Detailed Notes
Are you busy all day but still feel stuck?
In this Building Better Developers Friday Challenge, we reflect on our conversation with executive coach Andrew Hinkelman and explore why developers often struggle with focus, burnout, and direction — even when they’re working hard.
We discuss: • Why personal growth and professional growth are connected • How scope creep disguises itself as productivity • When you should solve a problem vs outsource it • The real purpose of coaching • A simple weekly exercise to regain forward motion
Then we give you a challenge you can try this week to break through something that’s been blocking you.
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🧠 The Friday Challenge 1. List 3 ongoing problems bothering you 2. Decide: learn it, outsource it, or you’re stuck 3. Pick ONE stuck item and get outside input
Talk to someone. Ask a mentor. Email someone. Just don’t stay stuck alone.
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👤 About Andrew Hinkelman
Andrew Hinkelman is a certified executive coach and former CTO who helps tech leaders strengthen leadership, communication, and decision-making skills.
After experiencing burnout in his own leadership journey, he now focuses on helping developers and technical leaders build clarity, trust, and sustainable growth — professionally and personally.
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Transcript Text
See, can you hear me? Okay, good. Am I Yes, you should be able to hear me. I'm assuming you can. No, you cannot. >> Can you hear me? >> I can hear you, but you can't hear me, can you? >> Now I can. >> Okay, >> but you're awfully low. >> Let's see. Is that any better? Uh, >> let me try this. Uh, >> let's see. Uh, I want I don't want that. I want that. Let me go to settings. Um, input volume is all the way up. Are you not hearing it? >> Yeah, you're muffled. Let me put my headphones on. Hang on. I don't know if it's my laptop speakers or if it's just I'm losing my hearing. Um, >> could be a little of both. If it's like me, it's probably a little of both. >> Okay, try again. >> Can you hear me now? Is that any better? >> You're still coming through. That's a AirPod. All right. Right now. Oh, okay. Yeah. Now, >> can you hear me now? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, it must be my speakers. All right. Let me fix my light. That is not right. Sorry about that. >> That's all right. I'm having to do the same. I'm sort of like adjusting a few things here. >> See if I did that. Not bad. I've got way too much light over there, but that's okay. >> Does that look better or >> What was that? >> Is that better or that? >> Uh, second one. Not that one. >> That one. >> That one's better. I think the other one you've like wash out a little bit. >> Yeah, my lighting's not great. Let me >> Yeah, you got a little Walking Dead thing going when you do that. That's a little better. I'm at home today, so the lighting's not quite if I face the window. That's fine. I may have to redo my office. Anyway, um yeah, so this one is uh Andrew Hingleman. >> Yep. >> The coach. So hitting record here. Um so we are doing something new for you guys are listening in the uh YouTube world. Um or actually I guess also watching is we're going to add another episode each week. So this is going to be our Friday challenge. Uh this is a new thing we talked about. We want we really enjoy the challenges. We like giving them to you guys and throwing those out there. We think it's something that does very much help uh build better developers. And so what we're going to do is uh this will be our first one. We're going to talk about what has come out, what you have listened to this week and uh give a little bit of thoughts on that and then have a challenge related to that. Uh so we will dive in or we're going to do this entirely YouTube, right? I think we decided we're going to keep this all YouTube. So even better. So we don't have to do like you don't have to listen to the normal crap or anything like that. Um although we'll probably do a little bit of the normal crap. We'll do it like a little differently. Um I think we will. I think we'll just like I'm I'm gonna wing it because that's what I do best is improv. Uh Second City and all you guys The theater. Yeah. Props out to you guys. Um so we're going to wing it this time and have sort of an intro and then dive right into it. Uh this week, if I haven't already mentioned, we talked to Andrew Hlelman. We talked about coaching. Um, I am pulling up our little summary, which AI is so awesome at doing for us while my wife puts her ears in so she doesn't have to listen to us. And there we go. Let's see. I do want to like focus my eyes a little more up on you and just sort of like we'll just sort of cover like things today. I think we would follow my lead. Um, so, uh, Andrew Hinkleman. Yeah. So, we talked about uh really some good stuff in here with coaching and that is where we're going to get into it a little bit like some little like our thoughts on each of each of our thoughts and then we'll get to the challenge. So, uh we will dive right in. As always, I'm just going to start by introducing myself. I'm Rob Broadhead, one of the founders of Developer. If you haven't figured that out yet, look up there somewhere where we've got like lots of stuff from us or out on these these different places over here where you're going to find all kinds of links to tons and tons of content. I'm also the founder of RB Consulting and uh I think I'll go with like my business. This would be sort of our thing. Is it a good thing bad thing? Let's do like a business uh learn thing recommendation that I got this week. Um I was actually sitting in I'll give one that's a little different. I was sitting in a networking mastermind kind of thing and one of the things they talked about they went through this time was uh finances just spent an hour basically talking about what you should do as a business owner. And I think that this is something I want to throw out there to everybody is regardless of what time of the year it is, unless you've just done it like in the last, you know, quarter probably, if it's even been more than three or four months, sit down and just do a quick, you know, 15 maybe 20 minutes top assessment of like your business, your side hustle, the the financials of it. And by this, I mean like do you know what what's what's coming in? What is your what's what are the revenue streams coming in? what's coming in, what's going out. Are you taking care of the things you need to care of along the way? Have you are you caught up on like insurance if you're dealing with insurance? Have you are you caught up on tax payments if you're supposed to do quarterly tax payments or something along those lines? Have you have you recently looked at uh benefits that you may be able to take? U look for like tax deductions for your kinds of business. uh if you're in software development, depending on how you're set up, look into the software development or the I think it's called the may software develop, but it's the research uh tax benefits that you can get out of it. I've got a customer that is saving uh thousands and thousands of dollars each year with part of what we're doing because he's using this uh tax write off. So, take a look at that. We're not tax accountants by any means or anything like that, but I think that's a was a good little reminder. It's like everything else, every part of your business you should check into on a regular basis. And I'm going to check in with my co-host right now so he can introduce himself. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malsh. Um, also one of the co- founders of developer. Um, I'm also the founder of Invision QA where we help people uh build software, write tests, and improve their business. Uh, let's see. So business focus of the week uh not the challenge, right? or >> correct. >> Okay, I'm we're winging this guys, so bear with us. >> Uh so I guess this week was So this is coming out uh in February. So for those of you trying to follow the videos, these are coming out after we've recorded them. But we've recently had a nasty ice storm here. So getting back out and talking to people and reworking uh has been kind of my goal this week and talking to people and one of the biggest challenges a lot of I'm hearing from a lot of people is the impact to the business because of the storms. Even if you're remote, you lose that face-to-face customer >> uh experience and it can be demoralizing. uh a lot of people were really struggling to try and get through that rough time and now we're kind of in the aftermath of that trying to rebuild I guess or get back to normal. And uh that was kind of this week talking to people trying to reconnect and get things moving again. But to your point though about the finance thing, it's kind of interesting you uh mentioned that because I do it about once a month. I have it budgeted to where I do all my finances, both personal and business, once a month. And tools can be very helpful for that. So, if you have like accounting tools like Quickbooks or Wave Apps, things like that, look at the tools because the tools generally have some type of graph or some type of monitor to give you an indicator of how you're doing. If you're still doing spreadsheets, that's fine, but make sure you have some graphing or some indicator that highlights when things aren't uh on par. When you're like a little more in the red or a little more in the black, give yourself some indicators. Uh Excel is great. You can write some quick uh formulas for that and it'll pop for you. So, don't just rely on numbers themselves. Give yourself some visuals so you can quickly look at like a dashboard and make your life easy. So, diving into uh our guest for this week, uh Andrew Hlelman. Oh, well, before we even jump into this, I want to throw something out to you guys for feedback. Uh one of the things we've talked about is doing a like maybe a monthly roundt where we may gap grab a couple of our guests uh or some other ones and just have a a discussion. Uh and we're sort of throwing some ideas around. I want to see if that would be something that would appeal to you guys. It' probably be on YouTube. I don't know if we would do it on uh the podcast as well, but we'll throw it out to them. Uh the listeners, the the non-viewers, uh the ones that actually still can see because their eyes haven't melted looking at our ugly faces. And uh we'll see where that goes. But we're just like we're always looking for uh new ways that we can help you guys out and then maybe take more advantage of some of the people that we've talked to. Uh back to now. Uh Andrew Hleman, we he's a coach. Um and one of the things that he like he focused is it was um professional and personal development being very much tied together which I think is something that is that to me that was something that very much resonates with the developure point of view. If you go read the uh the book, the the developer orb software uh book as I actually just got from uh one of our other past uh guests that he said, "Yep, he read through it. He's got some great questions and some comments around it." And uh so uh I do recommend it. It'll probably get updated at some point because it's now a couple years old and AI and some of these things have changed. But um more than happy to uh field questions around that about like how has this changed in the last you know the few years since it's been since that uh actually now several years since that book was uh actually originally published and I think that was one of the things I really got out of it that I like that as a his approach to a coach is much more down to earth was more grounded was more of a like this is a this is a whole you know holistic whole person coaching approach that he took. Uh I will add a caveat to this uh before I toss it over Michael is that coaches are coaches can be very useful to you and we'll talk about this a little bit in the the challenge I think but uh they can also be very very expensive and by expenses I'm not talking like hundreds of dollars or even sometimes thousands of dollars. It literally a lot of them it's going to be you know probably lowend you're probably talking 15 to $20,000 to spend a few months with a coach. Uh some of them are that much per month. Uh and if you find if you go listen to like some of the big people that are out there. Um trying to think a few of them. I think Smart Passive Income I think he used a coach uh for a couple years that really helped him out. Um I'm trying to think a few others that I've mentioned. I can't I think John Lee Dumis I think of uh Entrepreneurs on Fire. I think he had a really good coach. if you if you go back into some of their their material, you can hear about their experiences and that maybe will help you out, give you a little better idea of like what it would be like or what the potential is if you work with a coach. Um, the rest of it I'll say for the challenge and I'll get what are your thoughts on our conversation with Andrew. >> So, first I've never really talked to a coach before, so this was kind of an interesting conversation we had with Andrew. Uh it was interesting because a lot of the points he touched on initially at the beginning were a lot of things you and I have talked about a lot like eating the frog trying to uh limit our task as creep um you know focus on you know you know those primary tasks but the thing that uh I found illuminating was as we got into the conversation he talked about doing those like emotional intensity testing to try to figure out where you're at uh with your emotions where your focus is. And I'm actually trying to find one of those um that kind of makes sense for me because um I actually went to a networking meeting here recently that talked about doing the same thing that that's what their business plan does. They come in, they do that first. And then the other things that as we're talking Andrew that kind of hit home was we started talking about like the burnout, you know, when we're losing focus, when we're drained. I like some of the tips he threw out. Uh, you know, like he mentioned, uh, Brian Tracy, you know, eating the frog like you've constantly mentioned, but then setting keystone goals. Uh, but then really to look at yourself and he talked about pausing, you know, trust yourself. You know what you need to do. You know what the problem is. You don't need to be going out and searching unless it's a problem you don't have a solution to. You do need to do some research, but trust yourself. Get out of your head and really try to identify what it is that you really need to be doing, not just doing the busy work. Because when we're going through the weekend, you're working mornings to evenings and it just feels like you're not moving. you know, the bar is not moving, things aren't getting done. Are you really working on the right things or are you working on things that are needed but not the important things? Like those are lower priority. You can move those to the end of the line and change your pri focus priorities. So, those were things that really resonated with me because, you know, I've been going through a lot of different projects. I've been working, you know, burning the midnight oil for almost two years now. And it it's hard because, you know, we reach those points where we lose that self-awareness. We could lose that energy and we are driving, but we're not hitting the destination. We're just kind of endlessly going around the the loop and we just can't figure out how to find the exit. And that's uh that goes very much to uh a conversation I had with with AI few months ago now and was just looking at a lot of stuff and I was building some things out and I was I was sort of assessing where did I want to go next and ended up actually built my own little time tracking app that now like most of my stuff that are my own has grown a good deal. Uh, but it's now it's like I have a time tracking app that's just straight up uh, you know, pretty easy to use for me. Uh, it has a lot of information. Uh, shoot me an email robbs.com or info@ developer.com. Either of those if you want to if you want a copy of it. It's just a Django app. Uh, simple mysql database. I can give you all the stuff. You can do whatever you want with it. Uh, but basically I just I put my time in. I have statuses of just very simple like am I doing it? Is it is it sitting there? Am I is it in progress? isn't done. I track hours. I have uh what is called assets basically which this has really helped me and I think is really good from a doing the right thing is that it has assets that are basically like if I'm doing a product if I'm doing uh if I've got a task I either it's either a one-time thing that I've got to do it's repeatable that I need to be like working on a script or an automation or something to automate that eventually or it's extractable and there's some sort of asset like a website or a document or a template or something that I'm building out of that. And this really helps me because what I can do is I get part of this is I've got KPIs. I've got all these reports that are based on uh that are based on like what work did I do in the business on the business, what was overhead, and then what did I do on my assets? Where have I been working on those this week and in prior weeks? And it makes a big difference because it now has me much more focused on doing stuff related to an an asset, doing stuff related to an outcome. So it very much is a why focus for your task. It's like okay you're doing this well why are you doing it? Is it moving the ball forward? And even though I'm currently just like each day I sort of throw together tasks for the next day. But even when I'm looking at that uh and as I'm just yeah it's takes a little bit of time. It takes extra few minutes a day to enter my time and stuff like that. But also looking at how I did each day I get to see like where did I go off the rails? And some of it is okay because it's something where I thought I was going to spend an hour or two, but I ended up spending four hours building out this, you know, great thing. But it it gives us um to me it really does it gives you that focus. It's sort of like the short answer I think for anybody that doesn't want any complex tool is sit down with your to-do list at the beginning of the week is just write down like you know maybe three to five things that you want progress on and then not just like a checklist but like what does progress look like for that for this week and then as you're going through the week make sure that you are moving towards those goals. You can do that on any any stop during the day during the week you can just be like is this moving the ball forward on the goals that I need to and if it's not then adjust and I think that especially these days is one of the biggest things to to overcome. Now I don't want to go too long so but I will let you do you have any thoughts on that before we jump into the uh the challenge? Yeah, the one thing I kind of want to bounce off of you based on that. Uh, you know, because you've shared the to-do list. I've loaded it up. I just have not unfortunately had enough bandwidth to spend too much time digging into it. And it sounds like I really need to carve out. That needs to be one of the things I kind of move up in the priorities a little bit to hopefully um reset things a little. But talking about, you know, getting stuck or, you know, spending too much time on things, how do you identify even with your to-do task? This is just kind of following up with what your example there is, when you're spending four or five hours and you're looking at what you need to do. And what you need to do may seem simple. It may be like a small task, but it is taking longer than expected. How are you identifying when it's scope creep, when it's you're not quite focusing on the right thing, or is it the problem itself? Well, the first one for scope creep is it's usually for me that's pretty um because the way I've gotten that I do stuff is it it gets pretty easy pretty quick to figure out if it's if I'm if it's scope creep and it's sometimes it's by design. There's a lot of stuff that I will put in and be like, "Okay, I'm going to go through this." And I get back to it later and it's like, "Well, what does this really look like?" And as I'm doing it, I realize, you know what? This needs to be I need to apply this differently than I thought. I'll give you a simple example is um I had like I'm building out I'm doing a lot of working on the business and one of the things I did was build um let's just talk about this just a little bit ago I was building these micro proofs because normally on a site you're going to have these proofs especially if it's a you know you've got your call to action you've got this this is why this is good this is why you should do it and what I've basically done is I've taken projects that I've done and work that we've done and turned them into these micro proofs of basically like we do this or we you know we had this problem this is how we solved it this is what the outcome was so it's a nice simple thing and I started out originally it was just going to be like bang bang bang like three little oneliners and as I started working on it and I started to build those out I realized that no it made more sense as being almost like a an emblem or a badge or something like that that I could do a little bit more with it and the next thing I did knew I was like I had built out you know a dozen pages each one with this micro proof and I've got some images and I've you know cleaned it up and put a little stuff in there and call to actions and stuff. And so it's something that I can snapshot. I can use a lot of different ways. And it took me what was going to take me 15 minutes. I'm like not done with it yet because it grows a little bit as I'm going through it. But I'm probably going to be three or four hours into it. But to me, I was thinking about this like, do I really want to go down this? What is the end result? When I started going into that and I started saying, well, I could do this and this and this. The first thing I did was after I was like, well, I could do all this is I step back say like, is that valuable to me? What does that look like when it's done and is that something I want to have? So, that's part of like I think addressing scope creep. But the other thing is is when you're it goes back to like it is it goes back to your why. It goes back to your requirements. It goes back to what does success look like or what does forward motion look like this week? If you're working on something and it doesn't look like forward motion and I'll give you a great one that is a hard one to get into is like I have I for work for customers I have a lot of stuff where I'm working on something and I'm looking in there I'm messing with the page or messing with some logic and I see something that is either I could make this you know better looking I can make it more user friendly I could make it faster I can make it you know more efficient something like that and those those may have value. They may not, but that's the first thing I'm going to do is like, okay, while I'm in there, what's the cost? Is this just going to take me like a minute, which has its own problems. Is this going to just take me a minute or is this something that I'm going to sp I'm that you know has some value that's going to take some time. Always assume it's going to take some time. So then it's like assume the minute is actually going to take an hour and then does that if what can I do in that hour or what can I do in that extra day? Is that really going to move the ball forward? And if it's not moving the ball forward for what I need right now, even though it could be prettier, it could be faster, it could be all of these good things. If that's not on your current focus, then create a ticket, make a note, whatever you do, backlog it and you can come back to it later. I know there's a cost of coming back and all that kind of stuff, but it's usually unless it literally is just like you see it, it's a typo or something that's a super simple fix or it's something that could cause problems later that you can't really like it's faster to do it right now than it is to write yourself a ticket and then try to remember how to track it later. Then I would say go ahead and and dive into it. Otherwise, punt it. Um, you know, take care of it. But it's like there's a lot of other thoughts that could go in that that could be a couple episodes in itself probably. It's like when if you're truly of the developer mindset is when do you move and when do you you know when do you punt, when do you fish, when do you cut bait as far as all of the stuff that you can do? And this is a this is a daily thing for me because I have so many things I can get done. I have so many ideas and so many directions I can go. I have to like find ways to time box them. just put something in and say, "Okay, I'm going to give myself 15 minutes and if that's up, then okay, that's that's the time I've put into it." >> Yeah, that's I guess kind of the hard thing for me because it's like I've got so many things that still need to be done and it's like the one thing I'm working on making forward progress on, but it's just taking so long is I have a form and I've got some annoying little fields that are on the form that aren't lining up. like they aren't mapped correctly and figuring that out. It's like, oh yeah, it'll take a couple has taken a couple hours to get it all figured out and I know and it feels like I'm not like I'm not it's like am I spending the time wisely? You know, it am I doing this right? Am I still moving forward? It's just frustrating because you have to find it. it. It's just so forums are not fun um to begin with, but it's one of those where it's like I've time boxed it, >> but the time box has gotten bigger just because the the minutia of the stupid form is just a pain. Um so it's just one of those where things are moving forward, but it's hard not to feel defeated because it's taking a lot longer than it feels like it really should have taken. Mapping fields is the most tedious and painful thing in almost every project. I I I don't know how many times I've dealt with integrations and migrations and updates and all that kind of stuff. And anytime where you're moving data from point A to point B, u if you don't get the mappings right and you're having to like guess them or something like that, it can be very very tedious and very very uh timeconuming and you just have to be sort of ready for it. I will say that I have found um if you can phrase the problem right I found AI to be very helpful with that but it very much means that which is probably a good thing is it really forces you to ensure that your input is clean and well defined and your output is clean and well defined so it can so you can say this isn't matching to that and it can help you find it but you have to be able to you have to have enough knowledge about it going into it to be able to do so um a second set of eyes sometimes times will help as well. And that's sort of what AI just gives you is it's like, okay, look at these. Why are these not matching up? And sometimes it's a um you know, it's like a a typo or it's like you you use a underscore in the name here, but you don't use it here. Um I use those a lot for some of those kinds of bugs. That brings us to >> Oops. I was just going to say AI actually did indicate that it was named something, but it was not named what the field was. >> Well, you got to watch that. It'll like it'll false suggest stuff sometimes. It's like I want to help and >> it it found it. >> It's just the field itself on the form was not identified as what the field on the form was. >> Yeah, you got to be consistent there, too. You got to watch out for that kind of stuff. I got bit by that the other day where I had a typo and I had moved something and I was like, why why is this broken everywhere? And I finally looked at and it never AI never caught it. I was looking at I was like, oh, this thing is grabbing the wrong value here. It's a bad mapping. and it just propagated. That's also why you got to watch out if you automate AI that kind of stuff. If you've got a broken process, it'll give you more broken results at the end. Challenge is back to the coaching thing because we have drifted a little. Um I think the challenge of the week is to and this is this goes a little into some of the conversations he had is when we were talking about like how do you decide if you want a coach? How do you find a coach that's a fit for you? The challenge I throw out there is spend a little time and think about what are the things that are bugging you. What are the problems that have been dogging you for a while? And it may be it may be technical, it may be business, it may be personal, whatever it is. It's like what are the things that have just been on your mind for a while? And for a while is very much up to you. It may be weeks, it may be months, it could be years. Um get yourself at least three that are like ongoing problems. And then with those, is it is it something that you are working through? So, it's a problem, but you've like you've you've got a path forward and you're working your way through it. Um, is it something that you need to solve? This is really important with coaches. Like I I talked to a coach that wanted to do, we talked about uh lead generation. And the more I thought about it, I was like, I don't need to learn how to do lead generation. I can go hire somebody to do that. That is not something that is a good use of my time. So, is this something that you need to solve? That is valuable to you that it furthers your business or your career for you to know that? Because if not, then don't worry about it. You can hire somebody at some point or something like that. Outsource it. And then finally, is it something where you're stuck, where you don't know the way forward? If it's something where you don't know the way forward, that's where you may want to look at a coach, talk to some, you know, talk to a friend, do something. And that's I think where I want to go with the challenge is the actual challenge is find a thing. Find just one thing where you're stuck and spend a little time on it this week. Doesn't matter like like I said, talk to your friend, talk to your parents, talk to your kids, talk to your dog. If your dog will talk back, you need something there. Um, you know, shoot us an email, shoot other people an email. Whatever it is, is just like try to reach out to somebody else and see what happens. see if you get some good advice and potentially even, you know, maybe go search for like do a Google search or something like for coaches on that topic or that solve that problem or maybe even counselors that solve that problem and, you know, maybe you can make a little advance thoughts on that as a the challenge. >> Yeah. And while you're going through that, um, as I mentioned before, like Andrew said, you know, before you really get into that, take a second, pause, you know, really look at yourself, you know, trust yourself before you just start going willingly. It's like, oh my god, everything's wrong and you're just going to AI or certain things. One of the biggest issues, as Andrew mentioned, with AI, is you're gonna get a lot of affirmatives, like you're doing everything right. That's not necessarily true. So, take a pause before you go too crazy with AI or some of these searches and really try to identify what the issue is and then um start looking for those coaches. >> Yeah. with coaches or anybody like that like I will give an example that we had a we had a coach for dancing uh an instructor that was very positive was like you're great you're awesome you're beautiful that was the best ever blah blah blah and we even told her we said like don't that's not what we want we need to know where we're broken so we can fix it and we ended up moving on to another coach and she loved the idea the first thing we said was like if it's broke we want you to fix this we don't want you to tell us how awesome we are we want you to tell us how bad we are because we know there's a lot to learn. And I think that is key for any of these kinds of things is like whether it's a coach, whether it's a mentor, whether whatever it is is say like where am I going wrong? Where can I do better in this? Because if they say, "No, you're great. You're awesome." Then they're useless to you. They need to be able to give you actionable advice as far as what you can do better. And when you're looking like find somebody that's done it if you can find somebody that you look up to that you know that has done it that is going through it. Even if they haven't solved it then maybe they can at least help you with some ideas of how they you know how you will not need to go about solving it. Uh closing thoughts as we do this uh first episode of our you know of of whatever the heck the Friday I don't know the reality piece or something like that. Friday uh Friday challenge. We'll call it that. Or or we'll get a better name. We'll use AI to like market it up and make a better name for it. Here, let me I'll do that while Michael's while Michael's thinking about it. So, yeah, we had talked about doing this and I kind of like it. you know, it gets us back into kind of uh us kind of going doing the review of the episodes, giving our experiences, and uh I love the challenge ideas because it not only is a challenge for you guys as the listeners, but it's also challenges for us. It it kind of makes us stop and be like, "Oh, am I doing this right?" You know, uh do I need to reflect and do I need to do this challenge? Um because you know we're all growing. We're all learning. And I see Rob laughing over there. So I guess AI came back with something else. But yeah, it's self-improvement, self-help are things that everyone needs. Even if you don't think you need it or it's like, "Oh, this isn't for me." You still need to reflect. You still need to grow. And the only way to grow is through reflection. And you want this goes back. You've you've got to take a step back. You will never do that when you are down in the weeds. When you are like just go you I've and you'll deny it. I know because I have at times where I'm like ah no I'm fine. I like I'm not down in the weeds and I finally take a breath and I'm like I was down in the weeds. I missed something. So this goes to exactly what it is. It's like so this was AI and this tells you this exactly what we're talking about. Sometimes it's too positive. So I asked it give me some names. And the first thing I said, love this concept. It fits developer per perfectly practical, reflective, and forward moving. It's like fine. I'm really I'm really tempted to tell uh tell AI to be like stop being positive. Be more negative and challenging. But anyways, so it could be uh here's some of the names just to throw these out and we'll think about it. The developer weekly challenge. That's pretty easy. developer ship it Saturday which is an interesting little thing. Uh the weekly builder challenge one improvement the 1% build. Oh this is that's an interesting little concept for us to go with uh the execution sprint. Uh reflect build reflect improve the weekly reality check the builder which I'll just say that actually he stole that because we have a tech reality check at RB Consulting that we're using. So, he even said this would be aligned with the RB thing. Uh, the builder debrief, which is interesting. Uh, the dev momentum show, very good for this season. Uh, build week, the dev challenge loop, my top three for Rob specifically, it said. I don't know why. Specifically for me, uh, one improvement, the builder debrief, or build week. And he even says, I'm assume it's a he. I'm sorry. I gendered our my AI because I call him Chip. Um, if this is 10 to 15 minutes, a weekly recap, and ends with a clear challenge, then one improvement is very strong. It aligns with our newsletter that went out, uh, which if you haven't subscribed, I don't know if we even I don't know if we have that. Subscribe to our newsletter. Go out to developor.com, subscribe. We're actually starting to put a lot of really good information in this. I say that honestly as somebody who's been doing the newsletter for years, and I'm really enjoying what's being, you know, the research and putting some stuff into the newsletters. I'm enjoying reading them. these days. So hopefully check that out. Um it comes out once a month and it's a you know nice easy one for you. Uh and then it gives me a lot of other stuff. So I think that's that's a good thing. We'll think about it. Maybe we'll give it like a nice title and a maybe it'll give us like a nice cool image that we can use and stuff like that that um just like everybody else that's like you know burning through all of these cycles and resources by generating cool pictures of themselves which I was really against until I started having it generate some like generic stuff for me and I'm like oh that's actually not bad. I guess I'll use it but I use it professionally and for business not just okay not always just for just for myself. parting thoughts before we wrap this one up. >> Uh, I'm gonna have to muddle through that list because that gave me a bunch of ideas. I My mind's like going many different directions there. I I like it. Um, I'll pick one and I'll throw it out there as the title and we'll play around with it for a while. I I this is just a great example of how AI can help you, but it can also uh send you down rabbit holes that >> Yes, >> this is where time management does uh is important because you could uh get yourself in trouble just by throwing an idea at AI and then next thing you know you're kind of not doom scrolling but you're AI scrolling because you're like just going crazy with AI. Yeah, it's uh AI needs guard rails for what it tells you, for what you're asking it, for where it goes, and you need guardrails and using it so you don't end up effectively doom scrolling or uh creating, you know, 15,000 new products and and things like that because you sort of can. Um, but that being said, we're going to wrap this one up. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. I don't know this always going to be this long. We've gone a little we've we've rambled a little, but we'll see how this goes. Uh feedback would be awesome for this. Um we don't have all our normal stuff. So, as always, like leave us comments, shoot us an email, [email protected]. Uh you can go out to the developer.com site. There's a contact us form. Feel free to use that. Uh check out if you haven't been there in a while. We have totally revamped that as of the beginning of the year. So, developer site is very new, very different, and uh got a lot of new features and stuff like that. It's It should be a lot easier for you to navigate. Uh we're always and we even have somewhere. Uh we have uh a link to it. All of the episodes. You can see all of the episodes, all of the seasons, everything out there. And then there's links to it. I think the links all work. I haven't like gone all the way back, but I think all the links at least get you to the uh the blog page for that podcast. So it you can actually see all nearing a thousand episodes of the podcast. And at some point coming soon, we're going to try to do that with uh the YouTube site as well as get some navigation through that because we are now I think we are over 300 uh articles and and things that are out on YouTube. Most of them uh half hour longer. So we have a lot of content. As always, thank you so much for hanging out with us and uh give us great feedback. Hope you have a great day. Hope you have a great weekend and we will talk to you next time. Bonus, you get to see me try to find the stop recording button.
Transcript Segments
See, can you hear me? Okay, good.
Am I Yes, you should be able to hear me.
I'm assuming you can.
No, you cannot.
>> Can you hear me?
>> I can hear you, but you can't hear me,
can you?
>> Now I can.
>> Okay,
>> but you're awfully low.
>> Let's see. Is that any better? Uh,
>> let me try this. Uh,
>> let's see.
Uh, I want I don't want that. I want
that. Let me go to settings.
Um,
input volume is all the way up. Are you
not hearing it?
>> Yeah, you're muffled. Let me put my
headphones on. Hang on.
I don't know if it's my laptop speakers
or if it's just I'm losing my hearing.
Um,
>> could be a little of both. If it's like
me, it's probably a little of both.
>> Okay, try again.
>> Can you hear me now? Is that any better?
>> You're still coming through.
That's a AirPod. All right. Right now.
Oh, okay. Yeah. Now,
>> can you hear me now?
>> Yeah.
>> Okay.
>> So, it must be my speakers. All right.
Let me fix my light. That is not right.
Sorry about that.
>> That's all right. I'm having to do the
same. I'm sort of like adjusting a few
things here.
>> See if I did that.
Not bad. I've got way too much light
over there, but that's okay.
>> Does that look better or
>> What was that?
>> Is that better or that?
>> Uh, second one. Not that one.
>> That one.
>> That one's better. I think the other one
you've like wash out a little bit.
>> Yeah, my lighting's not great. Let me
>> Yeah, you got a little Walking Dead
thing going when you do that.
That's a little better.
I'm at home today, so the lighting's not
quite
if I face the window. That's fine. I may
have to redo my office.
Anyway, um
yeah, so this one is uh Andrew
Hingleman.
>> Yep.
>> The coach. So hitting record here. Um so
we are doing something new for you guys
are listening in the uh YouTube world.
Um or actually I guess also watching is
we're going to add another episode each
week. So this is going to be our Friday
challenge. Uh this is a new thing we
talked about. We want we really enjoy
the challenges. We like giving them to
you guys and throwing those out there.
We think it's something that does very
much help uh build better developers.
And so what we're going to do is uh this
will be our first one. We're going to
talk about what has come out, what you
have listened to this week and uh give a
little bit of thoughts on that and then
have a challenge related to that. Uh so
we will dive in or we're going to do
this entirely YouTube, right? I think we
decided we're going to keep this all
YouTube. So even better. So we don't
have to do like you don't have to listen
to the normal crap or anything like
that. Um although we'll probably do a
little bit of the normal crap. We'll do
it like a little differently. Um
I think we will. I think we'll just like
I'm I'm gonna wing it because that's
what I do best is improv. Uh Second City
and all you guys The theater. Yeah.
Props out to you guys. Um
so we're going to wing it this time and
have sort of an intro and then dive
right into it. Uh this week, if I
haven't already mentioned, we talked to
Andrew Hlelman. We talked about
coaching. Um, I am pulling up our little
summary, which AI is so awesome at doing
for us while my wife puts her ears in so
she doesn't have to listen to us.
And there we go. Let's see. I do want to
like focus my eyes a little more up on
you
and just sort of like we'll just sort of
cover like things today. I think we
would follow my lead. Um, so, uh, Andrew
Hinkleman. Yeah. So, we talked about uh
really some good stuff in here with
coaching and that is where we're going
to get into it a little bit like some
little like our thoughts on each of each
of our thoughts and then we'll get to
the challenge. So, uh we will dive right
in. As always, I'm just going to start
by introducing myself. I'm Rob
Broadhead, one of the founders of
Developer. If you haven't figured that
out yet, look up there somewhere where
we've got like lots of stuff from us or
out on these these different places over
here where you're going to find all
kinds of links to tons and tons of
content. I'm also the founder of RB
Consulting and uh I think I'll go with
like my business. This would be sort of
our thing. Is it a good thing bad thing?
Let's do like a business uh learn thing
recommendation that I got this week. Um
I was actually sitting in I'll give one
that's a little different. I was sitting
in a networking mastermind kind of thing
and one of the things they talked about
they went through this time was uh
finances just spent an hour basically
talking about what you should do as a
business owner. And I think that this is
something I want to throw out there to
everybody is regardless of what time of
the year it is, unless you've just done
it like in the last, you know, quarter
probably, if it's even been more than
three or four months, sit down and just
do a quick, you know, 15 maybe 20
minutes top assessment of like your
business, your side hustle, the the
financials of it. And by this, I mean
like do you know what what's what's
coming in? What is your what's what are
the revenue streams coming in? what's
coming in, what's going out. Are you
taking care of the things you need to
care of along the way? Have you are you
caught up on like insurance if you're
dealing with insurance? Have you are you
caught up on tax payments if you're
supposed to do quarterly tax payments or
something along those lines? Have you
have you recently looked at uh benefits
that you may be able to take? U look for
like tax deductions for your kinds of
business. uh if you're in software
development, depending on how you're set
up, look into the software development
or the I think it's called the may
software develop, but it's the research
uh tax benefits that you can get out of
it. I've got a customer that is saving
uh thousands and thousands of dollars
each year with part of what we're doing
because he's using this uh tax write
off. So, take a look at that. We're not
tax accountants by any means or anything
like that, but I think that's a was a
good little reminder. It's like
everything else, every part of your
business you should check into on a
regular basis. And I'm going to check in
with my co-host right now so he can
introduce himself.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malsh.
Um, also one of the co- founders of
developer. Um, I'm also the founder of
Invision QA where we help people uh
build software, write tests, and improve
their business. Uh, let's see. So
business focus of the week uh not the
challenge, right? or
>> correct.
>> Okay, I'm we're winging this guys, so
bear with us.
>> Uh so I guess this week was So this is
coming out
uh in February. So for those of you
trying to follow the videos, these are
coming out after we've recorded them.
But we've recently had a nasty ice storm
here. So getting back out and talking to
people and reworking
uh has been kind of my goal this week
and talking to people and one of the
biggest challenges a lot of I'm hearing
from a lot of people is
the impact to the business because of
the storms. Even if you're remote, you
lose that face-to-face customer
>> uh experience and
it can be demoralizing. uh a lot of
people were really struggling to try and
get through that rough time and now
we're kind of in the aftermath of that
trying to rebuild I guess or get back to
normal. And uh that was kind of this
week talking to people trying to
reconnect and get things moving again.
But to your point though about the
finance thing, it's kind of interesting
you uh mentioned that because I do it
about once a month. I have it budgeted
to where I do all my finances, both
personal and business, once a month. And
tools can be very helpful for that. So,
if you have like accounting tools like
Quickbooks or Wave Apps, things like
that, look at the tools because the
tools generally have some type of graph
or some type of monitor to give you an
indicator of how you're doing. If you're
still doing spreadsheets, that's fine,
but make sure you have some graphing or
some indicator that highlights when
things aren't uh on par. When you're
like a little more in the red or a
little more in the black, give yourself
some indicators. Uh Excel is great. You
can write some quick uh formulas for
that and it'll pop for you. So, don't
just rely on numbers themselves. Give
yourself some visuals so you can quickly
look at like a dashboard and make your
life easy.
So, diving into uh our guest for this
week, uh Andrew Hlelman. Oh, well,
before we even jump into this, I want to
throw something out to you guys for
feedback. Uh one of the things we've
talked about is doing a like maybe a
monthly roundt where we may gap grab a
couple of our guests uh or some other
ones and just have a a discussion. Uh
and we're sort of throwing some ideas
around. I want to see if that would be
something that would appeal to you guys.
It' probably be on YouTube. I don't know
if we would do it on uh the podcast as
well, but we'll throw it out to them. Uh
the listeners, the the non-viewers, uh
the ones that actually still can see
because their eyes haven't melted
looking at our ugly faces. And uh we'll
see where that goes. But we're just like
we're always looking for uh new ways
that we can help you guys out and then
maybe take more advantage of some of the
people that we've talked to. Uh back to
now. Uh Andrew Hleman, we he's a coach.
Um and one of the things that he like he
focused is it was um professional and
personal development being very much
tied together which I think is something
that is that to me that was something
that very much resonates with the
developure point of view. If you go read
the uh the book, the the developer orb
software uh book as I actually just got
from uh one of our other past uh guests
that he said, "Yep, he read through it.
He's got some great questions and some
comments around it." And uh so uh I do
recommend it. It'll probably get updated
at some point because it's now a couple
years old and AI and some of these
things have changed. But um more than
happy to uh field questions around that
about like how has this changed in the
last you know the few years since it's
been since that uh actually now several
years since that book was uh actually
originally published
and I think that was one of the things I
really got out of it that I like that as
a his approach to a coach is much more
down to earth was more grounded was more
of a like this is a this is a whole you
know holistic whole person coaching
approach that he took.
Uh I will add a caveat to this uh before
I toss it over Michael is that coaches
are coaches can be very useful to you
and we'll talk about this a little bit
in the the challenge I think but uh they
can also be very very expensive and by
expenses I'm not talking like hundreds
of dollars or even sometimes thousands
of dollars. It literally a lot of them
it's going to be you know probably
lowend you're probably talking 15 to
$20,000 to spend a few months with a
coach. Uh some of them are that much per
month. Uh and if you find if you go
listen to like some of the big people
that are out there. Um trying to think a
few of them. I think Smart Passive
Income I think he used a coach uh for a
couple years that really helped him out.
Um I'm trying to think a few others that
I've mentioned. I can't I think John Lee
Dumis I think of uh Entrepreneurs on
Fire. I think he had a really good
coach. if you if you go back into some
of their their material, you can hear
about their experiences and that maybe
will help you out, give you a little
better idea of like what it would be
like or what the potential is if you
work with a coach. Um, the rest of it
I'll say for the challenge and I'll get
what are your thoughts on our
conversation with Andrew.
>> So,
first I've never really talked to a
coach before, so this was kind of an
interesting conversation we had with
Andrew. Uh it was interesting because a
lot of the points he touched on
initially at the beginning were a lot of
things you and I have talked about a lot
like eating the frog trying to uh limit
our task as creep um you know focus on
you know you know those primary tasks
but the thing that uh I found
illuminating was as we got into the
conversation he talked about doing those
like emotional intensity testing to try
to figure out where you're at uh with
your emotions where your focus is. And
I'm actually trying to find one of those
um that kind of makes sense for me
because um I actually went to a
networking meeting here recently that
talked about doing the same thing that
that's what their business plan does.
They come in, they do that first. And
then the other things that as we're
talking Andrew that kind of hit home was
we started talking about like the
burnout, you know, when we're losing
focus, when we're drained. I like some
of the tips he threw out. Uh, you know,
like he mentioned, uh, Brian Tracy, you
know, eating the frog like you've
constantly mentioned, but then setting
keystone goals. Uh, but then
really to look at yourself and he talked
about pausing, you know, trust yourself.
You know what you need to do. You know
what the problem is. You don't need to
be going out and searching unless it's a
problem you don't have a solution to.
You do need to do some research, but
trust yourself. Get out of your head and
really try to identify what it is that
you really need to be doing, not just
doing the busy work. Because
when we're going through the weekend,
you're working mornings to evenings and
it just feels like you're not moving.
you know, the bar is not moving, things
aren't getting done. Are you really
working on the right things
or are you working on things that are
needed but not the important things?
Like those are lower priority. You can
move those to the end of the line and
change your pri focus priorities. So,
those were things that really resonated
with me because, you know, I've been
going through a lot of different
projects. I've been working, you know,
burning the midnight oil for almost two
years now. And it it's hard because, you
know, we reach those points where we
lose that self-awareness. We
could lose that energy and we are
driving, but we're not hitting the
destination. We're just kind of
endlessly going around the the loop and
we just can't figure out how to find the
exit.
And that's uh that goes very much to uh
a conversation I had with with AI few
months ago now and was just looking at a
lot of stuff and I was building some
things out and I was I was sort of
assessing where did I want to go next
and ended up actually built my own
little time tracking app that now like
most of my stuff that are my own has
grown a good deal. Uh, but it's now it's
like I have a time tracking app that's
just straight up uh, you know, pretty
easy to use for me. Uh, it has a lot of
information. Uh, shoot me an email
robbs.com
or info@ developer.com. Either of those
if you want to if you want a copy of it.
It's just a Django app. Uh, simple mysql
database. I can give you all the stuff.
You can do whatever you want with it.
Uh, but basically I just I put my time
in. I have statuses of just very simple
like am I doing it? Is it is it sitting
there? Am I is it in progress? isn't
done. I track hours. I have uh what is
called assets basically which this has
really helped me and I think is really
good from a doing the right thing is
that it has assets that are basically
like if I'm doing a product if I'm doing
uh if I've got a task I either it's
either a one-time thing that I've got to
do it's repeatable that I need to be
like working on a script or an
automation or something to automate that
eventually or it's extractable and
there's some sort of asset like a
website or a document or a template or
something that I'm building out of that.
And this really helps me because what I
can do is I get part of this is I've got
KPIs. I've got all these reports that
are based on uh that are based on like
what work did I do in the business on
the business, what was overhead, and
then what did I do on my assets? Where
have I been working on those this week
and in prior weeks? And it makes a big
difference because it now has me much
more focused on doing stuff related to
an an asset, doing stuff related to an
outcome. So it very much is a why focus
for your task. It's like okay you're
doing this well why are you doing it? Is
it moving the ball forward? And even
though I'm currently just like each day
I sort of throw together tasks for the
next day. But even when I'm looking at
that uh and as I'm just yeah it's takes
a little bit of time. It takes extra few
minutes a day to enter my time and stuff
like that. But also looking at how I did
each day I get to see like where did I
go off the rails? And some of it is okay
because it's something where I thought I
was going to spend an hour or two, but I
ended up spending four hours building
out this, you know, great thing. But it
it gives us um to me it really does it
gives you that focus. It's sort of like
the short answer I think for anybody
that doesn't want any complex tool is
sit down with your to-do list at the
beginning of the week is just write down
like you know maybe three to five things
that you want progress on and then not
just like a checklist but like what does
progress look like for that for this
week and then as you're going through
the week make sure that you are moving
towards those goals. You can do that on
any any stop during the day during the
week you can just be like is this moving
the ball forward on the goals that I
need to and if it's not then adjust and
I think that especially these days is
one of the biggest things to to
overcome. Now I don't want to go too
long so but I will let you do you have
any thoughts on that before we jump into
the uh the challenge? Yeah, the one
thing I kind of want to bounce off of
you based on that. Uh, you know, because
you've shared the to-do list. I've
loaded it up. I just have not
unfortunately had enough bandwidth to
spend too much time digging into it. And
it sounds like I really need to carve
out. That needs to be one of the things
I kind of move up in the priorities a
little bit to hopefully um reset things
a little. But talking about, you know,
getting stuck or, you know, spending too
much time on things, how do you identify
even with your to-do task? This is just
kind of following up with what your
example there is, when you're spending
four or five hours and you're looking at
what you need to do. And what you need
to do may seem simple. It may be like a
small task, but it is taking longer than
expected.
How are you identifying when it's scope
creep, when it's
you're not quite focusing on the right
thing, or is it the problem itself?
Well, the first one for scope creep is
it's usually for me that's pretty um
because the way I've gotten that I do
stuff is it it gets pretty easy pretty
quick to figure out if it's if I'm if
it's scope creep and it's sometimes it's
by design. There's a lot of stuff that I
will put in and be like, "Okay, I'm
going to go through this." And I get
back to it later and it's like, "Well,
what does this really look like?" And as
I'm doing it, I realize, you know what?
This needs to be I need to apply this
differently than I thought. I'll give
you a simple example
is um I had like I'm building out I'm
doing a lot of working on the business
and one of the things I did was build um
let's just talk about this just a little
bit ago I was building these micro
proofs because normally on a site you're
going to have these proofs especially if
it's a you know you've got your call to
action you've got this this is why this
is good this is why you should do it and
what I've basically done is I've taken
projects that I've done and work that
we've done and turned them into these
micro proofs of basically like we do
this or we you know we had this problem
this is how we solved it this is what
the outcome was so it's a nice simple
thing and I started out originally it
was just going to be like bang bang bang
like three little oneliners and as I
started working on it and I started to
build those out I realized that no it
made more sense as being almost like a
an emblem or a badge or something like
that that I could do a little bit more
with it and the next thing I did knew I
was like I had built out you know a
dozen pages each one with this micro
proof and I've got some images and I've
you know cleaned it up and put a little
stuff in there and call to actions and
stuff. And so it's something that I can
snapshot. I can use a lot of different
ways. And it took me what was going to
take me 15 minutes. I'm like not done
with it yet because it grows a little
bit as I'm going through it. But I'm
probably going to be three or four hours
into it. But to me, I was thinking about
this like, do I really want to go down
this? What is the end result? When I
started going into that and I started
saying, well, I could do this and this
and this. The first thing I did was
after I was like, well, I could do all
this is I step back say like, is that
valuable to me? What does that look like
when it's done and is that something I
want to have? So, that's part of like I
think addressing scope creep. But the
other thing is is when you're it goes
back to like it is it goes back to your
why. It goes back to your requirements.
It goes back to what does success look
like or what does forward motion look
like this week? If you're working on
something and it doesn't look like
forward motion and I'll give you a great
one that is a hard one to get into is
like I have I for work for customers I
have a lot of stuff where I'm working on
something and I'm looking in there I'm
messing with the page or messing with
some logic and I see something that is
either I could make this you know better
looking I can make it more user friendly
I could make it faster I can make it you
know more efficient something like that
and those those may have value. They may
not, but that's the first thing I'm
going to do is like, okay, while I'm in
there, what's the cost? Is this just
going to take me like a minute, which
has its own problems. Is this going to
just take me a minute or is this
something that I'm going to sp I'm that
you know has some value that's going to
take some time. Always assume it's going
to take some time. So then it's like
assume the minute is actually going to
take an hour and then does that if what
can I do in that hour or what can I do
in that extra day? Is that really going
to move the ball forward? And if it's
not moving the ball forward for what I
need right now, even though it could be
prettier, it could be faster, it could
be all of these good things.
If that's not on your current focus,
then create a ticket, make a note,
whatever you do, backlog it and you can
come back to it later. I know there's a
cost of coming back and all that kind of
stuff, but it's usually unless it
literally is just like you see it, it's
a typo or something that's a super
simple fix or it's something that could
cause problems later that you can't
really like it's faster to do it right
now than it is to write yourself a
ticket and then try to remember how to
track it later. Then I would say go
ahead and and dive into it. Otherwise,
punt it. Um, you know, take care of it.
But it's like there's a lot of other
thoughts that could go in that that
could be a couple episodes in itself
probably. It's like when if you're truly
of the developer mindset is when do you
move and when do you you know when do
you punt, when do you fish, when do you
cut bait as far as all of the stuff that
you can do? And this is a this is a
daily thing for me because I have so
many things I can get done. I have so
many ideas and so many directions I can
go. I have to like find ways to time box
them. just put something in and say,
"Okay, I'm going to give myself 15
minutes and if that's up, then okay,
that's that's the time I've put into
it."
>> Yeah, that's I guess kind of the hard
thing for me because it's like I've got
so many things that still need to be
done and it's like the one thing I'm
working on making forward progress on,
but it's just taking so long is I have a
form and I've got some annoying little
fields that are on the form that aren't
lining up. like they aren't mapped
correctly and figuring that out. It's
like, oh yeah, it'll take a couple has
taken a couple hours to get it all
figured out and I know and it feels like
I'm not
like I'm not
it's like am I spending the time wisely?
You know, it am I doing this right? Am I
still moving forward? It's just
frustrating because you have to find it.
it. It's just so forums are not fun um
to begin with, but it's one of those
where it's like I've time boxed it,
>> but the time box has gotten bigger just
because the the minutia of the stupid
form is just a pain. Um so it's just one
of those where
things are moving forward, but it's hard
not to feel defeated because it's taking
a lot longer than it feels like it
really should have taken.
Mapping fields is the most tedious and
painful thing in almost every project. I
I I don't know how many times I've dealt
with integrations and migrations and
updates and all that kind of stuff. And
anytime where you're moving data from
point A to point B, u if you don't get
the mappings right and you're having to
like guess them or something like that,
it can be very very tedious and very
very uh timeconuming and you just have
to be sort of ready for it. I will say
that I have found um
if you can phrase the problem right I
found AI to be very helpful with that
but it very much means that which is
probably a good thing is it really
forces you to ensure that your input is
clean and well defined and your output
is clean and well defined so it can so
you can say this isn't matching to that
and it can help you find it but you have
to be able to you have to have enough
knowledge about it going into it to be
able to do so um a second set of eyes
sometimes times will help as well. And
that's sort of what AI just gives you is
it's like, okay, look at these. Why are
these not matching up? And sometimes
it's a um you know, it's like a a typo
or it's like you you use a underscore in
the name here, but you don't use it
here. Um I use those a lot for some of
those kinds of bugs. That brings us to
>> Oops. I was just going to say AI
actually did indicate that it was named
something, but it was not named what the
field was.
>> Well, you got to watch that. It'll like
it'll false suggest stuff sometimes.
It's like I want to help and
>> it it found it.
>> It's just the field itself on the form
was not identified as what the field on
the form was.
>> Yeah, you got to be consistent there,
too. You got to watch out for that kind
of stuff. I got bit by that the other
day where I had a typo and I had moved
something and I was like, why why is
this broken everywhere? And I finally
looked at and it never AI never caught
it. I was looking at I was like, oh,
this thing is grabbing the wrong value
here. It's a bad mapping.
and it just propagated. That's also why
you got to watch out if you automate AI
that kind of stuff. If you've got a
broken process, it'll give you more
broken results at the end. Challenge is
back to the coaching thing because we
have drifted a little. Um I think the
challenge of the week is to
and this is this goes a little into some
of the conversations he had is when we
were talking about like how do you
decide if you want a coach? How do you
find a coach that's a fit for you? The
challenge I throw out there is spend a
little time and think about what are the
things that are bugging you. What are
the problems that have been dogging you
for a while? And it may be it may be
technical, it may be business, it may be
personal, whatever it is. It's like what
are the things that have just been on
your mind for a while? And for a while
is very much up to you. It may be weeks,
it may be months, it could be years. Um
get yourself at least three that are
like ongoing problems. And then with
those, is it is it something that you
are working through? So, it's a problem,
but you've like you've you've got a path
forward and you're working your way
through it. Um, is it something that you
need to solve? This is really important
with coaches. Like I I talked to a coach
that wanted to do, we talked about uh
lead generation. And the more I thought
about it, I was like, I don't need to
learn how to do lead generation. I can
go hire somebody to do that. That is not
something that is a good use of my time.
So, is this something that you need to
solve? That is valuable to you that it
furthers your business or your career
for you to know that? Because if not,
then don't worry about it. You can hire
somebody at some point or something like
that. Outsource it. And then finally, is
it something where you're stuck, where
you don't know the way forward? If it's
something where you don't know the way
forward, that's where you may want to
look at a coach, talk to some, you know,
talk to a friend, do something. And
that's I think where I want to go with
the challenge is the actual challenge is
find a thing. Find just one thing where
you're stuck and spend a little time on
it this week. Doesn't matter like like I
said, talk to your friend, talk to your
parents, talk to your kids, talk to your
dog. If your dog will talk back, you
need something there. Um, you know,
shoot us an email, shoot other people an
email. Whatever it is, is just like try
to reach out to somebody else and see
what happens. see if you get some good
advice and potentially even, you know,
maybe go search for like do a Google
search or something like for coaches on
that topic or that solve that problem or
maybe even counselors that solve that
problem and, you know, maybe you can
make a little advance thoughts on that
as a the challenge.
>> Yeah. And while you're going through
that, um, as I mentioned before, like
Andrew said, you know, before you really
get into that, take a second, pause, you
know, really look at yourself, you know,
trust yourself before you just start
going willingly. It's like, oh my god,
everything's wrong and you're just going
to AI or certain things. One of the
biggest
issues, as Andrew mentioned, with AI, is
you're gonna get a lot of affirmatives,
like you're doing everything right.
That's not necessarily true. So, take a
pause before you go too crazy with AI or
some of these searches and really try to
identify what the issue is and then um
start looking for those coaches.
>> Yeah. with coaches or anybody like that
like I will give an example that we had
a we had a coach for dancing uh an
instructor that was very positive was
like you're great you're awesome you're
beautiful that was the best ever blah
blah blah and we even told her we said
like don't that's not what we want we
need to know where we're broken so we
can fix it and we ended up moving on to
another coach and she loved the idea the
first thing we said was like if it's
broke we want you to fix this we don't
want you to tell us how awesome we are
we want you to tell us how bad we are
because we know there's a lot to learn.
And I think that is key for any of these
kinds of things is like whether it's a
coach, whether it's a mentor, whether
whatever it is is say like where am I
going wrong? Where can I do better in
this? Because if they say, "No, you're
great. You're awesome." Then they're
useless to you. They need to be able to
give you actionable advice as far as
what you can do better. And when you're
looking like find somebody that's done
it if you can find somebody that you
look up to that you know that has done
it that is going through it. Even if
they haven't solved it then maybe they
can at least help you with some ideas of
how they you know how you will not need
to go about solving it. Uh closing
thoughts as we do this uh first episode
of our you know of of whatever the heck
the Friday I don't know the reality
piece or something like that. Friday uh
Friday challenge. We'll call it that. Or
or we'll get a better name. We'll use AI
to like market it up and make a better
name for it. Here, let me I'll do that
while Michael's while Michael's thinking
about it. So, yeah, we had talked about
doing this and I kind of like it. you
know, it gets us back into kind of uh us
kind of going doing the review of the
episodes, giving our experiences, and uh
I love the challenge ideas because it
not only is a challenge for you guys as
the listeners, but it's also challenges
for us. It it kind of makes us stop and
be like, "Oh, am I doing this right?"
You know, uh do I need to reflect and do
I need to do this challenge? Um because
you know we're all growing. We're all
learning. And I see Rob laughing over
there. So I guess AI came back with
something else. But yeah, it's
self-improvement,
self-help are things that everyone
needs. Even if you don't think you need
it or it's like, "Oh, this isn't for
me." You still need to reflect. You
still need to grow. And the only way to
grow is through reflection.
And you want this goes back. You've
you've got to take a step back. You will
never do that when you are down in the
weeds. When you are like just go you
I've and you'll deny it. I know because
I have at times where I'm like ah no I'm
fine. I like I'm not down in the weeds
and I finally take a breath and I'm like
I was down in the weeds. I missed
something. So this goes to exactly what
it is. It's like so this was AI and this
tells you this exactly what we're
talking about. Sometimes it's too
positive. So I asked it give me some
names. And the first thing I said, love
this concept. It fits developer per
perfectly practical, reflective, and
forward moving. It's like fine. I'm
really I'm really tempted to tell uh
tell AI to be like stop being positive.
Be more negative and challenging. But
anyways, so it could be
uh here's some of the names just to
throw these out and we'll think about
it. The developer weekly challenge.
That's pretty easy. developer ship it
Saturday which is an interesting little
thing. Uh the weekly builder challenge
one improvement the 1% build. Oh this is
that's an interesting little concept for
us to go with uh the execution sprint.
Uh reflect build reflect improve the
weekly reality check
the builder which I'll just say that
actually he stole that because we have a
tech reality check at RB Consulting that
we're using. So, he even said this would
be aligned with the RB thing. Uh, the
builder debrief, which is interesting.
Uh, the dev momentum show, very good for
this season. Uh, build week, the dev
challenge loop,
my top three for Rob specifically, it
said. I don't know why. Specifically for
me, uh, one improvement, the builder
debrief, or build week. And he even
says, I'm assume it's a he. I'm sorry. I
gendered our my AI because I call him
Chip. Um, if this is 10 to 15 minutes, a
weekly recap, and ends with a clear
challenge, then one improvement is very
strong. It aligns with our newsletter
that went out, uh, which if you haven't
subscribed, I don't know if we even I
don't know if we have that. Subscribe to
our newsletter. Go out to developor.com,
subscribe. We're actually starting to
put a lot of really good information in
this. I say that honestly as somebody
who's been doing the newsletter for
years, and I'm really enjoying what's
being, you know, the research and
putting some stuff into the newsletters.
I'm enjoying reading them. these days.
So hopefully check that out. Um it comes
out once a month and it's a you know
nice easy one for you. Uh and then it
gives me a lot of other stuff. So I
think that's that's a good thing. We'll
think about it. Maybe we'll give it like
a nice title and a maybe it'll give us
like a nice cool image that we can use
and stuff like that that um just like
everybody else that's like you know
burning through all of these cycles and
resources by generating cool pictures of
themselves which I was really against
until I started having it generate some
like generic stuff for me and I'm like
oh that's actually not bad. I guess I'll
use it but I use it professionally and
for business not just okay not always
just for just for myself.
parting thoughts before we wrap this one
up.
>> Uh,
I'm gonna have to muddle through that
list because that gave me a bunch of
ideas. I My mind's like going many
different directions there. I I like it.
Um, I'll pick one and I'll throw it out
there as the title and we'll play around
with it for a while. I I
this is just a great example of how AI
can help you, but it can also uh send
you down rabbit holes that
>> Yes,
>> this is where time management does uh is
important because you could uh get
yourself in trouble just by throwing an
idea at AI and then next thing you know
you're kind of not doom scrolling but
you're AI scrolling because you're like
just going crazy with AI.
Yeah, it's uh AI needs guard rails for
what it tells you, for what you're
asking it, for where it goes, and you
need guardrails and using it so you
don't end up effectively doom scrolling
or uh creating, you know, 15,000 new
products and and things like that
because you sort of can. Um, but that
being said, we're going to wrap this one
up. Thank you so much for hanging out
with us. I don't know this always going
to be this long. We've gone a little
we've we've rambled a little, but we'll
see how this goes. Uh feedback would be
awesome for this. Um we don't have all
our normal stuff. So, as always, like
leave us comments, shoot us an email,
Uh you can go out to the developer.com
site. There's a contact us form. Feel
free to use that. Uh check out if you
haven't been there in a while. We have
totally revamped that as of the
beginning of the year. So, developer
site is very new, very different, and uh
got a lot of new features and stuff like
that. It's It should be a lot easier for
you to navigate. Uh we're always and we
even have somewhere. Uh we have uh a
link to it. All of the episodes. You can
see all of the episodes, all of the
seasons, everything out there. And then
there's links to it. I think the links
all work. I haven't like gone all the
way back, but I think all the links at
least get you to the uh the blog page
for that podcast. So it you can actually
see all nearing a thousand episodes of
the podcast. And at some point coming
soon, we're going to try to do that with
uh the YouTube site as well as get some
navigation through that because we are
now I think we are over 300 uh articles
and and things that are out on YouTube.
Most of them uh half hour longer. So we
have a lot of content. As always, thank
you so much for hanging out with us and
uh give us great feedback. Hope you have
a great day. Hope you have a great
weekend and we will talk to you next
time.
Bonus, you get to see me try to find the
stop recording button.