Detailed Notes
The start of a new year is the perfect time to focus on breaking bad habits that no longer serve us. In the Building Better Habits podcast episode titled “Anti-Habits: How to Break Bad Habits,” hosts Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche share practical tips to identify, confront, and replace negative patterns. If you’re looking to improve your daily routines and make 2025 your most productive year yet, these insights will help you get started.
Read More: https://develpreneur.com/breaking-bad-habits-simple-strategies-for-a-healthier-life/
*Weekly Challenge for Breaking Bad Habits*
As Rob and Michael highlight, breaking bad habits is about taking small, intentional steps. Here’s your weekly challenge:
1. Identify One Bad Habit: Choose a habit you want to change—whether it’s snacking, excessive screen time, or overspending. 2. Plan a Replacement: Decide what positive habit you’ll adopt in its place. For example, replace snacking with drinking water or screen time with reading. 3. Track Your Progress: Use a journal or app to monitor your efforts and reflect on your wins and challenges at the end of the week.
This focused approach helps build momentum, creating a foundation for long-term success.
*Stay Connected: Join the Develpreneur Community*
Have a success story about breaking bad habits? Share it with the Building Better Habits team at [email protected] or connect with them on social media. Let us know your questions, feedback, or suggestions for future episodes. Let’s make 2025 the year we say goodbye to bad habits and hello to better ones!
*Additional Resources*
* Digital Fast Detox (https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Fast-Detox-Reclaim-Matters/dp/B0CQD95HG6) * Achieving Goals – Setting A Milestone And Hitting The Mark (https://develpreneur.com/achieving-goals-setting-a-milestone-and-hitting-the-mark/) * Use Accountability To Achieve Your Goals (https://develpreneur.com/use-accountability-to-achieve-your-goals/) * Setting Goals That Serve Others – Interview With Nicky Billou (https://develpreneur.com/setting-goals-that-serve-others-interview-with-nicky-billou/) * Use The Value of Steady Improvement to Achieve Big Goals (https://develpreneur.com/use-the-value-of-steady-improvement-to-achieve-big-goals/)
Transcript Text
[Music] okay so welcome every everybody we just hit record and I am adjusting my height so this is a bad view of me or a worse view of me I apologize but we were doing a little pregaming there and we were getting myself centered so hopefully now you appreciate that I have got my background properly centered on my head if it looks like I've got stuff coming out on my ears that is on purpose let me just my mic a little bit hopefully that is not going to be a problem welcome back it is after the holidays and we are back to building better habits so diving right in uh two things I'm thinking about because this is in the New Year's resolution season as it were um one of I thought about because and it actually goes back to something that I think you mentioned was in some previous stuff you're realizing how much you enjoy doing like UI work that there's these things that I think one of the things like a fun habit is is as we get into this new year is putting a habit in that's something fun and some things that I've done that I've learned over the last couple years that I think would be uh pretty cool and maybe we start with that one another one I thought about that sort of came to me that would be an interesting one we'll see how this goes because it's like all of them um is an anti-ab as I was saying about like doing it is figureing out a way to break a habit because you know New Year's resolutions are not always about uh adding sometimes it's about it's uh addition by subtraction sometimes it is being better by not doing the things that are problematic um so I was thinking that might be a good one I had one other cookies what like step eating Christmas cookies well very literally that could be part that could be one of them it's like for me it's like right now it's like it's too much snacky stuff and I'm trying to like I don't know if I'm going to try to but right now I have to because of just some of the things I'm doing but um you know it's like there's things like that that are habits we have that sometimes we don't realize them you know like a lot of people they don't realize how much time they have on they look at their phone until they get to end of the week and it says you had 15 hours of screen time you know stuff like that or 20 or what whatever it is um kind I like that rocket money app that looks for all the uh that gave even oh the the recurring uh charges and stuff like yeah yeah I like that um one other that we may just put on our thing that I thought about was a um it's sort of in the anti i-h habits but I was thinking about building a habit of focus um particularly I got into it because I was thinking about spending the last couple days I've had several conversations where I've been in conversations with developers and they've had keyboards in front of them and realized that I am not the only one by any stretch that hits rabbit Trails all the time um and I think it's one of those things that we as a as better developers I think it's way too often that we get ourselves sidetracked by stuff and then we get lost and that's why some like stand-ups that's why stand-ups can be as difficult as they are is because developers want to spend an hour working on a problem as opposed to just like get in get out go get your stuff done and so we get there's that drift so those are three ideas I had so let's see fun habits anti- patterns or anti-h habits and building a habit of focus better focus better focus um let's do that last one another time because I think if we brainstorm a little bit we can actually come up with a good pairing to go with that one so that week will be yeah kind of a themed habit of um you know building better focus and maybe we can do something else for meetings or productivity that week cool I have to write yeah throw that in the slack I have to write I have too many slacks up okay so let's see we'll start with I'll just put all three of these and we'll know that we did the one uh if I have it so you want to start with fun or you want to start with anti-h habits let's start with anti-ab it since we are this will be the first one officially new uh Habit episode after the new year uh and that'd be a good one cuz we kind of introduced you know say goals and that in the New Year's Day episode uh this would be a good one to kind of follow up with that all right then we'll go with our three wow there's something checked up with my camera oh well well hello and welcome back we are back it is now 2025 and we are actually in 2025 with you as opposed to the last episode if you were listening New Year's Eve we were pre- New Year's Eve we're still here or we just got really good images of ourselves we survived the year as far as all of us know and we are back to our habits before we get too far into that I'm gonna introduce myself because it's a new year same old me though I just have adjusted well for those video Watchers I did adjust a little bit my camera and stuff like that my name is Rob broaded I happen to be one of the founders of developing or building better developers and also a founder of RB Consulting where we are we're here to help you use technology better through simplification Automation and integration we take the vast huge internet of techn technology and help you find the best things out there for your business for your specific needs for your custom it's your business your customers your unique thing that you bring to the world and your value proposition we find the best way to take technology and help you leverage that to deliver that to your customers we're in the habits and I'm going to talk about some new ones here in this next couple episodes that are things that I have built in at the beginning of the year uh this is a great time at the beginning of the year to really if you maybe have got a little rusty on your habits over the holidays to get back into them uh one of the things that I've done throughout uh I did skip a couple of days of the pomodoros but got right back into them and it really has like I said doing like not aiming for a full day of pomodoros but just aiming for a couple of them has just continued to be very effective for me uh also the um the automation piece I think just it's one of those we started with seven days and then automate something I think that is really one that is very helpful to do on a weekly basis is just make it part of your schedule each week is to go find something that you do too much of that you can automate that you can correct or maybe that you can just wipe out of your life you know maybe it's something that you don't need to do where you're being busy instead of productive uh and I found that to be very helpful to me so those are a couple habits have been useful um I think another one is uh we talked a little bit Michael's talked more about about the uh being tied personally to your stuff to your code to what you create I've been through whole bunch of changes in the last few weeks and some releases and things like that and uh it's really good I don't I don't know if it's been it's it's something I go through enough that it's not say I've been tied to as much but it is very um I guess energizing almost to be able to sit there and be able to sit there and say like you know work with somebody and say yeah we need to make this better as opposed to feeling like it's like you're taking it personally or something like that to be like yeah we're we're the same team we're finding ways to make it better sort of like when you find your bug it's a lot easier than when if somebody else points out the bug it's those kinds of things but being able now to say hey this person's a teammate and working with me has been a it's really helping build those habits of finding more ways more sets of eyes so that I can be a better developer not just by myself but so like we can be a developer better developer with our team and we deliver better things for our customer good thing bad thing interesting one New Year's Eve we had plans we had a party we had all this stuff we're going to go to it was we went to the hotel they were supposed to have this thing the pregame to it we found out it was not going to be a thing it was going to be basically a DJ and that was it DJ and some interpretive dance they weren't going to have drinks they weren't going to have food we're going to have to figure out all that stuff out so we pivoted and we pivoted to another place we were able to Uber and it wasn't too expensive like we're going to Uber there so the bad thing was our initial plans were ridiculously blown up the good thing was is that we found another place at 7 starting at 7:00 on New Year's Eve we found another party in Nashville which is hard to find spots anyways because it's packed we found another place found a party got there a little early so we managed to miss all the crowds and it turned out to be a excellent New Year's Eve and a great way to step into the the new year also stepping into the new year across the internet for me is Michael and I'm going to let you go ahead and introduce yourself hey everyone my name is Michael Mage I'm one of the co-founders of building better developers developer ner I'm also the founder of Invision QA where we help companies build software through test driven development approaches automation integration testing and functional testing looking back now we're kind of into 2025 uh kind of looking back at the habits we started last season or at towards the end of the year for this season and over the holidays I I really implemented and followed a lot of our habits that we talked about like the Pomodoro techniques the list techniques automation uh really kept me focused and able to get work done even through the holidays uh I was able to still take some downtime but we really got a lot of work accomplished uh even with taking time off and spending time with family good thing bad thing uh good thing it's a new year bills are paid bad thing tax season is coming up around the corner and I'm struggling to figure out what the heck I need to file for business taxes end of the year filings and all that fun stuff for uh to make sure I'm compliant with the government so they don't come knocking on my door well I sort of teased at it and we are going to talk about uh we actually going to do it's almost like instead of building better habits this episode we're going to talk about anti-habsburg opposite of it because I think about this and it is particularly as I step into the new year and I look at resolutions one of the resolution that a lot of people have is usually going to be you know around I'm going to lose weight or I'm going to get healthy and usually those are related to things like I'm going to give something up or I'm going to stop something that is a bad habit another one that you may have is that I'm not going to spend as much time lost on social media or something like that so it's like I'm going to give something away and I want to talk about that because I think this is something that we don't I think simplifying our life is something that we don't look at enough particularly in the in the technology realm because there's so many tools there's so many things out there that we want to get involved in all this different stuff we want to touch all these toys we want to play with them and there's a lot of times that we we shouldn't that these are things that are not productive for us they do not help us become better developers or better people in general and so I think that what I want to focus on this time is how do we build a a better negative Habit in say how do we break a habit it's not just building a habit but how do we break a habit how do we one of them is I think this is the maybe the biggest value for you as you're you're looking at this particular challenge we get into this is identifying what is a negative habit I think the first thing to do is is like we do with a lot of these is sort of sit back a little bit and examine your week behind and maybe a little bit of your week ahead and I think more so maybe the week behind it's like what were your plans that you had now if last week happened to be one of the holiday weeks you may have to go back a couple of weeks because things look different or maybe in the week ahead just keep track of like what are your plans when you start the week and you're fresh and new and it's like it's a whole week ahead of mean these are the things are going to do where does it go sideways where does it go pear-shaped as they say and what are maybe some of the contributing factors to that now I think some things that I'm going to uh suest and some things that actually some of these are very near and dear to my heart uh some aren't but uh one of the things that very well could be a problem for you maybe if you get into like social media you get lost in email uh other conversation or just like you know slack or messenger or whatever you're happen your chat version of you know chat app is sometimes you get lost in those uh so looking at that I like how can I do less of that and it may be that there's something where you need a you need some sort of a timer or something like that that says like hey I'm going to have a a timer that says hey you've spend too much spent too much time on that there are also a lot of apps out there that will allow you to at the end of the week or the end of the day or whenever you do it look at where was your time spent and and it maybe it was you know in a browser on these specific tools or an email things like that that I think are very insightful because you'll realize that wow I thought I spent 10 minutes an email and you realize you actually spent two hours looking email I brought up in the pre-show I mentioned the idea of like when these um you now Apple sends through and I think Android does too you'll get at the end of the week you can get your screen time report and you'll get stuff where you know you think well I didn't spend that much time and then your report comes back that you spent you know 20 hours in the last week in in screen time like oh maybe I can cut that down what else could I do in those 20 hours 20 hours is a lot so it's 20 you cut that in a half you've got like a extra long day of stuff that you can get things done so I think that's what you do is look at pick something pick one thing and this sort of is in the idea of when we think of the the world of agile and scrum one of the things you do when you go from Sprint to Sprint to Sprint is you pick one thing in the next Sprint that you want to fix and we're going to sort of look at it this way is think of like a sort of onewe Sprint what is something that is a a habit that you want to break and then the goal each day is going to be to identify when that habit kicks in and to get yourself thinking that I don't want to do that and it's basically usually going to be a replacement habit and I think that's the key and you find this with all of the the addictions and habits and stuff like that you know like smokers when they want to quit a lot of times they will go to instead of smoking they're going to go have a snack or a cup of coffee or something like that it's the same thing and I think this is where you're this is going to very much I think help you in building better habits and removing bad habits is finding the replacement what am I going to do instead of X whatever my bad habit is now for me one of the things that I do way too often when I'm working from home is I will take my break which is a good thing I'll take you know half an hour hour in I'll take a break of like five minutes the bad thing is is that too often I will go like hit my little snack closet I'll have like a handful of chips or something like that is I'll just have something cuz it it gives me something to do that is not sitting there in front of the computer and while that's not horrible in itself it's one of those things like I I have better things I could do now I could replace it with like I'm going to go check email or something like that but I think for myself it's more of an idea of and I've done this in the past and and this is what is reminding me to get back to it is the idea of instead of walking to That Snack closet for myself I will just walk right by the snack closet and do maybe a lap or two around the house go you know go look outside check out the backyard the front yard and things like that which is also a very good habit from a vision point of view because now you get from staring at this screen for so much time and then you turn around and now you're standing staring at something that's you know in the distance and it really does help your eyes and it just helps me to get out and have even on a rainy day it's a different perspective and so it is a uh a positive in sort of that endorphin kind of thing of like hey I'm not starring in a screen and we'll talk more about like fun habits in another episode but I think it's the key here is looking at what you want to fix and thinking about what would be a positive replacement of that because it's usually not going to be as simple as I need to eliminate it it's I want to replace it and then it also benefits you because now you're going from a negative to a positive and this is like now a much bigger swing those are my thoughts on it and this has really been something I just pitched to Michael like right before this so I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on this hey Rob uh yeah so we're talking about anti-habsburg the holidays and they need to figure out you know how to cut back well what's interesting about rocket money and this Falls right into this anti-ab is how much are we spending on things that we don't think about you know you go join a gym members or sign up for a gym membership but never go to the gym but you're still paying that membership or you sign up for multiple uh like trials over the holidays so you could watch your holiday shows and that and you forget to cancel them these things just kind of Stack Up over time and you know next thing know you're spending $600 $800 a month on things that you aren't using you know you're essentially throwing money away interestingly enough I go through this every few years and not necessarily with the uh credit card and memberships but I do this with my bills so like your credit card companies your uh internet uh your satellite TV whatever you use that you use a lot what is interestingly enough and I I had a sales guy actually tell me this is if you get comfortable if it's like oh I can afford that well over time policies and billing cycles and fees change within a service provider so what you want to do is you want to call your vendor you want to call your provider and say Hey I want to talk to the Fulfillment Department not the sales department you want to talk to fulfillment fulfillment has access to every single deal throughout the entire company across the country or across the world wherever they're located and what's interestingly enough is the Fulfillment people have the ability and typically have the um go-ahead to use anything in their Arsenal to make the customer happy and sealed the deal so typically where you go to your local like Spectrum or Verizon store and they say oh yeah we can offer you uh you know $25 a month for unlimited plan Etc you called Verizon talked to the Fulfillment they may say hey we can lock you in for a year at $15 a month even though you're an existing customer we can still give you this deal now the people at the stores can't they're not authorized but fulfillment typically can be I did this one year and managed to cut $11,000 off my bills for 2 years locking in certain payment deals now with that being said here we are two and a half plus years later and now I'm noticing that prices have changed things have gone down and I'm actually paying more for some things that I shouldn't be so one of the anti habits is don't get complacent with your bills go follow up with your vendors and say hey am I really paying the right amount for what service I'm getting or am I locked into some contract or even out of contract sometimes when you're out of contract contract the fees go up and you don't even realize it so just kind of one little Habit to just kind of go through and just reset your current bills and if you do pay for a lot of subscriptions look at Rocket money you know that might look at your accounts and say hey I can cut the fat what am I not using cancel it so that's one little anti-ab I have the other one that we kind of briefly talked about in the pre-show is we're coming out of the holiday so no it's New Year's resolutions you know everyone's like well I got to lose weight let's go get a gym membership well instead of just doing that and you mentioned this you know people make those resolutions to quit smoking the problem with a lot of these goals is that people don't find something to replace the bad habit with a good habit and that can come with losing weight so one of my anti-ab goals isn't so much to lose weight but it is to stop eating junk food like Rob said or in my case stop eating Christmas cookies and that PL of ice cream that I finished off last night because Cherry Garcia was just so good you need to look at things in moderation so one of my anti anti-habsburg I'll just reach for something healthy apples are very good they're very sweet oranges as well typically you can eat up to like five apples a day and you still get the benefit of the fruit because apples also have fiber and your body needs fiber so I learned that trick from a nutritionist years ago so that's one way you can actually cut a lot of fat so to speak reduce a bad habit and just introduce something healthy in your life that still tastes good and then lastly you know the other thing with the anti-h habits you know with the holidays especially New Year's we don't know about you but in our household we spent a little too much drinking champagne over new years's and the holidays so one of the things to cut back on that isn't so much to stop drinking wine or stop drinking uh spirits but to cut back so instead of that full glass of wine maybe just pour 4 oz have one or two of those you now equal one glass of one you still have a couple glasses you're still enjoying it but you're doing it in moderation you're not doing it in excess so the anti-ab here is to just reduce a little bit of what you're doing in excess and you should see a positive outcome come from that what are your thoughts on that Rob those are excellent um I think the one of the things there on this the latter part is the uh we talk about momentum and I think that's one of the things if you can cut back like i' I've known several people that have gone from uh like energy drinks and sodas to pure black straight coffee and part of the way they do it every almost everybody I've talked to one of the ways they do it is they you know they go to coffee and initially they have a lot of sugar and cream in it and they start cutting it back and cutting it back and eventually get to the point where they just they're happy having it straight take a lot of sugar out of their their life and things like that uh another thing is I do I do think that it is useful to examine your habits like Michael talked about with it's like you know like for me this is it was actually very near and dear to my heart because mentioned I got married this year brought somebody else in I've had all of these habits and all these automated things that I did and uh a lot of them are related to it's it's things like you know it's my cell phone bill and insurance and some of those kinds of things that had been that I periodically look at them but had just gotten in the habit hadn't looked at him in a couple of years and she comes in and says hey you know what about this and I'm like I don't know like give it a shot let's see it's probably I was like usually my answer is like I think I talked to them six months or a year ago but give it a shot and it's usually like yeah I haven't talked to him in three or four years because time does that and there was there's a lot of stuff that we got out of this like cell phone in particular we were able to uh drop we were able to moost stuff around add another phone get a new phone and still cut 50 or 100 bucks a month off of our bill I can't remember but it's one of those saying like insurance was insanely different there's just a lot of things like that and part of it too is because we you know life moves on you have different situations but like I I think we've talked about this before but Michael said it is very useful to periodically at least I would say once a year every two years go back through your your long-term kinds of relationships your cell phones your insurances um those kinds of things and even like memberships and stuff like that and just see like what's a deal because it's amazing how often uh which almost every time I think like I was an AT&T member for years and years and years and I think every time I called them it was every 12 to 18 months I would get a better deal they would they would make some changes and I would get a better deal out of it so definitely you know look at the habits and just examine them as well because it may be where you can refine the ones you have and just make those a little bit better it takes us to the challenge for this one the challenge is I really set this up beforehand the challenge is one identify a negative habit identify something that you need to change what is something in the week ahead pay attention each day and is there something that is not healthy that is not productive um or something along those or just something you don't like to do something that makes you feel icky something that you just you know are not a fan of that you want to find a way to not have that habit not have that a part of your life and then at the the challenge is to choose a replacement habit and then in the next week to start in implementing that habit and see how that goes for you and I'm really interested as we come to the end of the you know end of a year and starting a new one I'm always going to throw out the sell it send us an email at info developer.com but I really want to hear like what are your resolutions and maybe what's really fascinating to me when I have is what is a resolution you made last year that has stuck and I would love to if if the email is I couldn't I didn't make any of them that's cool too because it's just really interesting is I think everybody talks about how they haven't kept their resolutions and I'm always fascinated by the people that have and I'm always very proud if I've had something that has stuck with me to be like hey I'm bucking the trend as it were uh you can also reach out to us on X you can reach out to us on Facebook uh developer.com we have contact us forms wherever you see podcast out on YouTube you can leave comments you can leave feedback of any sort we love to have that particular looking you know at this kind of time where we're looking ahead to the year ourselves and making plans and things like that it's always good to have feedback because we do this for you and we want to make you help you be better developers and however we can do that uh we definitely want to look forward to that and get those information and we have another season coming up in the next probably you know couple months and uh would love to have some ideas and thoughts on where you would like to see us go uh in the next couple of Seasons that being said we're going to wrap this one up so go out there and have yourself a great day a great week and we will talk to you and a great year we will talk to you next time bonus material so I just kind of want to reiterate some of the things we did mention in the podcast so you mentioned like the screen time apps so uh apple has a great one built in I think it's like screen time or FaceTime no FaceTime is the video but screen time turn it on it's not necessarily always on by default but turn it on kind of track what you're doing see maybe oh I spent 40 80 hours on Facebook all week that means you literally were glued to your phone while you were doing your job or whatever it is you were doing for that week maybe you need to cut back on that the other thing is what's interesting about those type of apps is you can also restrict your viewing time of certain apps or usage time of certain apps uh during the day so you can stay more focused so that's one of the other things I'd like to throw out there and if you're worried about how much Focus or things you're doing as a bad habit in your house a lot of routers you can actually block certain websites during certain times and schedule and it is a pain in the ass to go in and turn that off so it really um incentivizes you not to do your H you know that really makes you break to Hab because you like don't want to keep going in all right I got to go turn no no no and you eventually either get frustrated with it and you turn it off or you just live with it and it's like okay I just broke my habit because I put the walls up so strong that I can't bust through the brick anymore it's like you know put some habits or put some barriers in place if you're trying to break a habit and on the flip side you know have a little fun with this you know pick up the phone call some of your vendors and say Hey What Can you offer me to stay with you I'm looking to go to someone else you know what kind of deal can you give me have fun with it don't necessarily go into those mindsets of those types of calls with ah this is going to be no just have fun with it it's like hey I've been a customer for X number of years how can you continue to make me happy or I'm going somewhere else do it in a positive way typically you'll throw them off if you're positive because if you come in kind of downbeat mad uh you're going to immediately turn them off and they're not going to want to help you if you come in positive you're either one going to make their day because they've had all these negative calls and two they're going to be more incentivized to help you so just some tips and a little extra bonus there I do want to say um just in that because it and I well I set Michael link so hopefully that'll be a link in the show notes is uh it reminds me of there's a book called the 40-day digital fast and there are one of the things about that is there is a lot of neat little ideas that are in there that are along the idea of making it tougher for you or less likely for you to do some of the things that you do like one of the things that I found um I struggled with but really liked was that you can put your iPhone at least and I think you can with an Android you can put it into black and white mode and it is amazing how putting your phone into black and white changes your desire to look at the phone it's like it really helps you like with a smartphone it really helps you not want to sit spend time sitting in apps and reading news and stuff like that uh now the warning is is if you're like me and you do Wordle every day you cannot tell the difference between the Wordle colors and so it makes it very very difficult to do that so literally I think impossible to do Wordle properly um so I did have to like for a while I had my phone in black and white and I had a tablet that was specifically just for my daily whle uh and then I eventually mov my phone back but it's one of those things it's like there are some there are a lot of helpful things like that that just make it so the habit that you do is either a pain or not as enjoyable and it really can help you reduce that habit and for me one of the things was is when I switched it to black and white when I was thinking I don't want to look at this as much it reminded me that I want to do that other habit I want to do some sometimes it is it's not so much it's that habit is so automatic it's helping us realize the Automation in ourselves and breaking that so we can replace it with the new habit so and that made me think of something else so if you are looking to try and like get away from eating certain foods so this was a trick I picked up years ago and put something on the food that you don't like so add like chili powder or hot sauce or something to make it a little less enjoyable and then when you look at that it's like oh no I don't like the taste of that your mind will remember that and you'll be let likely to go grab that sorry you you just kind of made me think of that okay so I'll I'll follow that up with bonus bonus is that but watch out so for example uh one of the things was is we're going through sort of our own little dietary thing and Natalie got some V8 that looks like green paint it looks like and not a pretty green it is really tasty I like I was like all right I'm going to give it a try just because cuz I need the vitamins and stuff and I tried it I was like oh wow this is is really good this is like a little treat so be careful you may especially like me I have found some of my best uh my favorite foods are throwing a couple of things that are a little different into it and so I'm like wow that's a great combination it's like that's probably how like Reese's got St you know started so it's like nobody's going to like chocolate and peanut butter and then they're like oh my gosh this is the greatest thing ever so just beware on that what you do if you do like it then forget it and then go find something that you definitely do not like that being said uh start a habit of watching us every time and even like giving us feedback that'd be awesome not just once but like a ritual of sending us emails and just what you like and don't like or how you're doing on the the challenges of the time that being said we're going to let you get back to it thank you as always for for watching we look forward to uh reaching out to you and meeting with you virtually again the rest of the year as we continue into this new season this new year of developing or stuff this is like our I think this is our eighth year now of as a as a podcast and our our second year in a a video podcast kind of thing so we are just chugging right along and we have outdone dozens and dozens and dozens of or actually probably millions of pod faded podcasts that are out there that made it to like you know 10 episodes or something like that so thank you so much for being there have a great week and we will talk to you next time [Music]
Transcript Segments
[Music]
okay
so welcome every everybody we just hit
record and I am adjusting my height so
this is a bad view of me or a worse view
of me I apologize but we were doing a
little pregaming there and we were
getting myself centered so hopefully now
you appreciate that I have got my
background properly centered on my head
if it looks like I've got stuff coming
out on my ears that is on purpose let me
just my mic a little bit hopefully that
is not going to be a problem welcome
back it is after the holidays and we are
back to building better habits
so diving right in uh two things I'm
thinking about because this is in the
New Year's resolution season as it were
um one of I thought about because and it
actually goes back to something that I
think you mentioned was in some previous
stuff you're realizing how much you
enjoy doing like UI work that there's
these things that I think one of the
things like a fun habit is is as we get
into this new year is putting a habit in
that's something fun and some things
that I've done that I've learned over
the last couple years that I think would
be uh pretty cool and maybe we start
with that one another one I thought
about that sort of came to me that would
be an interesting one we'll see how this
goes because it's like all of them um is
an anti-ab as I was saying about like
doing it is figureing out a way to break
a habit because you know New Year's
resolutions are not always about uh
adding sometimes it's about it's uh
addition by subtraction sometimes it is
being better by not doing the things
that
are
problematic um so I was thinking that
might be a good one I had one other
cookies what like step eating Christmas
cookies well very literally that could
be part that could be one of them it's
like for me it's like right now it's
like it's too much snacky
stuff and I'm trying to like I don't
know if I'm going to try to but right
now I have to because of just some of
the things I'm doing but um you know
it's like there's things like that that
are habits we have that sometimes we
don't realize them you know like a lot
of people they don't realize how much
time they have on they look at their
phone until they get to end of the week
and it says you had 15 hours of screen
time you know stuff like that or 20 or
what whatever it is um kind I like that
rocket money app that looks for all the
uh that gave even oh the the recurring
uh charges and stuff like yeah yeah I
like that
um one other that we may just put on our
thing that I thought about was a um it's
sort of in the anti i-h habits but I was
thinking about building a habit of focus
um particularly I got into it because I
was thinking about spending the last
couple days I've had several
conversations where I've been in
conversations with developers and
they've had keyboards in front of them
and realized that I am not the only one
by any stretch that hits rabbit Trails
all the time um and I think it's one of
those things that we as
a as better developers I think it's way
too often that we get ourselves
sidetracked by stuff and then we get
lost and that's why some like stand-ups
that's why stand-ups can be as difficult
as they are is because developers want
to spend an hour working on a problem as
opposed to just like get in get out go
get your stuff done and so we get
there's that drift so those are three
ideas I
had so let's see fun habits anti-
patterns or anti-h habits and building a
habit of focus better focus better
focus um let's do that last one another
time because I think if we brainstorm a
little bit we can actually come up with
a good pairing to go with that one so
that week will be yeah kind of a themed
habit of um you know building better
focus and maybe we can do something else
for meetings or productivity that
week
cool I have to
write yeah throw that in the slack I
have to write I have too many slacks up
okay so let's see we'll start with I'll
just put all three of these and we'll
know that we did the
one uh if I have
it so you want to start with fun or you
want to start with anti-h
habits let's start with anti-ab it since
we are this will be the first one
officially new uh Habit episode after
the new year uh and that'd be a good one
cuz we kind of introduced you know say
goals and that in the New Year's Day
episode uh this would be a good one to
kind of follow up with that all right
then we'll go with our
three wow there's something checked up
with my camera oh well well hello and
welcome back we are back it is now 2025
and we are actually in 2025 with you as
opposed to the last episode if you were
listening New Year's Eve we were pre-
New Year's Eve we're still here or we
just got really good images of ourselves
we survived the year as far as all of us
know and we are back to our habits
before we get too far into that I'm
gonna introduce myself because it's a
new year same old me though I just have
adjusted well for those video Watchers I
did adjust a little bit my camera and
stuff like that my name is Rob broaded I
happen to be one of the founders of
developing or building better developers
and also a founder of RB Consulting
where we are we're here to help you use
technology better through simplification
Automation and integration we take the
vast huge internet of techn technology
and help you find the best things out
there for your business for your
specific needs for your custom it's your
business your customers your unique
thing that you bring to the world and
your value proposition we find the best
way to take technology and help you
leverage that to deliver that to your
customers we're in the habits and I'm
going to talk about some new ones here
in this next couple episodes that are
things that I have built in at the
beginning of the year uh this is a great
time at the beginning of the year to
really if you maybe have got a little
rusty on your habits over the holidays
to get back into them uh one of the
things that I've done throughout uh I
did skip a couple of days of the
pomodoros but got right back into them
and it really has like I said doing like
not aiming for a full day of pomodoros
but just aiming for a couple of them has
just continued to be very effective for
me uh also the um the automation piece I
think just it's one of those we started
with seven days and then automate
something I think that is really one
that is very helpful to do on a weekly
basis is just make it part of
your schedule each week is to go find
something that you do too much of that
you can automate that you can correct or
maybe that you can just wipe out of your
life you know maybe it's something that
you don't need to do where you're being
busy instead of productive uh and I
found that to be very helpful to me so
those are a couple habits have been
useful um I think another one is uh we
talked a little bit Michael's talked
more about about the uh being tied
personally to your stuff to your code to
what you create I've been through whole
bunch of changes in the last few weeks
and some releases and things like that
and uh it's really good I don't I don't
know if it's been it's it's something I
go through enough that it's not say I've
been tied to as much but it is
very um I guess energizing almost to be
able to sit there and be able to sit
there and say like you know work with
somebody and say yeah we need to make
this better as opposed to feeling like
it's like you're taking it personally or
something like that to be like yeah
we're we're the same team we're finding
ways to make it better sort of like when
you find your bug it's a lot easier than
when if somebody else points out the bug
it's those kinds of things but being
able now to say hey this person's a
teammate and working with me has been a
it's really helping build those habits
of finding more ways more sets of eyes
so that I can be a better developer not
just by myself but so like we can be a
developer better developer with our team
and we deliver better things for our
customer good thing bad thing
interesting one New Year's Eve we had
plans we had a party we had all this
stuff we're going to go to it was we
went to the hotel they were supposed to
have this thing the pregame to it we
found out it was not going to be a thing
it was going to be basically a DJ and
that was it DJ and some interpretive
dance they weren't going to have drinks
they weren't going to have food we're
going to have to figure out all that
stuff out so we pivoted and we pivoted
to another place we were able to Uber
and it wasn't too expensive like we're
going to Uber there so the bad thing was
our initial plans were ridiculously
blown up the good thing was is that we
found another place at 7 starting at
7:00 on New Year's Eve we found another
party in Nashville which is hard to find
spots anyways because it's packed we
found another place found a party got
there a little early so we managed to
miss all the crowds and it turned out to
be a excellent New Year's Eve and a
great way to step into the the new year
also stepping into the new year across
the internet for me is Michael and I'm
going to let you go ahead and introduce
yourself hey everyone my name is Michael
Mage I'm one of the co-founders of
building better developers developer ner
I'm also the founder of Invision QA
where we help companies build software
through test driven development
approaches automation integration
testing and functional
testing looking back now we're kind of
into
2025 uh kind of looking back at the
habits we started last season or at
towards the end of the year for this
season and over the holidays I I really
implemented and followed a lot of our
habits that we talked about like the
Pomodoro techniques the list techniques
automation uh really kept me focused and
able to get work done even through the
holidays uh I was able to still take
some downtime but we really got a lot of
work accomplished uh even with taking
time off and spending time with
family good thing bad thing uh good
thing it's a new year bills are paid bad
thing tax season is coming up around the
corner and I'm struggling to figure out
what the heck I need to file for
business taxes end of the year filings
and all that fun stuff for uh to make
sure I'm compliant with the government
so they don't come knocking on my
door well I sort of teased at it and we
are going to talk about uh we actually
going to do it's almost like instead of
building better habits this episode
we're going to talk about anti-habsburg
opposite of it because I think about
this and it is particularly as I step
into the new year and I look at
resolutions one of the resolution that a
lot of people have is usually going to
be you know around I'm going to lose
weight or I'm going to get healthy and
usually those are related to things like
I'm going to give something up or I'm
going to stop something that is a bad
habit another one that you may have is
that I'm not going to spend as much time
lost on social media or something like
that so it's like I'm going to give
something away and I want to talk about
that because I think this is something
that we
don't I think simplifying our life is
something that we don't look at enough
particularly in the in the technology
realm because there's so many tools
there's so many things out there that we
want to get involved in all this
different stuff we want to touch all
these toys we want to play with them and
there's a lot of times that we we
shouldn't that these are things that are
not productive for us they do not help
us become better developers or better
people in
general and so I think that what I want
to focus on this time is how do we build
a a better negative Habit in say how do
we break a habit it's not just building
a habit but how do we break a habit how
do we one of them is I think this is the
maybe the biggest value for you as
you're you're looking at this particular
challenge we get into this is
identifying what is a negative habit I
think the first thing to do is is like
we do with a lot of these is sort of sit
back a little bit and examine your week
behind and maybe a little bit of your
week
ahead and I think more so maybe the week
behind it's like what were your plans
that you had now if last week happened
to be one of the holiday weeks you may
have to go back a couple of weeks
because things look different or maybe
in the week ahead just keep track of
like what are your plans when you start
the week and you're fresh and new and
it's like it's a whole week ahead of
mean these are the things are going to
do where does it go sideways where does
it go pear-shaped as they
say and what are maybe some of the
contributing factors to that now I think
some things that I'm going to uh suest
and some things that actually some of
these are very near and dear to my heart
uh some aren't but uh one of the things
that very well could be a problem for
you maybe if you get into like social
media you get lost in email uh other
conversation or just like you know slack
or messenger or whatever you're happen
your chat version of you know chat app
is sometimes you get lost in those uh so
looking at that I like how can I do less
of that and it may be that there's
something where you need a you need some
sort of a timer or something like that
that says like hey I'm going to have a a
timer that says hey you've spend too
much spent too much time on that there
are also a lot of apps out there that
will allow you to at the end of the week
or the end of the day or whenever you do
it look at where was your time spent and
and it maybe it was you know in a
browser on these specific tools or an
email things like that that I think are
very insightful because you'll realize
that wow I thought I spent 10 minutes an
email and you realize you actually spent
two hours looking email I brought up in
the pre-show I mentioned the idea of
like when these um you now Apple sends
through and I think Android does too
you'll get at the end of the week you
can get your screen time report and
you'll get stuff where you know you
think well I didn't spend that much time
and then your report comes back that you
spent you know 20 hours in the last week
in in screen time like oh maybe I can
cut that down what else could I do in
those 20 hours 20 hours is a lot so it's
20 you cut that in a half you've got
like a extra long day of stuff that you
can get things done
so I think that's what you do is look at
pick something pick one thing and this
sort of is in the idea of when we think
of the the world of agile and scrum one
of the things you do when you go from
Sprint to Sprint to Sprint is you pick
one thing in the next Sprint that you
want to fix and we're going to sort of
look at it this way is think of like a
sort of onewe
Sprint what is something that is a a
habit that you want to break and then
the goal each day is going to be to
identify when that habit kicks in
and to get yourself thinking that I
don't want to do that and it's basically
usually going to be a replacement habit
and I think that's the key and you find
this with all of the the addictions and
habits and stuff like that you know like
smokers when they want to quit a lot of
times they will go to instead of smoking
they're going to go have a snack or a
cup of coffee or something like that
it's the same thing and I think this is
where you're this is going to very much
I think help you in building better
habits and removing bad habits is
finding the replacement
what am I going to do instead of X
whatever my bad habit is now for me one
of the things that I do way too often
when I'm working from home is I will
take my break which is a good thing I'll
take you know half an hour hour in I'll
take a break of like five minutes the
bad thing is is that too often I will go
like hit my little snack closet I'll
have like a handful of chips or
something like that is I'll just have
something cuz it it gives me something
to do that is not sitting there in front
of the
computer and while that's not horrible
in itself it's one of those things like
I I have better things I could do now I
could replace it with like I'm going to
go check email or something like that
but I think for myself it's more of an
idea of and I've done this in the past
and and this is what is reminding me to
get back to it is the idea of instead of
walking to That Snack closet for myself
I will just walk right by the snack
closet and do maybe a lap or two around
the house go you know go look outside
check out the backyard the front yard
and things like that which is also a
very good habit from a vision point of
view because now you get from staring at
this screen for so much time and then
you turn around and now you're standing
staring at something that's you know in
the distance and it really does help
your eyes and it just helps me to get
out and have even on a rainy day it's a
different perspective and so it is a uh
a positive in sort of that endorphin
kind of thing of like hey I'm not
starring in a screen and we'll talk more
about like fun habits in another episode
but I think it's the key here is looking
at what you want to fix and thinking
about what would be a positive
replacement of that because it's usually
not going to be as simple as I need to
eliminate it it's I want to replace it
and then it also benefits you because
now you're going from a negative to a
positive and this is like now a much
bigger swing those are my thoughts on it
and this has really been something I
just pitched to Michael like right
before this so I'm really interested to
hear your thoughts on
this hey Rob uh yeah so we're talking
about anti-habsburg
the holidays and they
need to figure out you know how to cut
back well what's interesting about
rocket money and this Falls right into
this anti-ab is how much are we spending
on things that we don't think about you
know you go join a gym members or sign
up for a gym membership but never go to
the gym but you're still paying that
membership or you sign up for multiple
uh like trials over the holidays so you
could watch your holiday shows and that
and you forget to cancel them these
things just kind of Stack Up over time
and you know next thing know you're
spending $600 $800 a month on things
that you aren't using you know you're
essentially throwing money away
interestingly enough I go through this
every few years and not necessarily with
the uh credit card and memberships but I
do this with my bills so like your
credit card companies your uh internet
uh your satellite TV whatever you use
that you use a lot what is interestingly
enough and I I had a sales guy actually
tell me this is if
you get comfortable if it's like oh I
can afford that well over time policies
and billing cycles and fees change
within a service provider so what you
want to do is you want to call your
vendor you want to call your provider
and say Hey I want to talk to the
Fulfillment Department not the sales
department you want to talk to
fulfillment fulfillment has access to
every single deal throughout the entire
company across the country or across the
world wherever they're located and
what's interestingly enough is the
Fulfillment people have the ability and
typically have the um go-ahead to use
anything in their Arsenal to make the
customer happy and sealed the deal so
typically where you go to your local
like Spectrum or Verizon store and they
say oh yeah we can offer you uh you know
$25 a month for unlimited plan Etc you
called Verizon talked to the Fulfillment
they may say hey we can lock you in for
a year at $15 a month even though you're
an existing customer we can still give
you this deal now the people at the
stores can't they're not authorized but
fulfillment typically can be I did this
one year and managed to cut $11,000 off
my bills for 2 years locking in certain
payment deals now with that being said
here we are two and a half plus years
later and now I'm noticing that prices
have changed things have gone down and
I'm actually paying more for some things
that I shouldn't be so one of the anti
habits is don't get complacent with your
bills go follow up with your vendors and
say hey am I really paying the right
amount for what service I'm getting or
am I locked into some contract or even
out of contract sometimes when you're
out of contract contract the fees go up
and you don't even realize it so just
kind of one little Habit to just kind of
go through and just reset your current
bills and if you do pay for a lot of
subscriptions look at Rocket money you
know that might look at your accounts
and say hey I can cut the fat what am I
not using cancel it so that's one little
anti-ab I have the other one that we
kind of briefly talked about in the
pre-show is we're coming out of the
holiday so no it's New Year's
resolutions you know everyone's like
well I got to lose weight
let's go get a gym membership well
instead of just doing that and you
mentioned this you know people make
those resolutions to quit smoking the
problem with a lot of these goals is
that people don't find something to
replace the bad habit with a good habit
and that can come with losing weight so
one of my anti-ab goals isn't so much to
lose weight but it is to stop eating
junk food like Rob said or in my case
stop eating Christmas cookies and that
PL of ice cream that I finished off last
night because Cherry Garcia was just so
good you need to look at things in
moderation so one of my anti
anti-habsburg
I'll just reach for something healthy
apples are very good they're very sweet
oranges as well typically you can eat up
to like five apples a day and you still
get the benefit of the fruit because
apples also have fiber and your body
needs fiber so I learned that trick from
a nutritionist years ago so that's one
way you can actually cut a lot of fat so
to speak reduce a bad habit and just
introduce something healthy in your life
that still tastes good and then lastly
you know the other thing with the anti-h
habits you know with the holidays
especially New Year's
we don't know about you but in our
household we spent a little too much
drinking champagne over new years's and
the holidays so one of the things to cut
back on that isn't so much to stop
drinking wine or stop drinking uh
spirits but to cut back so instead of
that full glass of wine maybe just pour
4 oz have one or two of those you now
equal one glass of one you still have a
couple glasses you're still enjoying it
but you're doing it in moderation you're
not doing it in excess so the anti-ab
here is to just reduce a little bit of
what you're doing in excess and you
should see a positive outcome come from
that what are your thoughts on that Rob
those are excellent um I think the one
of the things there on this the latter
part is the uh we talk about momentum
and I think that's one of the things if
you can cut back like i' I've known
several people that have gone from uh
like energy drinks and sodas to pure
black straight coffee and part of the
way they do it every almost everybody
I've talked to one of the ways they do
it is they you know they go to coffee
and initially they have a lot of sugar
and cream in it and they start cutting
it back and cutting it back and
eventually get to the point where they
just they're happy having it straight
take a lot of sugar out of their their
life and things like that uh another
thing is I do I do think that it is
useful to examine your habits like
Michael talked about with it's like you
know like for me this is it was actually
very near and dear to my heart because
mentioned I got married this year
brought somebody else in I've had all of
these habits and all these automated
things that I
did and uh a lot of them are related to
it's it's things like you know it's my
cell phone bill and insurance and some
of those kinds of things that had been
that I periodically look at them but had
just gotten in the habit hadn't looked
at him in a couple of years and she
comes in and says hey you know what
about this and I'm like
I don't know like give it a shot let's
see it's probably I was like usually my
answer is like I think I talked to them
six months or a year ago but give it a
shot and it's usually like yeah I
haven't talked to him in three or four
years because time does that and there
was there's a lot of stuff that we got
out of this like cell phone in
particular we were able to uh drop we
were able to moost stuff around add
another phone get a new phone and still
cut 50 or 100 bucks a month off of our
bill I can't remember but it's one of
those saying like insurance was
insanely different there's just a lot of
things like that and part of it too is
because we you know life moves on you
have different situations but like I I
think we've talked about this before but
Michael said it is very useful to
periodically at least I would say once a
year every two years go back through
your your long-term kinds of
relationships your cell phones your
insurances um those kinds of things and
even like memberships and stuff like
that and just see like what's a deal
because it's amazing how often uh which
almost every time I think like I was an
AT&T member for years and years and
years and I think every time I called
them it was every 12 to 18 months I
would get a better deal they would they
would make some changes and I would get
a better deal out of it so definitely
you know look at the habits and just
examine them as well because it may be
where you can refine the ones you have
and just make those a little bit better
it takes us to the challenge for this
one the challenge is I really set this
up beforehand the challenge is one
identify a negative habit identify
something that you need to change what
is something in the week ahead pay
attention each day and is there
something that is not healthy that is
not productive um or something along
those or just something you don't like
to do something that makes you feel icky
something that you just you know are not
a fan of that you want to find a way to
not have that habit not have that a part
of your life and then at the the
challenge is to choose a replacement
habit and then in the next week to start
in implementing that habit and see how
that goes for you and I'm really
interested as we come to the end of the
you know end of a year and starting a
new one I'm always going to throw out
the sell it send us an email at info
developer.com but I really want to hear
like what are your resolutions and maybe
what's really fascinating to me when I
have is what is a resolution you made
last year that has
stuck and I would love to if if the
email is I couldn't I didn't make any of
them that's cool too because it's just
really interesting is I think everybody
talks about how they haven't kept their
resolutions and I'm always fascinated by
the people that have and I'm always very
proud if I've had something that has
stuck with me to be like hey I'm bucking
the trend as it were uh you can also
reach out to us on X you can reach out
to us on Facebook uh developer.com we
have contact us forms wherever you see
podcast out on YouTube you can leave
comments you can leave feedback of any
sort we love to have that particular
looking you know at this kind of time
where we're looking ahead to the year
ourselves and making plans and things
like that it's always good to have
feedback because we do this for you and
we want to make you help you be better
developers and however we can do that uh
we definitely want to look forward to
that and get those information and we
have another season coming up in the
next probably you know couple months and
uh would love to have some ideas and
thoughts on where you would like to see
us go uh in the next couple of Seasons
that being said we're going to wrap this
one up so go out there and have yourself
a great day a great week and we will
talk to you and a great year we will
talk to you next
time bonus
material so I just kind of want to
reiterate some of the things we did
mention in the podcast so you mentioned
like the screen time apps so uh apple
has a great one built in I think it's
like screen time or FaceTime no FaceTime
is the video but screen time turn it on
it's not necessarily always on by
default but turn it on kind of track
what you're doing see maybe oh I
spent 40 80 hours on Facebook all week
that means you literally were glued to
your phone while you were doing your job
or whatever it is you were doing for
that week maybe you need to cut back on
that the other thing is what's
interesting about those type of apps is
you can also restrict your viewing time
of certain apps or usage time of certain
apps uh during the day so you can stay
more focused so that's one of the other
things I'd like to throw out there and
if you're worried about how much Focus
or things you're doing as a bad habit in
your house a lot of routers you can
actually block certain websites during
certain times and schedule and it is a
pain in the ass to go in and turn that
off so it really um incentivizes you not
to do your H you know that really makes
you break to Hab because you like don't
want to keep going in all right I got to
go turn no no no and you eventually
either get frustrated with it and you
turn it off or you just live with it and
it's like okay I just broke my habit
because I put the walls up so strong
that I can't bust through the brick
anymore it's like you know put some
habits or put some barriers in place if
you're trying to break a habit and on
the flip side you know have a little fun
with this you know pick up the phone
call some of your vendors and say Hey
What Can you offer me to stay with you
I'm looking to go to someone else you
know what kind of deal can you give me
have fun with it don't necessarily go
into those mindsets of those types of
calls with ah this is going to be no
just have fun with it it's like hey I've
been a customer for X number of years
how can you continue to make me happy or
I'm going somewhere else do it in a
positive way typically you'll throw them
off if you're positive because if you
come in kind of downbeat mad uh you're
going to immediately turn them off and
they're not going to want to help you if
you come in positive you're either one
going to make their day because they've
had all these negative calls and two
they're going to be more incentivized to
help you so just some tips and a little
extra bonus
there I do want to say um just in that
because it and I well I set Michael link
so hopefully that'll be a link in the
show notes is uh it reminds me of
there's a book called the 40-day digital
fast and there are one of the things
about that is there is a lot of neat
little ideas that are in there that are
along the idea of making it tougher for
you or less likely for you to do some of
the things that you do like one of the
things that I found um I struggled with
but really liked was that you can put
your iPhone at least and I think you can
with an Android you can put it into
black and white mode and it is amazing
how putting your phone into black and
white changes your desire to look at the
phone it's like it really helps you like
with a smartphone it really helps you
not want to sit spend time sitting in
apps and reading news and stuff like
that uh now the warning is is if you're
like me and you do Wordle every day you
cannot tell the difference between the
Wordle colors and so it makes it very
very difficult to do that so literally I
think impossible to do Wordle properly
um so I did have to like for a while I
had my phone in black and white and I
had a tablet that was specifically just
for my daily whle uh and then I
eventually mov my phone back but it's
one of those things it's like there are
some there are a lot of helpful things
like that that just make it so the habit
that you do is either a pain or not as
enjoyable and it really can help you
reduce that habit and for me one of the
things was is when I switched it to
black and white when I was thinking I
don't want to look at this as much it
reminded me that I want to do that other
habit I want to do some sometimes it is
it's not so much it's that habit is so
automatic it's helping us realize the
Automation in ourselves and breaking
that so we can replace it with the new
habit
so and that made me think of something
else so if you are looking to try and
like get away from eating certain foods
so this was a trick I picked up years
ago and put something on the food that
you don't
like so add like chili powder or hot
sauce or something to make it a little
less enjoyable and then when you look at
that it's like oh no I don't like the
taste of that your mind will remember
that and you'll be let likely to go grab
that sorry you you just kind of made me
think of that okay so I'll I'll follow
that up with bonus bonus is that but
watch out so for example uh one of the
things was is we're going through sort
of our own little dietary thing and
Natalie got some V8 that looks like
green paint it looks like and not a
pretty
green it is really tasty I like I was
like all right I'm going to give it a
try just because cuz I need the vitamins
and stuff and I tried it I was like oh
wow this is is really good this is like
a little treat so be careful you may
especially like me I have found some of
my best uh my favorite foods are
throwing a couple of things that are a
little different into it and so I'm like
wow that's a great combination it's like
that's probably how like Reese's got St
you know started so it's like nobody's
going to like chocolate and peanut
butter and then they're like oh my gosh
this is the greatest thing ever so just
beware on that what you do if you do
like it then forget it and then go find
something that you definitely do not
like that being said
uh start a habit of watching us every
time and even like giving us feedback
that'd be awesome not just once but like
a ritual of sending us emails and just
what you like and don't like or how
you're doing on the the challenges of
the time that being said we're going to
let you get back to it thank you as
always for for watching we look forward
to uh reaching out to you and meeting
with you virtually again the rest of the
year as we continue into this new season
this new year of developing or stuff
this is like our I think this is our
eighth year now of as a as a podcast and
our our second year in a a video podcast
kind of thing so we are just chugging
right along and we have outdone dozens
and dozens and dozens of or actually
probably millions of pod faded podcasts
that are out there that made it to like
you know 10 episodes or something like
that so thank you so much for being
there have a great week and we will talk
to you next time
[Music]