late or maybe you it helps you to split your day maybe you work from 9:00 to noon and then you work from you know 9: to 2:00 a.m. or something like that but that's another habit is getting yourself into a a scheduled habit of this is when I'm going to be on this is when I'm going to be off your loved ones even if it's only your dog will thank you for it your thoughts yeah so in addition to that I want to touch on another good habit so if you find yourself going through this process and you find that you're doing those ups and downs instead of that steady Pace why are things taking so long or why are things so hectic one way to help you slow down is to use the uh promodo I never say it right is it promoto promoto Pomodoro Pomodoro uh use a Pomodoro approach where you do small bits of work in 20 minute or 30 minute segments basically you time lock your work you spend a certain amount of time and then you walk away for a little bit then you come back spend a little bit of time the same amount of time work again it kind of helps you set the pace of instead of you constantly picking up the phone checking email you time block things and then by time blocking you basically can batch your process is it's like oh I can check all my emails twice a day and be more productive than checking it 5 minutes every hour well okay instead of checking it twice maybe 15 minutes you've now spent maybe half an hour checking your email in the day so using this technique is another way to kind of time block your tasks figure out why you're taking so long to get things done are you distracted uh if you have an iPhone or a Mac you can use the focus feature and turn off all those nasty little notifications you get that distract you the other cool thing with the Macs and I think even Android has it now but there's a way to schedule your screen time so you can actually lock out certain apps from even being accessible During certain time periods uh some of these are like features for kids but still you can use them as an adult to keep yourself on task if you pick up your phone and you try to access something you shouldn't it'll block you it won't work so it's another good habit to try and get into to try and stay on task what do you think of about you know what are some of your thoughts on that now that that actually brings to mind something that I started uh almost from scratch when I first started out and it was because I I've had somebody's a little senior to me and I I noticed one day that I was talking to him and uh he said you know what like in the M it was like you know early afternoon it's probably one or two in the afternoon something like that he's like I'm just I'm dying just I'll you I'll be back in 10 minutes he's like B I'm just going to put my head down on my desk and take a nap for 10 minutes just to power nap um that has evolved into something although I do power nap I'll do like my 10 15 minute naps during the day and get like you know one in the middle of the day to sort of Break Stuff up more importantly what I found is a middle of the day like it's normally people have this thing called lunch breaks and they will actually go away and they'll do a lunch break and they'll but if all you're doing you're just like rushing to get food and back that may not do it that may not get the benefit and what I what I found that is much better is to take that time and do something different now it it may be and it often is a part of your lunch break so you can go grab something to eat but read a magazine read a book if you're a gamer like play a play a game for a little bit if you're as a developer sometimes it may be fun just to take whatever your primary environment is and do something else do your little side hustle thing for a while particularly if it's in a different environment like if you're a if you're sitting in Windows all day but you've got a little you know Linux side project that you're working on go there or if you're in net all day then maybe you want to do a little Java app or something like that it's it depends on your makeup your mental and physical makeup and more your mental I guess makeup than anything but do something that's a little bit of a change of pace and it could be it really is why wide open try and if I were you I'd try all kinds of stuff whether it's I said it could be like reading worked really well for me for a while I was building a I was doing a side project and that was like I'd spend 30 minutes in my lunch period just writing on that um like you may do meditation you may do just listening to music you may watch a like watch a little TV show or something depends on what you are and what your day is like how that will help but it is I found it incredibly useful to have that break and to be able to then come into your you know we'll call it your second half of your day and it can be you know sometimes it's grown so that's it's like there's times when I would go I'd go work out go for a walk for you know 30 minutes or an hour or something like that and I'd go get clean up and grab some food and yeah I had a longer lunch break but I'd start a little early I'd work a little late and I was more productive in those those splits of time and that's my rhythm yours might be a little different but I think it really is if you start thinking of a long day six seven 8 nine hours in a day it is just mentally taxing and if you can break that up a lot of times that will help out your productivity thoughts on that yeah so the next habit kind of Builds on that so I like the idea of taking a break kind of pivoting during the day uh you know especially around that time of lunch because with this whole working from home thing that a lot of us do or even with side hustles we tend to skip things we tend to skip going to the gym we tend to skip lunch we try to Peck in as much work as as we can into our day to kind of you know beef up the bottom line there's some pros and cons to that but another good habit on top of what Rob was saying is one of the things I've kind of grown accustomed to over the years is try to learn one new thing a day so it's either learning a new piece of code learning a new architecture but every single day I spend about 15 minutes to half an hour looking at what's new is it something new with Java something you know what's in the latest release is it something with python um a lot of the things that recently I've been looking at is how to automate my tasks you know am I doing something repetitively that I can write a little application to streamline that hey hey I just got back five minutes a day well at the end of the week you know that's 25 minutes so these are other little habits that you can kind of build into your daily routine and now this could be your lunch break although really for lunch break try to do something that does distract you from your day job learning something new might do that but be careful because you don't want to be doing something too thought provocative and then you're you're kind of juggling between the to and you kind of get distracted or burned out and it's just something to be cautious of um I think it was Tim Ferris that said it you know don't try to read two major pieces of work at the same time cuz you're just going to confuse yourself or you're going to lose track of okay I'm going this route oh now I'm over here I'm going this and you then have to spend that mental capacity to get back on to where you were previously on the previous project so try to stack your tasks in a way that keeps you mentally moving forward not jumping around thoughts on that Rob yeah that makes a lot of sense and we've talked about the the cost of mentally Switching gears whether you're and this is something particularly if you if you're in a situation you're like a consultant or something or you've got a lot of projects that you're working on at a time it can be very taxing mentally taxing to switch gears switch gears switch gears switch gears so wherever you can wherever you can control those things those are you know the best ways to go is to is to try to batch that work just like you would anything else now we've got and we're just get start there's all kinds of little things that we do so we'll batch these up and come back in another episode probably further down the line to talk about some of our you our habits again hopefully you can bring up make some good habits like contacting us let us know what's your thoughts in particular send us what are some of the good or the bad habits we didn't even touch the bad ones um you what are some of them that you have experienced and that would be you know particularly that have been uh impactful for your career uh and maybe even your your general enjoyment of life because sometimes those two are very well inter intertwined you can shoot us an email at info developer.com if you would like to send us that way you can send us leave us comments out on the podcast or out on our YouTube site you can check out school. developer.com if you want to learn some more habits if you want to you learn some stuff out there if you want to spend a little time learning during your lunch break you can also check out developer.com if you want to there's all kinds of things from very short articles to rather long things presentations all kinds of different forms of content that can help you out whether you want to learn a little a lot check out our YouTube channel actually if you go to some of the older stuff we've got a whole bunch of 15 minutes a day kinds of Series where we just go in spend 10 15 minutes and work our way up to you know mastering python or working with the database or you know mastering SQL things like that these are all great resources love for to use them and for you to give us feedback and also leave us a for uh we've got a contact us form out on the site we've got Twitter SLX we've got Facebook you name it we're out there if we're not name it and we will get out there that's just that's how we are because we want to go out there and just try out all of those tools and platforms as well I think we've spent enough of your time today so hopefully this like worked perfect into your break during your day and now you can go back to work you know rejuvenated and ready to be super productive for the rest of your day but however it is go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you next time bonus material so first bonus material is so when I flipped my when I originally came up my background looked fine correct yeah so when you're in Zoom if you're looking at your image your background will be reversed because you're looking at a mirror and then when it goes out to The Stream you should see my background flipped correctly but when you look at it if you're looking at your monitor thing it shows it backwards right it's like a mirror so all right good because I thought that was what it was showing outside and I was like oh crap nobody's so good so little pointer for everybody that that's what Zoom does is I was sure what that was going to show uh as far as this is concerned so good good to know uh any bonus material you can think of like a a quick little habit maybe uh yeah uh so not work ated but it could be for your side hustle and that but batch your finances one of the biggest things I learned over the years was paying bills sucks it's a Time vacuum and unless you go out and actually combine it in such a way where you can push a button to pay all your bills at once or schedule them it's a Time suck so if you need to manage your bills and you know if you can't Auto aut schedu because you have to worry about when the bills come in and when they're due use programs like uh pay trust uh quick in and what a lot of those will do is a lot of companies you can set up to get online notifications or E statements and when those come in you can block out or basically put them into a certain folder and then when you pull it up there's all your bills and statements and everything typically you could you should be able to kind of batch them to maybe the 15th of the month and the 1 of the month or the 31st and then everything should be covered so if you aren't doing that I recommend doing that because the other thing that that helps you benefit is look at your savings slowly build in six months worth of savings and then you can if you then can start autopay those bills because then you have the money in the bank for six months so if something happens the bills will keep getting paid and you don't have to stress them that's a anywhere you can automate your life I think is going to be helpful uh yes with bills it could be a little bit of a pain because you're like oh wait I don't get especially if you don't if you got a a job where you have like a salary and you get paid the same amount every that was the best thing years and years ago I had salary every two weeks got the same check easy to figure out so I just sat down one weekend got it all set up autoaid it never looked at it again for like a couple years I would look at stuff occasionally just to make your weird charges didn't come through but basically it just all flowed those kinds of things very helpful I would say this goes actually to something we mentioned also in the um in the actual podcast section anywhere you find yourself doing something that you spend a lot of time on that's a perfect place for you to think about that during your like maybe your little daily break is it's like sit back during lunch and go what is something I would like to do less of or do more of and see if there's some ways that you can adjust you know maybe you can write a script maybe you can find a service maybe you can there's all these little things you can do and sometimes big things you can do to make those adjustments so for example if you're spending you know let's say you don't like yard work and you're spending four hours a week on your yard then maybe go find a lawn service because it may be worth your time to go spend you know whatever it is if it's 50 bucks to go get your yard done but during that time you could have earned a hundred bucks or more then it like it's better off for you to get that service so whatever your your problems are don't be afraid to like step back and think about is there a way that I can automate or eliminate this because your life will be happier for it so there's a couple little bonuses for you hopefully that has you know more than been a value for the value of the time that you have given us we'll wrap this one up and we'll come back around we're not done we're going to continue doing this definitely leave us you know feel free to leave comments out uh go ahead and subscribe and all that kind of fun stuff like us wherever the like buttons are and all that kind of stuff I don't even know if those count but whatever subscribe because then you're going to be able to get the updates trust like I do it it makes it so much nicer because then you're like oh yeah there's this cool topic that comes out and those kinds of things are are very useful to us particularly if we want to keep up with all the stinking content that comes at us that being said why don't you guys go out there and have yourself a great one and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
and we just hit record so welcome back
and we are figuring out talking through
what is our topic today because that's
how much ahead of the game we are uh you
threw a couple things out there let's
see habits good and bad share some of
our Dev Journey habits cutting the
Clutter sorry I'm moving stuff around on
my screens here when to walk away and
take a break oh those are all sort good
actually it's
funny clutter is something in my life
I'm going through right now because I've
got like some and daughter are moving
out in like the next few weeks and so
they're trying to figure out what
they're what they're taking with them
and what they're stay leaving here we're
doing the same to try to like just
simplify some crap and just you know get
things organized again so that's a
pretty good one but I sort of like
the just from a
general discussion point of view I think
habits good and bad would be a good
little like almost like a roundt kind of
thing as we'll just sort of like come up
with a couple of good habits talk
through them you know sort of bounce
that back and forth so I was like hey I
can throw one you can throw one we can
go back and forth yeah I thought that
was a good one because I know we've
talked about habits a little bit we
talked like best practices kind of
things and I thought this would be just
kind of a good one where we're at within
this series to kind of throw that one
out sounds good so that means that's
what we'll do uh once I get everything
situated a little bit here and hello and
welcome back we are continuing our
season we're talking about the developer
Journey this time around we are
Developer or we are focused on building
better developers I just realized that
my you don't see this on the audio but
my background is totally flipped because
that's one of those bonuses that you can
do on your video so I'm working on this
while I introduced myself my name is Rob
Broadhead and I am a founder of develop
anur and also a founder of RB Consulting
we do software development and solutions
providing our focus is on automation
integration and simplification so we go
out there and we find ways to basically
make you get help you get more out of
your technology investment you can also
invest a little time here as my co-host
Michael will introduce himself go for
it hey everyone my name is mikaeel Mage
I'm one of the co-founders of developing
Nur and I am the founder of Envision QA
so if you need any custom software built
where the people to come to or if you
need software assessments and one of our
key features is we also uh spend a lot
of time building quality tests
integration test system tests for
environments that don't have those or
for new
systems so this episode we're going to
look at habits good and bad we this like
a good part I think in the developer
Journey where we we've talked about more
focused on like getting started sort of
like early things and and some of it is
all so side hustles and things where
it's maybe where you're restarting or
you're you're stepping into a new phase
maybe not the beginning of your career
but it is a new Step you know a new
phase in your
career so here's a point where I think
it's not a bad idea to talk about and
particularly because right now it's sort
of mid year and stuff like that good and
bad habits so we'll just do a little bit
of some of the things that we've done
that have have impacted us um over you
know over time the first one I want to
the one I want to bring up first
is status reporting effect essentially
it's
communication when I started out it was
one of these things it was just a total
pain it was just every time I had to do
any sort of status it just stroke me
nuts it was like it took me out of my
groove and all of that kind of good
stuff however over time I found that
that is actually an incredibly good
habit to have if you look at the agile
approach and you look at Daily standups
even though
standup isn't really a status
report just the practice of on a daily
basis at least actually you know
definitely although I know we may do
weekly status but on a daily basis spend
a lot of time looking at what did you do
yesterday what are you g to do today and
then maybe some blockers or anything
like that which is very much I know
that's very much the standup approach
what you get done what are you going to
do What's blocking you but if you take
that from a a a status point of view and
you add a little context around that so
it's like what did I work on yesterday
oh yeah I worked on writing this
function that does this thing and here's
a couple of things that I went through
here's some this is why you know it took
me all day to do it here's the the good
and the bad of what I did yesterday sort
of like a a mini retrospective on what
you
did and then it's okay what am I going
to do today and this is excellent to do
if you've got like a little daily
planner if you've got a Blog there's
like all kinds of different ways to do
it whether you want to do old school
pencil and paper you want to do
something more modern and have like
maybe Evernote or something like that
where you've got u a digital record of
of what you're working
on I find it very it's very useful not
only at the end of the week or the end
of the month to go back and look at what
did I get done or if you're one of these
people that like you know maybe you've
been working for a while you know years
or two and now you're looking at a
different job you need to do a resume
update you may want to go back and look
at what are some of the things that I've
done but at more tactical type of
approach much like the getting things
done GTD approach of
knowing what is on my plate what is it
I'm going to tackle it's like a it's
that whole biblical idea of just like
focus on the problems for
today that's what it is what are my
problems today what is the problem I'm
going to solve today and it works very
well in a there's a lot of people
reference different ways to do it I
think the I don't remember if it's Tim
Ferris start was one of the first ones
but I think he stole it from somebody
else I don't know how far it goes back
but it's the idea of like picking you
know three maybe five things you're
going to get done today and the one that
you want to do the least make that the
first and maybe that's like I'm going to
get this done before I go to lunch or
something like
that doing that process doing that daily
status kind of thing and then
particularly if you can communicate that
either daily or weekly to your boss or
your customers it is amazing how much
that helps keep you focused on what's in
scope what's a priority what has changed
maybe and just generally keep yourself
each day being productive as opposed to
busy or spinning your wheels there's my
first one how about you what's why don't
you throw something out there so
actually I kind of wanted to tack on to
that a little bit and I'll kind of carry
on with that so
so that approach you just discussed is
very
useful however it can also be misused so
there are some you have to kind of be a
little uh restrictive with this process
so as you're doing it daily and that and
as you're writing down these tasks that
you're going to be working on you want
to make sure that you don't have a page
long list you know you don't want a list
that's G to keep you working till 11
o'clock at night you want to make sure
that while you're working on the things
that you need to do or the things you're
working on try to keep that list small
and concise that way you're not being
busy like Rob mentioned you're
constantly moving that needle forward
you're constantly getting that work done
on top of that I'd like to add on to
that a little bit so one of the habits
that I struggled with years ago that I
found very beneficial was partially what
you talked about there with the list
like taking the standup and doing the
weekly status I actually take it back a
little bit further and do daily status
or daily check list of things that I do
and it's actually funny I take a sheet
of paper and I fold it uh five or six
times basically to about the size of an
index card if I don't have index cards
handy and I try to write down no more
than four things that need to be done
that day now that doesn't include the
meetings that you typically have to go
to but this is stuff that you actually
work on that you have control over
try to keep that list small concise and
then you're going to find that if you do
that as you follow your daily statuses
and your weekly statuses those should
line up if they're not lining up then
why so now you can kind of do a like Rob
said a retrospective of yourself as to
okay why am I not getting what I say I
need to get done
done be careful with this approach
because a lot of people especially in
today's world of apps we like to get
things like little to-do apps or task
apps be careful with that you don't want
to scope creep Yourself by adding more
additional tasks that's why I used a
sheet of paper it's fixed I can only
write so many things on it and it keeps
me focused so that's kind of my first
habit um what do you think of that Rob I
think that it's a nice followup is that
it is and that goes back to like making
it uh bite-sized
chunks and it's you know so you what
you're doing today but it does help you
keep productive and that's thinking
about agile and the Sprint approach you
know let's say you've got you know you
got a two or three week Sprint you know
that there's things that you want to get
done during that Sprint maybe you
haven't pulled all of them out but you
want you these items need to be worked
on and I know this is going to take a
day this is going to take three days
things like
that when you have that which is sort of
a bonus is your uh your tasks plus an
estimate of what are those task going to
take then that really helps you be able
to assess okay I thought it was going to
take a day did I get it done in a day if
I didn't why not if I got it done faster
then why did I and those things may all
be there may be very valid reasons for
all of them but I think taking those
into account are going to help you
estimate in the future and also keep you
on track because it's it's very easy if
you get to the end of a day and you have
you know whatever it is three five even
just one item if that didn't get touched
then you know something went wrong you
knew you know your day went off the
rails now you may know your day went off
the rails anyways but there is this um
it's almost like it's just one of the
things it's almost like a a fallacy that
we have is that I know that I do it a
lot wife talks about it I know other
people I think I think this is everybody
runs into it where you have a day that
you felt like it went totally off the
rails but you realize you were
productive say you can look at your list
and you can say well crap I got
everything done on my list it felt like
the day got out of control but obviously
it didn't because I got things done and
so that's maybe to give yourself a
little you know pat on the back to say
hey I had a lot of interruptions or a
lot of things went off out of you know
out of order but I still got it done and
I think that's a key another habit that
uh you sort of touched on is when you're
done you're done is getting yourself in
that basically it's that Rhythm it's
it's like running a marathon if you set
a pace and you just like you know you
you can it's a little bit of a downhill
slope so you're just like you just
cranking and cranking cranking and then
it's an uphill slope and you're just
sort of walking and slogging your way
through it and you don't have a steady
Pace then the rise and fall is going to
blow you up when you're going to get to
the end you're going to be tired what
you want to be able to do is run solidly
all the way through and this is how
you're going to avoid burnout this is
how you're going to avoid U just not
getting you know not getting enough done
is make sure that you you look at your
schedule think about what are the hours
you're going to work in a day and try to
work towards that don't try to work
towards you know if it's a this is it
was easier when you went into an office
but even if you're in a you know a
remote situation is have office hours
and your goal should be that if you know
if you start your day at 8 and you have
an hourong lunch break and you end your
day at 5 then you should start your day
at 8 every day and you should try to end
your day at 5 every day if you get done
at 4:45 okay if you get done at three
then okay you can like pull something
in but getting yourself that this is
particularly in a in the remote world or
when you're you know when you've got
Flex schedules and stuff like that is
still find a schedule that works for you
and stick to that get yourself into the
rhythm of when you work and this goes
back to a lot of stuff we've talked
about in the past if you're a night owl
then maybe you do maybe you start your
day very late or maybe you it helps you
to split your day maybe you work from
9:00 to noon and then you work from you
know 9: to 2:00 a.m. or something like
that but that's another habit is getting
yourself into a a scheduled habit of
this is when I'm going to be on this is
when I'm going to be off your loved ones
even if it's only your dog will thank
you for it your thoughts
yeah so in addition to that I want to
touch on another good habit so if you
find yourself going through this process
and you find that you're doing those ups
and downs instead of that steady Pace
why are things taking so long or why are
things so hectic one way to help you
slow down is to use the uh promodo I
never say it right is it promoto promoto
Pomodoro Pomodoro uh use a Pomodoro
approach where you do small bits of work
in 20 minute or 30 minute segments
basically you time lock your work you
spend a certain amount of time and then
you walk away for a little bit then you
come back spend a little bit of time the
same amount of time work again it kind
of helps you set the pace of instead of
you constantly picking up the phone
checking email you time block things and
then by time blocking you basically can
batch your process is it's like oh I can
check all my emails twice a day and be
more productive than checking it 5
minutes every hour well okay instead of
checking it twice maybe 15 minutes
you've now spent maybe half an hour
checking your email in the day so using
this technique is another way to kind of
time block your tasks figure out why
you're taking so long to get things done
are you
distracted uh if you have an iPhone or a
Mac you can use the focus feature and
turn off all those nasty little
notifications you get that distract you
the other cool thing with the Macs and I
think even Android has it now but
there's a way to schedule your screen
time so you can actually lock out
certain apps from even being accessible
During certain time periods uh some of
these are like features for kids but
still you can use them as an adult to
keep yourself on task if you pick up
your phone and you try to access
something you shouldn't it'll block you
it won't work so it's another good habit
to try and get into to try and stay on
task what do you think of about you know
what are some of your thoughts on that
now that that actually brings to mind
something that I started uh almost from
scratch when I first started out and it
was because I I've had somebody's a
little senior to me and I I noticed one
day that I was talking to him and uh he
said you know
what like in the M it was like you know
early afternoon it's probably one or two
in the afternoon something like that
he's like I'm just I'm dying just I'll
you I'll be back in 10 minutes he's like
B I'm just going to put my head down on
my desk and take a nap for 10 minutes
just to power nap um that has evolved
into something although I do power nap
I'll do like my 10 15 minute naps during
the day and get like you know one in the
middle of the day to sort of Break Stuff
up more importantly what I found is a
middle of the day like it's normally
people have this thing called lunch
breaks and they will actually go away
and they'll do a lunch break and they'll
but if all you're doing you're just like
rushing to get food and back that may
not do it that may not get the benefit
and what I what I found that is much
better is to take that time and do
something different now it it may be and
it often is a part of your lunch break
so you can go grab something to eat but
read a magazine read a book if you're a
gamer like play a play a game for a
little bit if you're as a developer
sometimes it may be fun just to take
whatever your primary environment is and
do something else do your little side
hustle thing for a while particularly if
it's in a different environment like if
you're a if you're sitting in Windows
all day but you've got a little you know
Linux side project that you're working
on go there or if you're in net all day
then maybe you want to do a little Java
app or something like that it's it
depends on your makeup your mental and
physical makeup and more your mental I
guess makeup than anything but do
something that's a little bit of a
change of pace and it could be it really
is why wide open try and if I were you
I'd try all kinds of stuff whether it's
I said it could be like reading worked
really well for me for a while I was
building a I was doing a side project
and that was like I'd spend 30 minutes
in my lunch period just writing on that
um like you may do meditation you may do
just listening to music you may watch a
like watch a little TV show or something
depends on what you are and what your
day is like how that will help but it is
I found it incredibly useful to have
that break and to be able to then come
into your you know we'll call it your
second half of your day and it can be
you know sometimes it's grown so that's
it's like there's times when I would go
I'd go work out go for a walk for you
know 30 minutes or an hour or something
like that and I'd go get clean up and
grab some food and yeah I had a longer
lunch break but I'd start a little early
I'd work a little late and I was more
productive in those those splits of time
and that's my rhythm yours might be a
little different but I think it really
is if you start thinking of a long day
six seven 8 nine hours in a day it is
just mentally taxing and if you can
break that up a lot of times that will
help out your productivity thoughts on
that yeah so the next habit kind of
Builds on that so I like the idea of
taking a break kind of pivoting during
the day uh you know especially around
that time of lunch because with this
whole working from home thing that a lot
of us do or even with side hustles we
tend to skip things we tend to skip
going to the gym we tend to skip lunch
we try to Peck in as much work as as we
can into our day to kind of you know
beef up the bottom
line there's some pros and cons to that
but another good habit on top of what
Rob was saying is one of the things I've
kind of grown accustomed to over the
years is try to learn one new thing a
day so it's either learning a new piece
of code learning a new architecture but
every single day I spend about 15
minutes to half an hour looking at
what's new is it something new with Java
something you know what's in the latest
release is it something with python
um a lot of the things that recently
I've been looking at is how to automate
my tasks you know am I doing something
repetitively that I can write a little
application to streamline that hey hey I
just got back five minutes a day well at
the end of the week you know that's 25
minutes so these are other little habits
that you can kind of build into your
daily routine and now this could be your
lunch break although really for lunch
break try to do something that does
distract you from your day job learning
something new might do that but be
careful because you don't want to be
doing something too thought provocative
and then you're you're kind of juggling
between the to and you kind of get
distracted or burned out and it's just
something to be cautious of um I think
it was Tim Ferris that said it you know
don't try to read two major pieces of
work at the same time cuz you're just
going to confuse yourself or you're
going to lose track of okay I'm going
this route oh now I'm over here I'm
going this and you then have to spend
that mental capacity to get back on to
where you were previously on the
previous project so try to stack your
tasks in a way that keeps you mentally
moving forward not jumping around
thoughts on that Rob yeah that makes a
lot of sense and we've talked about the
the cost of mentally Switching gears
whether you're and this is something
particularly if you if you're in a
situation you're like a consultant or
something or you've got a lot of
projects that you're working on at a
time it can be very taxing mentally
taxing to switch gears switch gears
switch gears switch gears so wherever
you can wherever you can control those
things those are you know the best ways
to go is to is to try to batch that work
just like you would anything else now
we've got and we're just get start
there's all kinds of little things that
we do so we'll batch these up and come
back in another episode probably further
down the line to talk about some of our
you our habits again hopefully you can
bring up make some good habits like
contacting us let us know what's your
thoughts in particular send us what are
some of the good or the bad habits we
didn't even touch the bad ones um you
what are some of them that you have
experienced and that would be you know
particularly that have been uh impactful
for your career uh and maybe even your
your general enjoyment of life because
sometimes those two are very well inter
intertwined
you can shoot us an email at info
developer.com if you would like to send
us that way you can send us leave us
comments out on the podcast or out on
our YouTube site you can check out
school. developer.com if you want to
learn some more habits if you want to
you learn some stuff out there if you
want to spend a little time learning
during your lunch break you can also
check out developer.com if you want to
there's all kinds of things from very
short articles to rather long things
presentations all kinds of different
forms of content that can help you out
whether you want to learn a little a lot
check out our YouTube channel actually
if you go to some of the older stuff
we've got a whole bunch of 15 minutes a
day kinds of Series where we just go in
spend 10 15 minutes and work our way up
to you know mastering python or working
with the database or you know mastering
SQL things like that these are all great
resources love for to use them and for
you to give us feedback and also leave
us a for uh we've got a contact us form
out on the site we've got Twitter SLX
we've got Facebook you name it we're out
there if we're not name it and we will
get out there that's just that's how we
are because we want to go out there and
just try out all of those tools and
platforms as well I think we've spent
enough of your time today so hopefully
this like worked perfect into your break
during your day and now you can go back
to work you know rejuvenated and ready
to be super productive for the rest of
your day but however it is go out there
and have yourself a great day a great
week and we will talk to you next
time bonus material so first bonus
material is so when I flipped my when I
originally came up my background looked
fine
correct yeah
so when you're in Zoom if you're looking
at your image your background will be
reversed because you're looking at a
mirror and then when it goes out to The
Stream you should see my background
flipped
correctly but when you look at it if
you're looking at your monitor thing it
shows it backwards right it's like a
mirror so all right good because I
thought that was what it was showing
outside and I was like oh crap
nobody's so good so little pointer for
everybody that that's what Zoom does is
I was sure what that was going to show
uh as far as this is concerned so good
good to
know uh any bonus material you can think
of like a a quick little habit
maybe
uh yeah uh so not work ated but it could
be for your side hustle and that but
batch your
finances one of the biggest things I
learned over the years was paying bills
sucks it's a Time vacuum and unless you
go out and actually combine it in such a
way where you can push a button to pay
all your bills at once or schedule them
it's a Time suck so if you need to
manage your bills and you know if you
can't Auto aut schedu because you have
to worry about when the bills come in
and when they're due use programs like
uh pay trust uh quick in and what a lot
of those will do is a lot of companies
you can set up to get online
notifications or E statements and when
those come in you can block out or
basically put them into a certain folder
and then when you pull it up there's all
your bills and statements and everything
typically you could you should be able
to kind of batch them to maybe the 15th
of the month and the 1 of the month or
the 31st and then everything should be
covered so if you aren't doing that I
recommend doing that because the other
thing that that helps you benefit is
look at your savings slowly build in six
months worth of savings and then you can
if you then can start
autopay those bills because then you
have the money in the bank for six
months so if something happens the bills
will keep getting paid and you don't
have to stress them
that's a anywhere you can automate your
life I think is going to be helpful uh
yes with bills it could be a little bit
of a pain because you're like oh wait I
don't get especially if you don't if you
got a a job where you have like a salary
and you get paid the same amount every
that was the best thing years and years
ago I had salary every two weeks got the
same check easy to figure out so I just
sat down one weekend got it all set up
autoaid it never looked at it again for
like a couple years I would look at
stuff occasionally just to make your
weird charges didn't come through but
basically it just all flowed those kinds
of things very
helpful I would say this goes actually
to something we mentioned also in the um
in the actual podcast section anywhere
you find yourself doing something that
you spend a lot of time on that's a
perfect place for you to think about
that during your like maybe your little
daily break is it's like sit back during
lunch and go what is something I would
like to do less of or do more of and see
if there's some ways that you can adjust
you know maybe you can write a script
maybe you can find a service maybe you
can there's all these little things you
can do and sometimes big things you can
do to make those adjustments so for
example if you're spending you know
let's say you don't like yard work and
you're spending four hours a week on
your yard then maybe go find a lawn
service because it may be worth your
time to go spend you know whatever it is
if it's 50 bucks to go get your yard
done but during that time you could have
earned a hundred bucks or more then it
like it's better off for you to get that
service so whatever your your problems
are don't be afraid to like step back
and think about is there a way that I
can automate or eliminate this because
your life will be happier for it so
there's a couple little bonuses for you
hopefully that has you know more than
been a value for the value of the time
that you have given us we'll wrap this
one up and we'll come back around we're
not done we're going to continue doing
this definitely leave us you know feel
free to leave comments out uh go ahead
and subscribe and all that kind of fun
stuff like us wherever the like buttons
are and all that kind of stuff I don't
even know if those count but whatever
subscribe because then you're going to
be able to get the updates trust like I
do it it makes it so much nicer because
then you're like oh yeah there's this
cool topic that comes out and those
kinds of things are are very useful to
us particularly if we want to keep up
with all the stinking content that comes
at us that being said why don't you guys
go out there and have yourself a great
one and we will talk to you next time
[Music]