In this episode Brandon, Kris, and Toran chat about the topic of deep work inspired by the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. We talk about what distractions look like and how we can better engage in deep work to provide the most value to our teams and organizations.
References
The Model Health Show - Deep Work (podcast)
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Toran Billups - 00:07 - Welcome to Developing Fatigue today on the show. I got my man Kris Van Houten. What's up Kris
Kris Van Houten - 00:11 - Not Too much. Just chilling in North Carolina, sitting on a windows machine. Everyone. So if the audio quality's horrible, blame Microsoft. I'm sorry
Toran Billups - 00:22 - Boom. I get a acquisition taken affecting all the great developers. That's awesome. I got a from Tennessee. We got Mr Brandon Williams. What's up, Brandon
Brandon William - 00:31 - Hey guys. It's a beautiful day here. S
Toran Billups - 00:35 - not on a windows machin
Brandon William - 00:36 - not on a windows machine. N
Toran Billups - 00:39 - I'm just gonna have to keep trolling Kris on that. So today we have an interesting topic. Uh, seems maybe on the surface, a bit less technical, but I know Kris will set the record straight as he always does. And that topic is Deep Work. Uh, and if you haven't heard about this, hopefully by the time this podcast is over, you will have your master's degree in it. So Kris, kick it off. What's Deep Work
Kris Van Houten - 01:05 - Alright, so a Deep Work is also the name of a book written by a fellow named Cal Newport. Uh, and especially if you're interested, it's actually a pretty short book. You could probably go through it within a couple of hours, but really what we're talking about Deep Work, and this is straight from the description of the book from the website and it's basically the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. Um, you know, elsewhere it says that Deep Work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive 21st century economy, uh, but also says that's because of all the technology and all the distractions that are always going on around us. Uh, a lot of people have lost their ability to go deep spending their days and they frantic blur of email and social media and not even realizing that there is a better way
Kris Van Houten - 01:54 - And so that's the TLDR on what Deep Work is. But, you know, essentially what we're wanting to talk about is like how do we, uh, you know, especially in the context of doing software development, how do we get into that mindset and that place where we can just knock out work, get into the code and, and produce some really outstanding work. Um, but I think before we get into that I really have to talk about, you know, what are, what are some of the distractions that we come across in the workplace that tend to kind of pull us out of those modes and a lot of times can prevent us from ever going into Deep Work. And so I wasn't sure I have my list, of course as I always do because I'm the list making maniac, but it wasn't sure, you know, Brandon, Toran, if you guys had anything that you can think about the top of your head that are just like, what are the big distractions, a big things that happened throughout my day that boy, your day, not just my day, that prevent you guys from going into that deep place of focus and work where you can just knock stuff out
Toran Billups - 02:59 - Yeah. I wanted Brandon to go first because what I like about the panel of course is that we have a little diversity here of workplace. In fact, uh, Brandon is not a remote worker. So I sort of lost touch with the distractions of the workplace other than I know personally that when I travel to wherever I'm working, I just don't get any real work done that week in particular. So Brandon, how do you get any work done at all
Kris Van Houten - 03:24 - Yeah, what's it like going into an office every day
Brandon William - 03:27 - So I feel like I'm an animal on display at the zoo right now? No, this is good. I'm the first to you guys. Will definitely, uh, definitely relate with a. So I have teams, I am not on a windows machine at home or at work, but we have teams and I have the outlook and so I have those two clients open up all the time and um, the, the, the deans or the or the flash up in the top right corner will get my attention. You have the quote unquote walkups, you know, people come up and they're like, hey Brandon, would you be willing to teach me about this? And um, or that one coworker that you have hate here, what I did last night, you know, and they just want to talk about, hey, my kid, you know, he rolled over for the first time in, while that's an awesome, you know, shared experience building because we're both dads
Brandon William - 04:22 - Um, it does distract you from your work and 45 minutes later you look up and you're like, well, crap, there goes my whole lunch hour. So I guess I better work through and just eat at my desk type of thing. So, um, but yeah, you definitely have a lot of that stuff
Kris Van Houten - 04:22 - Nice. Toran, you got anything for us
Toran Billups - 04:41 - Yeah, I think, uh, the, the big struggle I like Brandon was hitting on, of course there are things like email and chat and from the remote workers perspective, uh, I think it's a little more heightened for me anyway because a lot of times you feel like when someone reaches out and you're not in the office, you have this increased responsibility to very quickly get back to someone because it's as if every time they send you a chat they're sort of under their breath thinking like is he really working on his desk? So like there are times where when, you know, when I catch myself very much in a shallow workday where I'm getting zero Deep Work done, it is that I've really been replying to many different people and having essentially just full day conversations. Uh, and while those things are good, like Brandon said, even even work related good meaning, you know, we solve some, some problems a lot of times they have not allowed me to get into the problems I committed to during standup or just generally the things I was hoping or anticipating I would work on that day
Kris Van Houten - 05:44 - So yeah, yeah, no I definitely resonate with that because I'm in a totally different time zone as are you torn of the employer's main office aware of who you work for and so it's like I take lunch at a different or you know, one of the things I like about being a remote developer is that I can step away from my desk for a few minutes and just like go walk around the block as I kind of turned on a problem and if I'm like away from my desk, I'm like, what if somebody messages me it needs help or has a question. And so like I'll take my phone with me and you know, it's, it's often that, you know, I'll just go for a quick walk around the block, just kind of turn on a problem in my head and you know, and I get, Hey, can you do, you got a second? I'm like, give me 10 minutes. I'm like, they probably think I'm like at a bar or something, just kicking back with beers or something. But one thing I've been noticing a lot lately is, and I don't know if it's just like the season that we're at with my job at the moment, but like administrative tasks had just been taking up so much of my time
Kris Van Houten - 06:40 - What did that, you know, managing Jira tickets, responding to questions, writing Jira tickets responded to email. Right now we're doing reviews and so I'm getting a lot of requests to give feedback on our coworkers and so like that's taking up time and then we're planning for the next release and that's taking up a lot of time and you know, meetings obviously come along with that. And I just feel like I never actually get to sit in for my, for my computer and just open up my editor and co like that. There's so much administration going on right now that I just, I can't even get into to do work. Even though those other things are work. It's like I feel like it's not what I was hired for though. I wasn't hired to sit in these meetings all day even though you really were
Toran Billups - 07:20 - Well that's something I want to jump into real quick while you while you fill this out here, because one of the things that people might be asking is like, well Kris, great definition, love it. You're on a windows machine, but they're probably wondering, Kris hasn't told me why I would want to do Deep Work versus you know, whatever shallow work, if you call it that checking email and I just want to highlight for me that the deeper concepts and when I think about it because I listened to a podcast that's based on the book that you mentioned and what I thought really hit home for me is that the Deep Work when I actually do it, I'm sure you guys feel this. I come away from the day just feeling so fulfilled and so rewarded. Like the actual work just feels great. Like you said, it's the work I was hired to do and I did it well and for some reason when I do shallow work, all the email coordination and chatting, I kind of just leave feeling let down or like that I'm letting someone down, you know
Kris Van Houten - 08:16 - Yeah. No, I think that that's really good point. I would totally agree that those days where I'm able to just to go heads down and just crush a whole bunch of code. I stepped away from my desk at 4:30 and I'm a psych. That was an amazing day. I'm super excited. I go hang out with my kids and like, like, why are you in such a good mood? I'm like, got stuff done today, man. This is awesome
Toran Billups - 08:16 - You can tell like Deep Work
Kris Van Houten - 08:40 - It just totally changes your outlook on a day when you're actually able to make some progress and and sometimes it doesn't necessarily mean I wrote 16,000 lines of code today. You might've written 40 lines of code or less, but you're able to get into the problem or get into the challenge that you were digging into. Read the documentation and actually understand it enough to feel like, okay, like I know where I'm at, I know where we need to go and tomorrow I can pick up and do this again hopefully. And, and yeah, so it's just a, it's a benefit because it gives you, typically will result in a higher quality output, more output, typically, not always, but typically, and you're just able to get your head in the game and actually understand the context of what's going on instead of, you know, for me personally, I get into those, those, those times where I know I'm not going to have a lot of time to fix this problem, I just need to fix it so that we can ship it and that always results in a less than optimal result if it, if I'm working with a particular bug or a particular issue because it's like
Kris Van Houten - 09:41 - Hey, I had to get this done by tomorrow and so let's just figure out what's going on. Right. A little patch in there and ship it out. But if I actually had the time just to sit down and just stew on the code, look around, uh, you know, the solution could be a lot cleaner and actually potentially solve other issues and at the same time. And so I think there's, there's a lot of benefit to having the opportunity to go deep into code, um, you know, and it's worth taking the time and making the efforts to make sure you can get into those, those seasons in those times throughout your day. So I'm actually Brandon, I wasn't sure because again, you work in a somewhat different area than we do. Do you see any benefit besides just putting out better quality work or getting access to more information or more, uh, an increased ability to understand what's going on? Do you see any additional benefits to Deep Work that maybe we're not thinking of in that regard
Brandon William - 10:42 - So, uh, I've been thinking about this and I think the one scenario or a couple of scenarios that come to my mind are we have as a systems team where there's constantly things breaking, hey, my deployed doesn't work. Hey, my bill doesn't work. Why is the build server not responding? I'm yada, yada, yada, whatever. Uh, and so we get a lot of these, what we call quote unquote walkups. Somebody walks up to your desk, hey, my builds not working. Can you help me troubleshoot this? I don't really know what's going on. How do you use Loggly or you know, the logging tool that we use or what is, you know, what's our APM say? Um, and so a lot of times it's just education and so we have our own work that we need to do, like our dream for our team is that we get to go multi-region and we get to be in AWS
Brandon William - 11:37 - We have a data center in um, you know, and in one of the AWS regions and we go and have the same set of servers and another region. Um, that's a long, uh, you know, it's a ways off for us and we hope to be there one day, but that's, that's some, that's one of our bigger projects. And in order to be able to do that, we're going to have to get down and do some Deep Work. I'm a, so I'm not sure where I was going with that, but I do want to give an example of when we did Deep Work. And a lot of times I agree with you guys, it's almost just cutting off all the distractions. So we had this, we had this awesome new tool that we wanted to use and we had to, uh, we wanted to start using it, but we were aware that there was a cost in order to convert over to it and we didn't want to take, um, we didn't want to take the month to two months that I was gonna that we thought it was going to take if we just did it in the normal course of daily work
Brandon William - 12:37 - So I said, what if we went to our leaders and we said, if you give us two full days, two of us two full days and will disconnect from email, from chat, nobody will be able to bother us. We will get it done. And I said, I think we can do it. Um, we will
Toran Billups - 12:56 - And you did it
Brandon William - 12:58 - Yeah. We actually went and sold it to our leadership. We said, hey, we want to full days two of us. We're going to do this. We said we're, we will be unavailable via email, will be unavailable via chat. Um, if you, if the, if the world is on fire, you can text us, but it's like we're on vacation for the next two days and when we come back we will, you know, we're going to be like Moses coming down off the mountain with our two tablets, but we actually said we disappeared and we got 95% of the way done. We just didn't get to do the last five percent cleanup. Um, but we implemented that tool and that, to me that was like the epitome of Deep Work where we just completely. We went and we had a white boards in the whole room. So we diagrammed the problem
Brandon William - 13:46 - We're like, okay, first step is we need to do this. Second step is we need to do this. How can we parallelize us so you can work on this and I can work on this. And as we're working on it, he's like, Hey, I'm running into a problem. So then we white boarded it. We're like, okay, how do we, how do we solve this problem? And how does that impact the work that I'm doing? And then we, you know, we quickly figured that out when we went back to our Deep Work, um, we didn't even bother each other, but we're there to bounce ideas off of each other so that we didn't, if we got stuck we could get through it a lot faster. Um, and when we came back they said, so what'd you guys get done? We said, we're done. Um, and that was, that was, that was awesome because, um, they're like, you're done already. I said, yeah, we, we actually switched everything in. The best part about that as a systems team is that you guys had no idea. So that was, that was, that was, uh, like I said, the epitome of Deep Work for, for me, that's what I think o
Kris Van Houten - 14:41 - a story of a show right there. That's awesome
Toran Billups - 14:44 - That's actually really cool because in the podcast that I listened to about Deep Work and probably in a book, it kind of further goes beyond fulfillment about like, oh, why would, why is Deep Work so important in the knowledge economy that we're in right now? And it's kind of the idea like, well there's new technology especially in our field, but just new ideas generally and you need to be able to get in and learn those things quickly and the only way to really get in deep when something is cognitively demanding, like very expensive on your brainpower is to be completely distraction free. And so that's why I thought this topic was was so important for us to kind of help evangelize and the community is one way to be successful. I'll get your guys take care of. But I feel like that's where we need to transition to next
Toran Billups - 15:24 - It's like we understand the why, but one of the pro tips on how to be successful as being intentional. Like there are days where I just completely forgotten about this book and I come in like doing my shallow work, not feeling very great about it, but there are some days we're actually coming and going, man, I really want to get this done. Kind of like you were saying, Brandon, in your example where you guys were so intentional, you're actually went to leadership and they bought into it and you may, you may have situations you need to do that, but even just being intentional with yourself and saying, I know I'm in fact there's a bunch of really fun things that as programmers we can do. We can open our etsy hosts and basically turn off, you know, if your employer still lets you get to like twitter or Facebook, whatever, go in and actually shut those things down so you can't accidentally just open a browser and go to twitter.com. Like it just won't let you do that between eight and five. Do that through twitter and social media other times. And I feel like that is the thing we need to hear more from other professional programmers
Toran Billups - 16:17 - It's like a, you know how to be a really good professional and allowing yourself, giving yourself this freedom or maybe the responsibility to say it is work time, make it work time and successfully decouple your, your day to day eight to five from social media and just any. Just any distraction if you can
Kris Van Houten - 16:36 - Yeah, no, I definitely second that and you know whatever browser you're using, whether it's Firefox or chrome, whatever it, there's, there's add ons and extensions that will basically manage all that for you. And what's funny is that you find yourself being so easily distracted to go check Facebook, check Twitter, check whatever, a new sites, but like the second you, you turn on those, those blockers, it's almost like subconsciously your mind remembers that you did that and you don't even think to go check twitter anymore. It's like you just, you just are able to go heads down and you know, there might be some times where I'll like go type in the url and I get like the notification saying, Hey, you blocked this website, get back to work. I'm like, Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Okay. That door, like, it's, it happens so much less often when I have that that extension turned on and I think it's a subconscious thing
Kris Van Houten - 17:29 - Um, yeah, that was definitely one of my points I want to mention that was, you know, go, go all the way and just block certain websites, you know, um, uh, I don't get a lot of whole, I don't get a whole lot of programming advice from Twitter throughout the day. I don't get a whole lot of programming advice and tips and tricks and solutions on Facebook or news or life hack websites like that. Those are just constant distractions. Um, sometimes you financials on Reddit through Google, but that's it. I just have to find a different workaround because I don't want to get caught that rabbit hole. But um, but yeah
Brandon William - 18:06 - the question to you guys as remote workers, I can't relate to this, but do you feel like you have to, or maybe it's more than just a feeling, but do you need to have teams and outlook open all the time? So for me, um, you, you brought up this topic earlier in the week and said, hey, let's talk about Deep Work. And I thought to myself, man, I should really turn off or like just shut down teams and outlook for hours and let, you know, like an hour at a time and then every hour on the hour just check really quick and say catch up on my messages, catch up on my email, shut them down again and then work for another solid hour. Um, and I've done that a couple of times and I've, I've seen like my productivity and um, and even if there is a walk up, like somebody comes up and like, Hey, can you wait just 15 minutes and then I have my break and then I can help you type of a thing. And I'm able to keep focused on what I'm working on at that time. Um, and keep the cognitive, like all the, all the things that I'm keeping in my shared memory up, up, up in my head. Um, but I dunno, is that something that you guys can do is remote people or do you need to have those up all the time
Kris Van Houten - 19:16 - Yeah, no, it's totally funny because I'm probably gonna release some of my strategies on this episode. So if into my coworkers, listen to this, they're gonna be like, dude, I know you just me on Monday. I need help. But okay. So first thing you mentioned was like shutting down outlook and this is something kind of going back to what Toran and I were talking about a little bit ago about feeling that pressure to respond quickly and always be a beyond the ready and to, you know, to give feedback or to answer people's questions. Like I started experimenting with this just a few days ago before I even knew we were doing this episode. Like I'm just going to turn off all day and you know, if, if a, if a fire starts and our code somewhere, someone could reach out to me on teams, which, which we use for all of our, our, uh, company communication
Kris Van Houten - 20:00 - And you know, most of our email is just like corporate stuff. Anyway, so it's like I was able to close outlook and uh, I didn't check until the end of the and I'm like, wow, that was actually really refreshing. I didn't get the constant notifications of emails coming in and like this, this actually worked. Um, you know, something else that I did at the suggestion of one of our designers was basically take three days a week, so Monday, Wednesday, Friday and set a blockout time, uh, put a on my outlook calendar that is just like Kris is busy and that has to be like your head's downtime. So that way if these three, three days a week for this block of time, you won't have meetings. You won't have, you know, uh, people reaching out to you to, to chat. What I need to get into the habit of now is actually closing down teams during that time
Kris Van Houten - 20:50 - And that's like my, my last remaining anxiety. But people will think I'm not working, but it's like, but if I'm delivering work, they won't think that. So, uh, you know, that's the next step for me is to, when I entered those prescheduled times, uh, to just turn off teams chat because a teams as a few bugs where I just can't say do not disturb me because it somehow makes you available again, just randomly. Uh, but also I've noticed that whenever I entered that time, somebody pings me on teams that needs help or needs a question and so I just need to be proactive and maybe sometimes be that jerk who's just looking out for his own productivity to say like, Nope, I'm just, I'm not online right now. Um, but the other thing is, like you mentioned, Brandon, is if, especially if I'm already like heads down in a problem and someone reached out, reached out to me to ask for help or if I can pair up, I, I almost always pumped them down the day a little bit
Kris Van Houten - 21:48 - And this is partly because like, Hey, I'm working on something. I can't get torn away from it. Uh, otherwise it's going to take me another half hour to get back into it and get my head background that the problem again, but also I want to give them the time to like work on a little bit more, uh, than a part of it is. Uh, I also asked them to get me a synopsis of what problem they're trying to solve. And uh, one thing I was thinking about the other day about all this was I also want them to, if they can, like push up their code and send me a link to their branch so I can look at the code beforehand, uh, because I'm not the best pair of programmer. I'm typically one of those guys who, uh, someone asked to pair program a nice kind of sit there
Kris Van Houten - 22:33 - Like, okay, that's your problem. Uh, let me think about this. I'll get mad. She's like that. That's historically is how I am. Like, I'm not good on the spot, but it's like if I can have some time to kind of look at your code and chew on it for a little bit before we start chatting. Uh, I think I'd be able to give you a better response and, and that's just a quirk about me, but yeah, so I send to typically move people down that they say, Hey, I'm busy right now, can we chat at three a? And if that doesn't work out, it doesn't work out, but you know, that's me trying to protect my productivity so that way I don't get those distractions. I don't get pulled away from my work, you know, every hour, every hour and a half. S
Toran Billups - 23:11 - yeah. And like we talked a little bit ago, like in the mentoring juniors episode, like that's actually really good for the people who abuse you in a way by overreaching because they are forced to sit down and say, well I can't get Kris for an hour, so I might as well just go right back at this and attack it from a different perspective. They're probably gonna learn from that and then solve that problem themselves. And I think that's actually just a good thing is sometimes like speaking from myself as the junior when I had really, when the people I was reaching out to were super available agents made it like the first go to every time. Like I would, I would stumble over little pebble in the road and I was like yeah, this guy would help me every single time. So I'll just go right to him right now, you know, rather than waiting until it's an absolute cliff that I'm falling off of before I go to ask him. So almost like the boy who cried wolf or something, you know
Kris Van Houten - 23:57 - Yeah. Yeah. And I typically have like a personal policy word, like if it's one of the other two developers who's on my immediate team, you know, if they're reaching out to me is because they need help and it's typically, you know, they're just stuck on something. And so I'll typically make an exception for them, but if it's a developer on one of the other numerous teams we have in the company, those are typically the people that I owe will almost always kind of punt down the day a little bit. Um, especially because like, we're typically working in totally different code bases. And so I had to have like a cognitive shift sometimes are working in different frameworks, different. Um, you know, one projects, ember, one projects in view, one projects in cycle js. And so it's just like I had to make that cognitive shift as well is becaus
Toran Billups - 24:35 - it's in the book, they call it Attention Residue, right? The idea that your context switching and of course you come back, we all know the danger of multitasking and context switching. But when you come back, you actually still have in the back of your mind this other problem you went to go triage with someone and that can actually chew up like 10 to 20 to 30 minutes of sort of this background thread that you don't even really. You don't realize it, but you're actually just throwing away your maximum potential because of that attention residue. So that's something cool that they talk about in the book as well
Kris Van Houten - 25:07 - Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, that's. And that's partially why it takes you so much time to kind of transition from one thing to the other. So if you get done pair programming with somebody, like you said, it can take you 10, 20, 30 minutes to kind of get your head back in the game and, and get back to what you're doing, which is this. And that can all start just from one simple notification in slack or teams chat, whatever it may be that just distracts you from what you're working on it. So, you know, minimizing those notifications as much as possible is, is the goal for me and you know, I, I kinda treat notifications as someone coming up to my desk and pounding on it saying hey, I need something. Whether that's an email notification nor to or chat notification. And, you know, me saying me turning off notifications is a way of me saying like, the door of my office is locked, you can't come in right now. And so, um, and I think that's to be expected because, you know, obviously we are, we are hired, we are hired at our companies to produce, but we're also hired to mentor and coach other developers as well. Um, but we have to be able to lock ourselves away so that we can get our best work done as much as possible. Um, you know, obviously within reason. So
Brandon William - 26:19 - so question for you too. Um, if you guys are like me, which I think you are, how does it, does it almost a, there's almost pain you when you, when you turn that stuff off and you're like, but there's somebody that I could be helping right now. Or are you, you asked them to wait, does it? It's like, but I could be helping them right now. I could, I could, I could be the person
Toran Billups - 26:44 - Yeah, from the last episode. I mean, Kris is like the heart, you know, that guy just like pours it out for these folks. So I was actually going to get back to you, Brandon, because you know, of course we talked a lot about the remote pressures, but like in office you just briefly said like sometimes you'll tell people, hey, give me 10, 15 minutes. How do people respond in person to that where they're basically like, but I can't do anything for 15 minutes because I'm stuck
Brandon William - 27:09 - Uh, most of the time they're actually, uh, it's actually a good, good thing. It's like, oh, oh, they have stuff that they're working on. And, and um, I think there's a whole company culture where we actually respect that. It's like, if I can't help you right now, I'm willing to tell you. I'm willing to tell you the truth, like, I have to get, I need to get this done first and then I will help you with somebody else or help help you, help you with what you're working on. I'm helping somebody else or something or I'm helping myself
Toran Billups - 27:38 - That's what I like about pairing is a lot of times it's sort of calls out we are in Deep Work together. So when someone is doing a walkup, it's very obvious, you know, they're probably talking about a problem. They're very zoomed in on this situation that it's like the guilt is transferred then to the other person rather than you feeling like you said, Brandon, oh, was somebody needs me, you know, somebody is going to need my help if I, if I go away. Well, this other person, I was like, wow, they're really into this. I better really need their help if I'm going to break up this pair. S
Kris Van Houten - 28:10 - I'd say if I could add a couple more really quick thing, sorry, that this is a topic that I'm really passionate about. So, uh, just just how to like, get in to help contribute to those mental states where you can get some, some Deep Work done. Um, you know, I've been, I'm see people who historically just wrestles with focus and wrestles with paying attention. And so one of the things I read a lot about, and uh, I recently started reading this book called Own the Day. Own the Day, Own Your Life by Aubrey Marcus. Aubrey Marcus, you haven't heard of them, is the founder of a company called Onnit, which kind of focuses on human optimization, whatever that might be. But, um, he, you know, I've read all these books in the past and they always talk about like, you know, I having a hard time focus, what do I do in like, one of the first things they always say is, are you getting enough sleep
Kris Van Houten - 28:58 - I'm like, no, I'm a software developer. Of course they don't get enough sleep. And it's almost like, well that's not gonna work because I can't, I, I don't get the opportunity to get enough sleep. But then, you know, another thing I taught, but it's like, obviously you need to eat well and not just have a diet that consists of potato chips and bacon. Bacon's not bad, but potato chips. And I'm reading, I'm reading this book and he basically goes into a lot of this science and the data. If I'm like, this is what happens when you sleep and here's why he's asleep, here's what happens when you eat and here's what you should eat at what time does the day to make sure that your brain is functioning at the highest optimal levels and then you know, uh, here's some vials you can take, some supplements you can take just to kind of help that a little bit to make sure that your body is able to receive the nutrients from what you're eating
Kris Van Houten - 29:44 - And like, um, I read this book. I'm like, wow, this actually makes sense. I need to get more sleep. I need to start eating well. And so it's been a huge catalyst for me. And like I'm, I just started doing this, following this book pretty tightly over the last month and like I'm starting to now see the benefits of it. And uh, so I guess if you're one of those people who's read those blog posts before that said, get more sleep, eat better, and take supplements, multivitamins and what have you. And just kind of scot at it because you're like, that's not the software developer's diet. Come on, give it a shot because, you know, I noticed now that those days where I'm not getting it at least like six, seven hours of sleep that I'm just like a slug and productivity speaking wise and uh, and when I do get the sleep, I'm able to focus a lot more meetings and just work more tightly with the code that I, that I'm looking at it. So this one to kind of drop that in. There is something that's non technical. It's not a technology thing, it's just a practical life skill to kind of help you get into those states. That will be easier
Toran Billups - 30:47 - Yeah. That actually is a great lead into big wins because my big win, a very similar and it's on topic this week for, for Deep Work, is trying to change habits that I think actually form structures and it's, it's talked about, I think in the book as well as on this podcast that when we do these, uh, these very intentional things where you're at the grocery store, you're waiting for, you're waiting in line pretty much anywhere. It's so easy to just reach for a distraction, a you reach for your phone and you bring up Twitter because you got five minutes, your car stopped, so you want to be reckless and check, check your email or something for a second. And all of these things aside from being dangerous. Uh, of course if you're driving or something, don't do that. But all of these little distractions, they form a pattern that you then bring to work
Toran Billups - 31:37 - And so my big win was actually, uh, I was getting my haircut recently and it was so funny. This is gonna sound, a little judgmental, but again, take it from like I'm judging myself first and I wanted to improve me. I came in, I saw there was like five people waiting in line. They were all on their phone and I thought to myself like Deep Work, like Deep Work was on my mind and I was like, you know what I'm not going to do. I had this phone in my pocket. I could catch up on a bunch of email and reading and shallow work, but I'm not even going to look at it. I'm going to pretend not even have a cell phone and that's my big win. I actually didn't even pull my phone. I waited in line for 35 minutes. I sat down and just looked out a window. Although it just feels horribly inefficient. I felt like it was a great, a big win for me because I didn't reach for this distraction. So now at work I think about that where it's like I'm running a build or you know, I'm, I'm running something that normally takes like 30 seconds a minute ago too, of course has reached for the phone or bring up twitter for a second and then come back. But now that I'm in my, you know, intentional, Deep Work, I know that these things are actually harmful
Toran Billups - 32:36 - The pattern is harmful. So my big win, I was able to beat it and I know you can't do so. What do you got, Kris? What's your a big win for the week, man, you have
Kris Van Houten - 32:44 - No, I just want to applaud you for that because you know what happens when you start pulling your phone constantly. It actually creates these neural pathways for. It's just like, it just kind of starts happening subconsciously where it's like, I'm waiting for my 32nd bill to refresh after I saved this file. Let's check Facebook. It's like, no, just persevere and just think about something that's more productive or I don't know, pick up a book when you're sitting at the barber shop instead of looking at your phone the whole time. Uh, so I applaud you for that. That's, that's good. Good stuff, man. Uh, for myself, I say a big win is, you know, I got to fly down to, uh, our office last week down to Austin to take part in these two days of solid meetings, talking about, you know, what are the issues with our code base that we need to fix? What are some challenges that we're facing as developers, uh, what we call developer ergonomics at our company. So how do we make the developer experience a little more friendly or more useful, uh, and how can we make some improvements here and came away from those
Kris Van Houten - 33:43 - I went into those meetings with quite a bit of skepticism and a but came out of them just really encouraged and optimistic about where we're heading and basically got permission from like all the key managers in the company to say like, just start doing stuff like make a combined board of all the work that you guys want to get done and start pulling stuff into in progress. Uh, you know, so we're not going to be like the agile method we're going to do to combine style method with, with this particular work and just work on it one day a week, a couple of hours a day, whatever. Uh, and if your product managers, your team leads, have an issue with it, tell him to come talk to us and were just like, yes, this is what we've been asking for for so long. Uh, so, uh, that's, that's a big one for me. I'm looking forward to actually improving our code base and making some things are more stable and giving it some, a lawn deserved attention that it needs. So yeah, looking forward to that stuff. That's awesome man. What's up, Brandon? What'd you got
Brandon William - 34:35 - Uh, so my big win this week is, uh, where I work, we really do a good job of expressing gratitude and giving praise where praise is due. Um, so in the normal course of business doing, doing things, um, last week somebody said, hey, you know, we've, we've had this issue for a couple of days, um, and we, we just can't seem to figure it out. And so they, they pulled me in and I just started walking through the process with them, documented in the email like, hey, I'm checking this because of this and I'm checking this because of this. And um, we had it figured out and I think in a couple hours and the fix implemented, um, but then they also, you know, every week we, we give our leader like, hey, this is what I did this week
Brandon William - 35:22 - Um, so in their weekly report they, they mentioned that I helped them out on that problem and they were really grateful and my leader shared that with me and I just thought, you know, it just reminded me like people do take notice and even though I was just doing what supposed to do that, that's just my job just to help them fix problems they did notice and they were appreciative and when I notice other people, um, it does get shared with them and so it's just, it's just, uh, uh, it's just really nice to know that people appreciate, appreciate you, that they are grateful for you, um, and that everybody's on the same team and we've all got each other's back. So that was, that was really cool this week just to get that today
Toran Billups - 36:06 - Solid big wins today. Well that's awesome man guys. I've had such a blast as I always do week to week, so thanks so much for joining me guys
Kris Van Houten - 36:18 - Yeah, windows isn't that
Toran Billups - 36:21 - that's another show. Alright, we'll see you all nex
Brandon William - 36:24 - See you guys later