WEBVTT 00:00:00.001 --> 00:00:02.600 This episode is all about developer productivity. 00:00:02.600 --> 00:00:07.020 From continuous learning to get source control tips to tools and books for developers, 00:00:07.020 --> 00:00:11.540 Jay Miller from the Productivity in Tech podcast is here to share his experiences. 00:00:11.540 --> 00:00:17.220 This is Talk by Thenemy, episode 133, recorded September 17th, 2017. 00:00:17.220 --> 00:00:35.760 Welcome to Talk Python To Me, a weekly podcast on Python, the language, the libraries, the 00:00:35.760 --> 00:00:37.300 ecosystem, and the personalities. 00:00:37.300 --> 00:00:39.420 This is your host, Michael Kennedy. 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:41.400 Follow me on Twitter, where I'm @mkennedy. 00:00:41.400 --> 00:00:45.280 Keep up with the show and listen to past episodes at talkpython.fm. 00:00:45.280 --> 00:00:47.880 And follow the show on Twitter via at talkpython. 00:00:47.880 --> 00:00:51.660 This episode is brought to you by Linode and GoCD. 00:00:51.660 --> 00:00:54.180 Be sure to check out what they're offering during their segments. 00:00:54.180 --> 00:00:55.360 It really helps support the show. 00:00:55.360 --> 00:00:59.420 Before we get to the interview with Jay, I have something cool to tell you about. 00:00:59.420 --> 00:01:04.880 Most of you are aware of my courses at training.talkpython.fm, but starting today, I'm trying a new experiment. 00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:07.620 I'm offering some free, shorter courses. 00:01:07.620 --> 00:01:13.400 Check out freemongodbcourse.com to get free access to my brand new two and a half hour 00:01:13.400 --> 00:01:15.880 MongoDB course called MongoDB Quick Start. 00:01:15.880 --> 00:01:17.060 No strings attached. 00:01:17.060 --> 00:01:17.800 You just sign up. 00:01:17.800 --> 00:01:18.180 It's free. 00:01:18.180 --> 00:01:21.600 You'll learn how to get started with MongoDB and Mongo Engine from Python. 00:01:21.600 --> 00:01:25.900 And we'll build an Airbnb knockoff so you can have some realistic data models to explore. 00:01:25.900 --> 00:01:29.980 Let me know what you think of this experiment of offering shorter free courses paired with 00:01:29.980 --> 00:01:32.100 my larger, more in-depth paid courses. 00:01:32.100 --> 00:01:35.080 Just visit freemongodbcourse.com and sign up right now. 00:01:35.080 --> 00:01:36.020 Okay. 00:01:36.020 --> 00:01:36.580 Signed up? 00:01:36.580 --> 00:01:36.960 Great. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:37.780 And let's chat with Jay. 00:01:37.780 --> 00:01:39.480 Jay, welcome to Talk Python. 00:01:39.480 --> 00:01:40.440 Hey, how's it going? 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:41.320 It's really great. 00:01:41.320 --> 00:01:42.620 It's great to have you on the show. 00:01:42.620 --> 00:01:45.480 You know, you and I have exchanged some conversations on Twitter. 00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:52.680 We've talked a bit about launching your website and podcasts, and you've had me on your podcast, 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:55.460 which we're going to talk about in depth in some parts. 00:01:55.460 --> 00:02:00.740 So I'm super excited to return the favor and have you back on Talk Python because there's 00:02:00.740 --> 00:02:03.840 a ton of cool developer productivity stuff to share. 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:04.400 Absolutely. 00:02:04.640 --> 00:02:06.020 And I enjoyed our conversation. 00:02:06.020 --> 00:02:12.160 And I have to tell your listeners, if it wasn't for not only your podcast, but me stealing 00:02:12.160 --> 00:02:15.340 time from you every once in a while, I wouldn't have a podcast. 00:02:15.340 --> 00:02:17.120 So big thanks to that. 00:02:17.120 --> 00:02:18.980 That's great to hear that I helped you out. 00:02:18.980 --> 00:02:19.400 That's awesome. 00:02:19.400 --> 00:02:20.780 And you're doing a really good job with it. 00:02:20.780 --> 00:02:21.680 So we'll get into that. 00:02:21.680 --> 00:02:23.500 Before we do, what's your story? 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:25.720 How did you get into programming and get interested in Python? 00:02:25.720 --> 00:02:32.220 So interesting enough, I went to school to be a computer engineer, and that lasted about 00:02:32.220 --> 00:02:33.140 one semester. 00:02:33.140 --> 00:02:35.880 I realized I did not want to be a computer engineer. 00:02:35.880 --> 00:02:37.520 I wanted to specialize in hardware. 00:02:37.520 --> 00:02:39.700 And yeah, that changed quickly. 00:02:39.700 --> 00:02:44.360 So for a while, kids don't do this, but I dropped out of college. 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:49.540 I was working as a web designer slash developer-ish. 00:02:49.540 --> 00:02:51.360 I had a few clients. 00:02:51.360 --> 00:02:56.880 I think the largest gig I had was like a $10,000 company website redesign, which was, 00:02:56.880 --> 00:02:59.780 you know, for an 18-year-old, that's absolutely phenomenal. 00:02:59.780 --> 00:03:01.080 Yeah, that crushes it. 00:03:01.080 --> 00:03:06.980 I mean, when I was 18, I was, I think, probably, I think at that time, I was probably building 00:03:06.980 --> 00:03:09.640 decks or something like this and not particularly making a lot of money. 00:03:09.640 --> 00:03:12.740 So that makes it hard to go back to college, right? 00:03:12.740 --> 00:03:15.960 Well, it was definitely a challenge. 00:03:15.960 --> 00:03:21.340 Being a young adult, in the literal sense, a young adult, I ran into school. 00:03:21.340 --> 00:03:23.560 Some issues, just life lessons. 00:03:23.560 --> 00:03:25.080 And I wound up joining the military. 00:03:25.080 --> 00:03:29.320 I got out of the military and picked up a system administrator job because that's what I did 00:03:29.320 --> 00:03:30.300 while I was in the military. 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:32.520 And I wasn't satisfied. 00:03:32.520 --> 00:03:34.400 And I don't know. 00:03:34.400 --> 00:03:41.100 I just, I wanted to revisit this computer, like going beyond, hey, is it, did you try restarting 00:03:41.100 --> 00:03:41.300 it? 00:03:41.300 --> 00:03:43.720 And I really- 00:03:43.720 --> 00:03:44.280 How many times? 00:03:44.280 --> 00:03:45.300 Three times. 00:03:45.300 --> 00:03:45.960 At least twice. 00:03:47.200 --> 00:03:52.520 But what I got to was, I didn't want to necessarily make the hardware, but I did want to make 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:53.140 it sing. 00:03:53.140 --> 00:03:55.980 And that was, I used to be a guitarist. 00:03:55.980 --> 00:04:00.720 And that was like, I grew up in a blues-infested area and a jam band-infested area. 00:04:00.720 --> 00:04:04.060 And a lot of musicians would say, you got to make the guitar sing. 00:04:04.060 --> 00:04:06.500 And that's what I wanted to do with my computer. 00:04:06.500 --> 00:04:10.600 I wanted to build things that were, you know, when people saw it, they go, wow, that's awesome. 00:04:11.040 --> 00:04:15.820 And I tried every programming language I could think of, you know, all of the basics. 00:04:15.820 --> 00:04:16.800 I started with Ruby. 00:04:16.800 --> 00:04:20.680 I went to JavaScript and Ruby was okay. 00:04:20.680 --> 00:04:22.140 And JavaScript was confusing. 00:04:22.140 --> 00:04:24.960 And then I said, hey, I'm going to figure something out. 00:04:24.960 --> 00:04:26.140 So I jumped into Python. 00:04:26.140 --> 00:04:29.380 At that time, I joined my first online community to learn how to program. 00:04:29.380 --> 00:04:31.140 And the rest is history. 00:04:31.140 --> 00:04:34.560 It's been five years of just nonstop Python after that. 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:35.440 Yeah, that's really cool. 00:04:35.440 --> 00:04:38.400 And you're doing things like Flask and, are you also doing MongoDB? 00:04:38.680 --> 00:04:41.100 Yeah, yeah, doing Flask and MongoDB right now. 00:04:41.100 --> 00:04:43.460 Yeah, yeah, that's definitely fun technologies. 00:04:43.460 --> 00:04:45.080 Well, really cool, really cool. 00:04:45.080 --> 00:04:50.000 I completely connect with this idea of like, I want to make the computer sing. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.160 I mean, there's so much incredible technology around us, right? 00:04:53.160 --> 00:04:58.180 We have the internet, the web, apps, just the desktops and everything. 00:04:58.180 --> 00:05:05.560 And like, being just a consumer of it seems so, like you're just missing out on so much of it, right? 00:05:05.700 --> 00:05:11.760 There are so many times that I see something that I've purchased through the app store or just online. 00:05:11.760 --> 00:05:14.940 And I go, wow, I really wonder how they made that. 00:05:14.940 --> 00:05:16.840 And that is becoming less and less now. 00:05:16.840 --> 00:05:19.980 I can really start to think about how they did make those things. 00:05:19.980 --> 00:05:23.040 And then I try to make my own just for fun. 00:05:23.040 --> 00:05:24.080 Yeah, that's great. 00:05:24.080 --> 00:05:25.000 That's really, really nice. 00:05:25.100 --> 00:05:31.760 I think one of the actually cool ways to learn programming is to pick something you see and go, I'm going to try to build like a knockoff of that. 00:05:31.760 --> 00:05:35.380 Not to like release it, but just to see like what the experience is like. 00:05:35.380 --> 00:05:36.040 That's fun. 00:05:36.040 --> 00:05:40.980 So let's talk about productivity and your project pit. 00:05:40.980 --> 00:05:42.620 Tell us a little bit about what it is. 00:05:42.780 --> 00:05:48.020 Productivity and tech started last year as just a podcast. 00:05:48.020 --> 00:05:55.640 One of the things that I had learned about myself is the only thing I liked more than computers was doing a good job. 00:05:56.320 --> 00:06:05.820 And having others, and I'll say that I did have a lot of social anxiety and self-esteem issues that I'm dealing with now that Pitt has helped with. 00:06:05.820 --> 00:06:11.640 But because of that, I always wanted to do the best job that I could for others. 00:06:11.640 --> 00:06:14.660 And when I got out of the military, I struggled a lot. 00:06:14.660 --> 00:06:18.460 And I thought I was going to get fired from my first job. 00:06:18.460 --> 00:06:19.900 You know, in the military, you can't get fired. 00:06:19.900 --> 00:06:25.240 So, you know, when you get that corporate job, your only fear is, you know, I'm just married. 00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:28.620 I'm starting a life, you know, for my family. 00:06:28.620 --> 00:06:30.240 I have to do a good job. 00:06:30.240 --> 00:06:33.160 And I kind of created this system for myself. 00:06:33.160 --> 00:06:35.020 And I don't want to bore you with the details in that. 00:06:35.020 --> 00:06:41.780 But in the end, when I started looking at the different techniques that I was implementing, I learned that they had names. 00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:45.060 You know, there were things like the Eisenhower Matrix and GTD. 00:06:45.060 --> 00:06:47.400 You know, I didn't know about these things before. 00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:52.660 So I really wanted to learn as much as I could and develop, you know, my own systems. 00:06:52.660 --> 00:06:57.760 Kind of like what I mentioned before, when you see the apps and you just go, wow, I really want to do something like that, you know, for myself. 00:06:57.760 --> 00:07:00.200 Well, that was productivity in tech. 00:07:00.200 --> 00:07:09.440 It was me coming up with ways to make others better, just as I had helped to make myself better. 00:07:09.440 --> 00:07:12.840 And I did that by the only way that I knew how. 00:07:12.840 --> 00:07:13.820 I've always been a talker. 00:07:13.820 --> 00:07:17.420 I've always been someone that can strike up a conversation with anyone. 00:07:17.420 --> 00:07:19.000 So I got online. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:26.580 I said, hey, I'm doing a podcast about the everyday person and how they're productive and the phenomenal people and how they're productive. 00:07:26.580 --> 00:07:29.820 And I want to meet somewhere in the middle and figure that out. 00:07:29.820 --> 00:07:30.680 Yeah, for sure. 00:07:30.720 --> 00:07:40.060 How much of this was inspired by you seeing people who are doing just incredible amounts of productive things. 00:07:40.060 --> 00:07:42.820 So a couple examples come to mind really quick. 00:07:42.820 --> 00:07:48.160 Like on Python Bytes, we covered what Kenneth Wrights did last week. 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:51.140 And that was like four or five projects that were released. 00:07:51.140 --> 00:07:54.740 Or you think about people like Elon Musk. 00:07:54.740 --> 00:07:59.420 Yeah, it's like, well, you know, we're going to start a space company and a car company. 00:07:59.420 --> 00:08:00.000 Why not? 00:08:00.000 --> 00:08:00.260 Right. 00:08:00.260 --> 00:08:09.400 Like how much of it was inspired by like those things and how much of it was just like, I'm not feeling like my effort day to day is generating stuff. 00:08:09.400 --> 00:08:09.600 Right. 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:13.020 Like I feel like I'm spending all my time in email and I'm never like getting anything done. 00:08:13.020 --> 00:08:14.600 Like what was the genesis there? 00:08:14.600 --> 00:08:20.320 I think the biggest was my own frustrations with myself and finding ways to improve myself. 00:08:20.320 --> 00:08:24.820 And I always reach for the people that I want to emulate. 00:08:24.820 --> 00:08:28.560 And we all want to build the next boring company or the next Tesla. 00:08:28.560 --> 00:08:31.220 But I had to be realistic. 00:08:31.220 --> 00:08:34.940 And I think that's where a lot of people in the productivity space, you know, fail. 00:08:34.940 --> 00:08:38.440 You know, they can tell you how to be productive as a productivity guru. 00:08:38.800 --> 00:08:41.220 You know, they're going to tell you how productivity gurus are productive. 00:08:41.220 --> 00:08:44.280 They can't tell you how a software developer is productive. 00:08:44.280 --> 00:08:47.120 They can't tell you how a system administrator is productive. 00:08:47.120 --> 00:08:57.900 So I wanted to find the people in those fields, the people that would say I'm an equal or one step above where I am now and learn how they're productive. 00:08:57.900 --> 00:09:00.500 That way I can actually apply that to my day to day. 00:09:00.500 --> 00:09:01.800 I think that makes a lot of sense. 00:09:01.800 --> 00:09:06.360 Like the specialization and trying to connect to somebody working in your space, right? 00:09:06.400 --> 00:09:14.920 Like connecting with a developer who is figuring out these things and working on these things and not somebody who spends most of their time like coaching executives. 00:09:14.920 --> 00:09:16.500 You know, things like that, right? 00:09:16.500 --> 00:09:21.520 I mean, that's fine and all, but that's not necessarily going to help you like be more productive with Git, for example. 00:09:21.520 --> 00:09:22.240 Not at all. 00:09:23.020 --> 00:09:23.880 Yeah, not at all. 00:09:23.880 --> 00:09:29.900 I want to save the actual podcast, some conversations about some of the particular podcasts for later. 00:09:29.900 --> 00:09:38.240 But what are some of the things that you've learned from doing productivity in tech like that have helped you that maybe really resonated with you? 00:09:38.240 --> 00:09:43.260 A lot of it is just the differences in what productive looks like. 00:09:43.680 --> 00:09:51.060 For instance, when you look at people like Mike Rohde, who is a software consultant slash sketchnote master. 00:09:51.060 --> 00:09:55.400 You know, he had an issue with writing long, detailed notes. 00:09:55.400 --> 00:10:00.160 So for him, the best productive method was simplifying it and going to this. 00:10:00.360 --> 00:10:05.600 I'm going to draw very few things in permanent marker and they're going to be rough. 00:10:05.600 --> 00:10:09.500 They're going to be down and dirty, but they're going to help me retain information. 00:10:09.500 --> 00:10:15.000 And the other idea is, you know, just the sense of being a real developer. 00:10:15.940 --> 00:10:21.900 I, to this day, I have never had a official like software developer role. 00:10:21.900 --> 00:10:28.360 That's actually my next goal is to transition into that space and to become a software developer. 00:10:28.360 --> 00:10:39.200 But when I look at the things that I've done, you know, building a podcast, as we'll probably talk about later, building it all from scratch, running Python and Flask and MongoDB. 00:10:39.200 --> 00:10:45.100 A lot of people look at the things that I've done and said, you've been a real developer for a couple of years now. 00:10:45.360 --> 00:10:47.080 And that's very rewarding. 00:10:47.080 --> 00:10:58.780 And seeing that you don't necessarily have to have the job title to have the knowledge and the skill set and to have people that do have the title acknowledge me as a peer. 00:10:58.780 --> 00:11:01.120 You know, that's just very, very rewarding. 00:11:01.120 --> 00:11:01.720 Yeah, yeah. 00:11:01.720 --> 00:11:02.320 That's really awesome. 00:11:02.320 --> 00:11:05.600 So like day to day, you're still doing a little more system admin type stuff. 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:12.000 But when you come home and get to do whatever you want to work on, that's a little more web development type of things. 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:12.660 Is that right? 00:11:12.660 --> 00:11:13.320 Absolutely. 00:11:13.780 --> 00:11:23.460 There's I think we're on like the fourth consecutive week that there's been a change on the website, either, you know, a visual change or a code change. 00:11:23.460 --> 00:11:25.140 This week there was both. 00:11:25.140 --> 00:11:30.280 So, yeah, that I go home and it's like my second job starts. 00:11:30.500 --> 00:11:33.340 Yeah, it's tough to find that energy to keep going. 00:11:33.340 --> 00:11:35.720 Like what motivates you to do that? 00:11:35.720 --> 00:11:40.300 Because I know a lot of times you come home from work and it's been a long day. 00:11:40.300 --> 00:11:44.940 There's traffic and you're just like, I just need to sit for a while. 00:11:44.940 --> 00:11:47.440 And then you got to do the dishes and you're like, now I'm really done. 00:11:47.440 --> 00:11:47.940 Like so. 00:11:48.220 --> 00:11:52.240 So where do you find the energy and the motivation to like sort of do these two things in parallel? 00:11:52.240 --> 00:11:54.000 A lot of it is just because it's fun. 00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:57.640 I think that that is a really big piece of the puzzle. 00:11:57.640 --> 00:12:01.980 If you're not having fun with what you're doing, then figure out a way to either make it fun or stop doing it. 00:12:02.460 --> 00:12:05.920 But the other part of it is I know what my goal is. 00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:11.600 You know, this year I've set some pretty interesting goals and we're coming to the end of the year now. 00:12:11.600 --> 00:12:16.180 And a few of them haven't been met yet, but I know I'm still working on them. 00:12:16.180 --> 00:12:17.300 I'm making forward progress. 00:12:17.300 --> 00:12:20.280 And as long as I can continue to make forward progress, I'm happy. 00:12:20.280 --> 00:12:25.500 But I do know that when you're tired and you're frustrated, sometimes you have to take a break. 00:12:25.500 --> 00:12:28.380 But then other times you have to remember, like, why am I tired? 00:12:28.380 --> 00:12:29.660 Why am I frustrated? 00:12:29.660 --> 00:12:32.080 And what how do I fix that? 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:39.720 And part of it is, hey, I'm going to build, you know, pit into this large community that who knows, maybe one day that will be my job. 00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:40.380 Yeah, absolutely. 00:12:40.380 --> 00:12:41.500 And it totally could. 00:12:41.500 --> 00:12:44.060 I mean, you're definitely growing it in a great way. 00:12:44.060 --> 00:12:53.060 And I think there's this, you know, we often get told to pursue our passion and follow the things that we are like are our hobbies or whatever. 00:12:53.060 --> 00:12:55.480 And there's some truth and value to that. 00:12:55.520 --> 00:13:04.820 But there's also like there's just a lot of joy from actually like taking something that I'm good at and finding a way to provide that to the world. 00:13:04.820 --> 00:13:05.540 Right. 00:13:05.600 --> 00:13:13.240 And that that becomes fun and that becomes amazing, even if it wasn't necessarily like what you did in your spare time originally or something. 00:13:13.240 --> 00:13:13.240 Right. 00:13:13.240 --> 00:13:13.520 Right. 00:13:13.520 --> 00:13:15.860 So I think there's there's a lot to motivate people there. 00:13:15.860 --> 00:13:16.400 Absolutely. 00:13:16.400 --> 00:13:25.440 And if you're not doing something that's fun or challenging to yourself, then say no to some of the things that aren't and just start doing them because it's extremely rewarding. 00:13:25.440 --> 00:13:26.100 Yeah, absolutely. 00:13:26.100 --> 00:13:26.580 All right. 00:13:26.580 --> 00:13:29.980 So that's a good place to segue into a couple of your tips. 00:13:29.980 --> 00:13:34.380 Let's go with 10, 10 of your tips for developer productivity. 00:13:34.380 --> 00:13:36.920 And so let's just you gave me a nice list here. 00:13:36.920 --> 00:13:37.660 Let's just go down the list. 00:13:37.660 --> 00:13:38.720 Some of these are very technical. 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:42.780 Some of these are more soft skills like say no, for example, things like that. 00:13:42.780 --> 00:13:43.020 Right. 00:13:43.020 --> 00:13:44.300 So what do you got? 00:13:44.300 --> 00:13:48.320 Well, the one that I've learned the most recently is embrace get fetch. 00:13:48.320 --> 00:13:53.060 And I say that kind of as a reminder to me to look before you leap. 00:13:53.320 --> 00:13:57.720 You know, a lot of times I will go, oh, it's going to be easy, blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:13:57.720 --> 00:14:01.020 And then I basically open my mouth faster than my brain thinks. 00:14:01.020 --> 00:14:03.040 And then I start working on it. 00:14:03.040 --> 00:14:06.380 And it's like, oh, no, I probably shouldn't have done this to myself. 00:14:06.380 --> 00:14:17.380 So taking the time to look and examine what is actually happening and what will be required of you, in this case, kind of like how you would use get fetch instead of get pull. 00:14:17.380 --> 00:14:20.960 That way you can see the changes that have been made so you don't make bigger mistakes. 00:14:20.960 --> 00:14:22.720 That can really help. 00:14:22.960 --> 00:14:23.840 Yeah, that's for sure. 00:14:23.840 --> 00:14:32.040 And, you know, the more you work in a team, things like get fetched to see what the consequences of doing, you know, giving out the latest is going to do is it's really interesting. 00:14:32.040 --> 00:14:37.560 And definitely branches, like feature branches, I think are really awesome for this kind of stuff. 00:14:37.560 --> 00:14:43.900 If you want to try something out, take the moment to think ahead and create a branch that's like, I'm going to try this thing out branch. 00:14:43.940 --> 00:14:46.240 And if you like it, you can do a PR or merge it back. 00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:49.500 But you don't have to, like, commit to breaking your code. 00:14:49.500 --> 00:14:53.820 You can always roll it back, but you might want to save it or you might want to slowly evolve it or whatever, right? 00:14:53.820 --> 00:14:57.000 I've definitely made my own local test this branch. 00:14:57.000 --> 00:15:00.480 And they rarely make it into master. 00:15:00.480 --> 00:15:04.880 But when they do, I'm really happy that I split it out first. 00:15:04.880 --> 00:15:05.780 Yeah, absolutely. 00:15:06.640 --> 00:15:15.480 So one that you did bring up, and I think the more successful you are as a developer, the worse that this plagues you. 00:15:15.480 --> 00:15:18.680 You say, try to say no to more. 00:15:18.680 --> 00:15:19.420 Absolutely. 00:15:19.420 --> 00:15:21.240 And I'm sure we'll talk about this later, too. 00:15:21.240 --> 00:15:23.480 But I'm actually working on a course about this. 00:15:23.480 --> 00:15:32.860 A lot of people are eager, especially in the junior developer role, like where I am looking now just for any kind of developer role. 00:15:32.860 --> 00:15:34.640 It's, oh, can you do this? 00:15:34.640 --> 00:15:35.220 Can you do this? 00:15:35.220 --> 00:15:35.560 Can you do this? 00:15:35.560 --> 00:15:38.340 You see all of these different items. 00:15:38.340 --> 00:15:40.920 And it kind of goes in with another idea of specializing. 00:15:40.920 --> 00:15:50.580 But if you try to do everything, it's kind of like that, I forgot what that saying that says, you know, be a master of one and not a generalist. 00:15:50.580 --> 00:15:54.900 Like, focus on one thing and then basically tune out everything else. 00:15:54.900 --> 00:16:00.140 Like, I've had people go, oh, well, how come you don't use Pelican or how come you don't use Pyramid or how come you don't use Django? 00:16:00.140 --> 00:16:03.400 And it's like, it's not that I don't want to use those things. 00:16:03.400 --> 00:16:07.400 It's just right now I'm focusing on the things that I am using. 00:16:07.620 --> 00:16:11.900 So I'm going to say no to completely like porting my code over to Django. 00:16:11.900 --> 00:16:15.200 And I'm going to say no to porting it over to React or React Native. 00:16:15.200 --> 00:16:18.740 And I'm just going to focus on what I'm currently doing. 00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:19.860 Yeah, that's a good point. 00:16:19.860 --> 00:16:27.100 And I find, like, I'm super susceptible to this because I like to help people out and I don't like to say no in particular. 00:16:27.100 --> 00:16:29.700 So if I can help someone and I can do it quick, it's fine. 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:34.800 But a lot of times I'll end up committing to projects that actually turn out to be bigger than I thought they were. 00:16:34.940 --> 00:16:40.280 And then I end up honestly doing not as good of a job for all the projects I'm involved in. 00:16:40.280 --> 00:16:44.320 So it's really hard to say no some of the time. 00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:48.140 But, you know, really stay focused is the goal, right? 00:16:48.140 --> 00:16:49.880 If you've got a goal, go for it. 00:16:49.880 --> 00:16:50.400 Absolutely. 00:16:50.400 --> 00:16:52.820 And there's nothing wrong with helping others. 00:16:52.940 --> 00:16:58.640 You know, I think one of the best examples of this is imagine that you're in a plane that's about to go down. 00:16:58.640 --> 00:17:04.900 The first thing that they always tell you to do when the little masks come down is to put the mask over your own face. 00:17:04.900 --> 00:17:11.780 Because if you spend all your time trying to put a mask on someone else's face, you'll probably black out, pass out, and then die in the fire. 00:17:11.780 --> 00:17:19.480 So you need to make sure that you're taken care of before you go out and expend all of your energy trying to help others. 00:17:19.480 --> 00:17:24.500 Not to say that you shouldn't help them, but make sure that you're in a position to where you can actually help them. 00:17:24.500 --> 00:17:25.760 Yeah, that's a good analogy. 00:17:25.760 --> 00:17:26.280 I like it. 00:17:26.280 --> 00:17:29.480 So another one that you have is to specialize. 00:17:29.480 --> 00:17:33.740 And this is a little bit like that I want when I'm getting started. 00:17:33.740 --> 00:17:37.420 I want to just say yes to any project and help anything and do whatever I can. 00:17:37.420 --> 00:17:44.580 You want to kind of like you said with Django and Flask and Django and Pyramid and all the different technologies you named. 00:17:44.580 --> 00:17:49.060 It seems valuable to like learn all those different technologies, right? 00:17:49.060 --> 00:17:52.920 Yeah, and I mean it is valuable to have an understanding of them. 00:17:52.920 --> 00:17:55.060 I mean I can put up a site in Pelican. 00:17:55.060 --> 00:17:56.800 I have a site that's built in Pelican. 00:17:56.800 --> 00:18:03.120 But I'm not spending hours upon hours each day trying to figure out how to make the best Pelican site ever. 00:18:03.120 --> 00:18:13.260 Instead, I'm focusing on the stacks that I use and the stacks that really help me to achieve the goals that I have, which right now are Flask and Mongo. 00:18:13.260 --> 00:18:24.720 So when I learn something new in Mongo, when I learn about pagination, when I learn about creating forms or processing credit card information, these are all things that I need to focus on. 00:18:25.120 --> 00:18:36.040 And if I try to learn absolutely everything else in the development space, I could miss out on some of the things that could really actually be beneficial to me. 00:18:36.040 --> 00:18:37.200 Yeah, it's a good point. 00:18:37.360 --> 00:18:44.860 It's like on one hand, there is certainly a lot of benefit to having a broad skill set. 00:18:44.860 --> 00:18:46.680 And people should have a broad skill set. 00:18:46.680 --> 00:18:51.080 But there should be something that you're really good at. 00:18:51.080 --> 00:18:54.920 And that can be kind of what you lever off of, right? 00:18:55.000 --> 00:19:03.540 So if you know a little bit of Django, a little bit of Flask, a little bit of Pyramid, a little SQLAlchemy, a little Mongo, and somebody says, hey, I need to hire somebody. 00:19:03.540 --> 00:19:07.800 I need to find somebody who can really solve this problem or have a performance in SQLAlchemy. 00:19:07.800 --> 00:19:12.420 Like, they're not going to go to the guy or girl who knows a little bit about SQLAlchemy. 00:19:12.420 --> 00:19:15.100 They're going to go to the person who knows a whole lot about it. 00:19:15.100 --> 00:19:20.080 You know, Mike Baer, the guy who created it, or some other people who are like really do a lot of stuff in that, right? 00:19:21.120 --> 00:19:24.300 This portion of Talk Python To Me is brought to you by Linode. 00:19:24.300 --> 00:19:28.340 Are you looking for bulletproof hosting that's fast, simple, and incredibly affordable? 00:19:28.340 --> 00:19:34.500 Look past that bookstore and check out Linode at talkpython.fm/Linode, L-I-N-O-D-E. 00:19:34.500 --> 00:19:38.840 Plans start at just $5 a month for a dedicated server with a gig of RAM. 00:19:38.840 --> 00:19:41.040 They have 10 data centers across the globe. 00:19:41.040 --> 00:19:43.780 So no matter where you are, there's a data center near you. 00:19:43.780 --> 00:19:47.840 Whether you want to run your Python web app, host a private Git server, or a file server, 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:52.900 you'll get native SSDs on all machines, a newly upgraded 200 gigabit network, 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:57.120 and 24-7 friendly support, even on holidays, and a seven-day money-back guarantee. 00:19:57.120 --> 00:20:00.580 Want a dedicated server for free for the next four months? 00:20:00.580 --> 00:20:04.940 Use the coupon code PYTHON17 at talkpython.fm/Linode. 00:20:06.420 --> 00:20:11.460 There's a really interesting analogy that John Sonmez gave on my show when I had him back. 00:20:11.460 --> 00:20:13.060 I think it was episode 71. 00:20:13.060 --> 00:20:14.660 I know he was on your show as well. 00:20:14.660 --> 00:20:23.340 He said, like, look, if you get arrested for murder, you want the lawyer that does murder trial, 00:20:23.340 --> 00:20:25.620 you know, murder criminal defense trials. 00:20:25.620 --> 00:20:31.380 You don't want the divorce lawyer that sometimes maybe also studied criminal law. 00:20:31.500 --> 00:20:33.560 You want the person who just does that, right? 00:20:33.560 --> 00:20:39.260 And I think if you're really trying to, like, lever your career up, like, another notch, right? 00:20:39.260 --> 00:20:44.060 Having one of those things where, like, if you need this, you go to you, right? 00:20:44.060 --> 00:20:45.240 That's really powerful. 00:20:45.240 --> 00:20:47.220 Then you can kind of broaden out from there. 00:20:47.220 --> 00:20:47.780 Absolutely. 00:20:48.060 --> 00:20:52.680 And that's not to say that, you know, shut the window on everything else either, because 00:20:52.680 --> 00:20:57.680 there have been times where I've looked at, for instance, right now I'm looking at building 00:20:57.680 --> 00:21:03.020 an app in Swift, and it's kind of like a little side project to help me, you know, forget about 00:21:03.020 --> 00:21:05.920 things whenever I'm banging my head up against the wall. 00:21:05.920 --> 00:21:12.140 But as I learn other things with just the intention of, like, okay, now how can I apply this to the 00:21:12.140 --> 00:21:13.960 thing that I'm really, really good at? 00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:17.480 You know, how can I take the lessons that I've learned in Swift or the lessons that I've learned? 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:22.300 I go to a monthly JavaScript meetup just so I can go, I think I know how to do this in 00:21:22.300 --> 00:21:23.900 Python, and it's actually a little bit better. 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:26.280 And then go and do that thing. 00:21:26.280 --> 00:21:30.120 Not to say, you know, JavaScript's bad or anything, but there have definitely been moments where 00:21:30.120 --> 00:21:38.100 I go, I wonder how I can apply this to my existing projects so that I'm better in the 00:21:38.100 --> 00:21:40.660 areas that I'm really trying to excel in. 00:21:40.660 --> 00:21:42.200 Yeah, it's a huge tension, right? 00:21:42.200 --> 00:21:47.000 Between getting better at the thing you're good at and that you're really doing versus broaden 00:21:47.000 --> 00:21:49.920 it out so that you can reapply it to that, right? 00:21:49.920 --> 00:21:50.960 So, so very cool. 00:21:50.960 --> 00:21:55.060 So that kind of leads us into another one of your suggestions is always be learning. 00:21:55.060 --> 00:21:55.660 Absolutely. 00:21:55.660 --> 00:21:56.900 I totally agree with this. 00:21:56.900 --> 00:21:57.320 Yeah. 00:21:57.320 --> 00:22:02.780 So for those that haven't talked with me ever, one of the things that most people don't know 00:22:02.780 --> 00:22:04.640 about me is I'm also a licensed minister. 00:22:04.640 --> 00:22:07.500 I don't practice, but I am licensed. 00:22:07.620 --> 00:22:13.220 And I did study some ministry a little bit, not formally at the collegiate level, but I've 00:22:13.220 --> 00:22:15.360 been under the tutelage of other ministers. 00:22:15.360 --> 00:22:21.880 And for me, I've always, people have always said like they love my sermons because I always 00:22:21.880 --> 00:22:22.860 come from left field. 00:22:22.860 --> 00:22:25.780 And, you know, a lot of people think that's weird. 00:22:25.780 --> 00:22:28.340 It's like, you know, you could be talking about something and then all of a sudden you're 00:22:28.340 --> 00:22:29.700 like, oh, that reminds me of this one time. 00:22:29.840 --> 00:22:34.480 And like you say this really austere, you know, you tell this story that's just like, 00:22:34.480 --> 00:22:35.320 like what? 00:22:35.320 --> 00:22:43.000 But at the same time, if you are going through your life experiences and you go, what can 00:22:43.000 --> 00:22:43.960 I learn from that? 00:22:43.960 --> 00:22:45.520 You know, what experience can I learn from that? 00:22:45.520 --> 00:22:49.200 What can I learn from this conversation that I'm having with Michael right now? 00:22:49.200 --> 00:22:51.760 You know, that's one of the things I love about the podcast. 00:22:51.760 --> 00:22:54.920 You know, with Pitt, I'm learning from my guest. 00:22:54.920 --> 00:22:58.220 I never try to be the central topic. 00:22:58.220 --> 00:23:00.580 I don't want them to talk about me. 00:23:00.580 --> 00:23:03.980 I want to talk about them because I want to learn from their experiences. 00:23:03.980 --> 00:23:05.640 Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. 00:23:05.640 --> 00:23:06.360 The podcast bit. 00:23:06.360 --> 00:23:11.420 I feel like I'm the first most honored guest because I actually get to ask the questions. 00:23:11.420 --> 00:23:12.360 It's awesome. 00:23:12.360 --> 00:23:15.220 But I feel like always learning is super important. 00:23:15.220 --> 00:23:20.040 Like you said, you go to these JavaScript meetups just to like get a different angle and 00:23:20.040 --> 00:23:20.860 things like that. 00:23:20.860 --> 00:23:27.780 Like I definitely attribute much of my success as a developer from the fact that 00:23:27.780 --> 00:23:32.960 probably, you know, almost every week I was either reading a book or taking an online course 00:23:32.960 --> 00:23:38.720 or doing some thing to just say, all right, what new thing can I learn this week? 00:23:38.720 --> 00:23:41.180 And how does it apply to what I've been doing? 00:23:41.180 --> 00:23:43.700 And it seems so small, right? 00:23:43.700 --> 00:23:48.220 Like, oh, I could do this loop better or I could access the database this way or whatever. 00:23:48.220 --> 00:23:52.060 But if you do that every week for years, it really, really adds up. 00:23:52.060 --> 00:23:52.460 Definitely. 00:23:52.460 --> 00:23:57.700 And you kind of hit a good point there that you're not learning all the time through the 00:23:57.700 --> 00:23:58.400 same method. 00:23:58.400 --> 00:24:02.480 You're not saying, I'm just going to go do a podcast and whatever I learned from the podcast, 00:24:02.480 --> 00:24:03.100 that's it. 00:24:03.100 --> 00:24:05.220 It's no, you're working on projects. 00:24:05.220 --> 00:24:06.000 You're reading books. 00:24:06.000 --> 00:24:07.900 You're helping others. 00:24:07.900 --> 00:24:10.260 You know, one of the best ways to learn is to actually teach. 00:24:10.260 --> 00:24:11.700 You're building courses. 00:24:11.700 --> 00:24:14.200 I'm sure you've learned a lot just doing courses. 00:24:14.200 --> 00:24:15.000 I know I have. 00:24:15.120 --> 00:24:15.560 Yeah, absolutely. 00:24:15.560 --> 00:24:21.680 So another thing that's really powerful and it works in both directions, I think, is you 00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:23.620 say there's mentorship and accountability. 00:24:23.620 --> 00:24:28.960 And mentorship is definitely really important for new people, but it could be your experience 00:24:28.960 --> 00:24:31.580 and you're helping a new person or you could be that new person receiving help. 00:24:31.580 --> 00:24:33.400 And the best part is sometimes you're both. 00:24:33.400 --> 00:24:35.940 And that is always interesting. 00:24:35.940 --> 00:24:41.300 That's one of the reasons why productivity and tech made the change from just a podcast to 00:24:41.300 --> 00:24:41.900 a community. 00:24:42.520 --> 00:24:46.640 You know, one of the things that we heard a lot was the people you have on the show 00:24:46.640 --> 00:24:52.440 are great, but it's really hard to just say, I'm going to do that thing and then stick to 00:24:52.440 --> 00:24:52.640 it. 00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:57.520 Well, that's why we have our Slack channel that we hold each other accountable. 00:24:57.520 --> 00:24:59.720 We have, we're all friends in there. 00:24:59.720 --> 00:25:02.240 And we had a conversation earlier today. 00:25:02.240 --> 00:25:04.420 Someone said, I'm going to do these things this week. 00:25:04.420 --> 00:25:09.060 And then later on, he came back and said, hey, everyone, I did these things. 00:25:09.380 --> 00:25:12.740 And, you know, every once in a while, we'll check in on each other and say, hey, I know 00:25:12.740 --> 00:25:15.060 you were going through this stuff. 00:25:15.060 --> 00:25:19.420 How is this affecting your goals or how is this affecting, you know, this other thing 00:25:19.420 --> 00:25:20.240 that you're working on? 00:25:20.240 --> 00:25:22.280 And that's just the accountability side. 00:25:22.280 --> 00:25:25.160 Mentorship is, is really, really powerful. 00:25:25.160 --> 00:25:27.320 I've had some amazing mentors. 00:25:27.320 --> 00:25:32.940 I would consider you, Michael, in ways, a mentor, especially when it comes to podcasting 00:25:32.940 --> 00:25:35.000 and developing your own system in podcasting. 00:25:35.080 --> 00:25:35.600 Well, thank you. 00:25:35.600 --> 00:25:35.920 Yeah. 00:25:35.920 --> 00:25:40.440 I've been able to share a lot of the tools and a lot of the resources that I've gotten 00:25:40.440 --> 00:25:45.980 from you and that I've learned with others so that, you know, a mentorship is not always 00:25:45.980 --> 00:25:46.620 just one way. 00:25:46.620 --> 00:25:49.520 It's not one person, you know, telling you how to do things. 00:25:49.520 --> 00:25:52.280 It's one person showing you ways to do it. 00:25:52.280 --> 00:25:54.000 You deciding whether or not you're going to do it. 00:25:54.000 --> 00:25:57.680 And then you turning back and teaching others. 00:25:58.200 --> 00:26:03.200 And one of the best things that you can always do is, is be, be accountable of your mentor. 00:26:03.200 --> 00:26:08.760 You know, when your mentor teaches you something, let them know that you've done it and let them 00:26:08.760 --> 00:26:11.920 know, you know, how it impacted you and how it taught you things. 00:26:11.920 --> 00:26:16.160 I always think my mentors, if, if I don't, I'll, it's funny, like I'll send them tweets 00:26:16.160 --> 00:26:20.200 like, Hey, I know I haven't sent you one in a few months, but I really appreciate you, 00:26:20.200 --> 00:26:24.600 you know, just being there as someone to talk to and as, as a mentor, because it's helped 00:26:24.600 --> 00:26:25.940 me get to where I am today. 00:26:25.940 --> 00:26:27.280 Yeah, that's, that's really awesome. 00:26:27.280 --> 00:26:31.740 And I think that's super important to have that both accountability and mentorship. 00:26:31.740 --> 00:26:34.520 And sometimes the mentorship is really, really loose, right? 00:26:34.520 --> 00:26:39.960 Like I follow some guy's blog and I read his book or it could be really, really tight. 00:26:39.960 --> 00:26:44.260 Like you and I talking and exchanging stuff or, you know, things like that. 00:26:44.260 --> 00:26:44.500 Right. 00:26:44.500 --> 00:26:45.180 Absolutely. 00:26:45.180 --> 00:26:50.780 And, and you can always just ask someone say, Hey, you know, I see you as a mentor. 00:26:50.780 --> 00:26:55.200 Is there any way that I can pick your brain about something every once in a while? 00:26:55.200 --> 00:26:59.920 Or I'd like to get on a call with you and maybe ask you some questions or, or my favorite, 00:26:59.920 --> 00:27:03.060 Hey, I, you're a really good mentor in this field. 00:27:03.060 --> 00:27:04.440 Why don't you come and be on my podcast? 00:27:04.440 --> 00:27:08.320 And we can, we can talk about some of these things that I've learned from you. 00:27:08.320 --> 00:27:08.700 Right. 00:27:08.700 --> 00:27:12.040 And that last one's interesting because it's like, not just, I'm asking you to help me 00:27:12.040 --> 00:27:15.140 out, but I'm trying to give you something back as part of it. 00:27:15.200 --> 00:27:18.520 And I think that's a really nice way to start these conversations, right? 00:27:18.520 --> 00:27:21.280 Like if you're, let's just pick somebody's blog. 00:27:21.280 --> 00:27:24.440 I'm following somebody's blog and they're doing really great work and I'm learning from 00:27:24.440 --> 00:27:24.540 it. 00:27:24.540 --> 00:27:25.920 I would like to like connect with them. 00:27:25.920 --> 00:27:31.580 You could say, look, I would love to be a proofreader and check all the code samples of 00:27:31.580 --> 00:27:32.240 your blog posts. 00:27:32.700 --> 00:27:36.160 If I could like work with you and just do that for free, could you give me some advice 00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:37.720 on like my career or something like that? 00:27:37.720 --> 00:27:37.920 Right. 00:27:37.920 --> 00:27:38.460 Definitely. 00:27:38.460 --> 00:27:41.700 And I think that's, that's something that a lot of people are afraid to do. 00:27:41.780 --> 00:27:47.340 I mean, I've, I've worked for free a lot in my life and it hurts at times where you want 00:27:47.340 --> 00:27:49.940 to actually always ask for some type of payment. 00:27:49.940 --> 00:27:56.620 But if you go up front and you say, Hey, you've already paid me in knowledge and experience. 00:27:56.620 --> 00:28:03.380 I would like to help you as, as payment, as, you know, reciprocating that payment. 00:28:03.380 --> 00:28:09.680 And in the future, maybe we can continue a relationship that, that works in both of our 00:28:09.680 --> 00:28:10.060 favors. 00:28:10.060 --> 00:28:10.380 Yeah. 00:28:10.440 --> 00:28:14.720 And you don't often, it's, it's often unclear how that's going to work out. 00:28:14.720 --> 00:28:20.560 But I found that like giving to people and helping out people pays itself back in unexpected 00:28:20.560 --> 00:28:21.860 and wonderful ways. 00:28:21.860 --> 00:28:26.720 So I kind of think that it's just worth it and it'll figure itself out later. 00:28:26.720 --> 00:28:29.140 I mean, we're all developers in an open source world. 00:28:29.140 --> 00:28:33.380 There's nothing wrong with going and looking at some open source code and saying, Hey, I 00:28:33.380 --> 00:28:37.560 noticed there was a typo in one of your comments and just pointing it out, or even just submitting 00:28:37.560 --> 00:28:39.320 a pull request that fixes it really quick. 00:28:39.320 --> 00:28:41.120 I mean, it's nice. 00:28:41.120 --> 00:28:43.520 And it, someone goes, Oh yeah, I didn't notice that. 00:28:43.520 --> 00:28:47.720 I do that all the time with websites that I look at go, Hey, I know that there's a language 00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:52.940 barrier here, but this statement doesn't quite make sense in American English. 00:28:52.940 --> 00:28:55.500 Perhaps you meant to say this instead. 00:28:55.500 --> 00:28:55.940 Right. 00:28:55.940 --> 00:28:56.480 For sure. 00:28:57.600 --> 00:29:02.540 So your, your next advice is, it's not burning the candle at both ends, which is 00:29:02.540 --> 00:29:05.460 really, there are times in life where that's really hard to do. 00:29:05.460 --> 00:29:09.600 Like if you're trying to do like a side project that you maybe want to transition to, there 00:29:09.600 --> 00:29:12.740 might be some period where like you are burning the candle a lot. 00:29:12.880 --> 00:29:17.040 Well, this is something that I've had to teach myself a lot lately. 00:29:17.040 --> 00:29:20.940 For the first year of productivity and tech, I really did this. 00:29:20.940 --> 00:29:22.420 I burnt the candle at both ends. 00:29:22.420 --> 00:29:27.300 I would, you know, wake up at four in the morning, work on productivity and tech, go to work at 00:29:27.300 --> 00:29:32.380 seven, come home at, you know, five 30, eat dinner with my wife and then stay up until 00:29:32.380 --> 00:29:35.660 midnight working on productivity and tech again. 00:29:35.660 --> 00:29:37.740 And I got really sick. 00:29:37.740 --> 00:29:44.260 You know, I, I'm still recovering from being sick and I had to take a lot of time off from 00:29:44.260 --> 00:29:44.580 work. 00:29:44.580 --> 00:29:47.080 I had to, you know, have a lot of doctor's visits. 00:29:47.080 --> 00:29:51.040 And in the end, I just said, you know, enough's enough. 00:29:51.040 --> 00:29:52.260 I cannot do that. 00:29:52.260 --> 00:29:53.280 And not again. 00:29:53.280 --> 00:29:53.700 Yeah. 00:29:53.700 --> 00:29:57.260 Like two hours a day would have in the end, probably actually made more time. 00:29:57.420 --> 00:29:58.800 You know, on the project, right? 00:29:58.800 --> 00:30:01.220 If you didn't like have to go deal with all this stuff. 00:30:01.220 --> 00:30:01.800 Oh, absolutely. 00:30:01.800 --> 00:30:06.720 It's, it's been proven that the more you take breaks, the better you're going to be off mentally 00:30:06.720 --> 00:30:08.340 working on tasks. 00:30:08.340 --> 00:30:12.800 You know, breaks allow your brain to catch up with what's going on and really start to process 00:30:12.800 --> 00:30:13.020 it. 00:30:13.020 --> 00:30:17.280 If you're just going at it a hundred percent all the time, you're going to burn yourself 00:30:17.280 --> 00:30:18.160 out instantly. 00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:18.660 Yeah. 00:30:18.660 --> 00:30:21.820 It's most of the time you want to view everything as a marathon, right? 00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:28.480 One of my favorite quotes is that inspiration is perishable. 00:30:28.480 --> 00:30:36.620 And I find that I work much faster, much more focused if I'm really inspired to do something. 00:30:37.080 --> 00:30:43.340 So I'll have these periods where like, I'm just driven to do a thing and I'm really into 00:30:43.340 --> 00:30:43.580 it. 00:30:43.580 --> 00:30:46.600 And I'll spend like 12 hours a day on it for a week or two. 00:30:46.600 --> 00:30:50.060 But you know, you got to like turn that back down, right? 00:30:50.060 --> 00:30:51.520 You can only do that for a little while. 00:30:51.660 --> 00:30:51.980 Definitely. 00:30:51.980 --> 00:30:55.580 You have to, you have to wind up just saying, Hey, you know what? 00:30:55.580 --> 00:30:58.400 I'm going to take a break and, or I'm going to put this down. 00:30:58.400 --> 00:30:59.160 I do that a lot. 00:30:59.160 --> 00:31:03.460 I'll start working on something and then I'll just get this little like voice in the back 00:31:03.460 --> 00:31:05.380 of my head saying, Hey, you've worked on this long enough. 00:31:05.380 --> 00:31:06.440 Why don't you go take a break? 00:31:06.440 --> 00:31:08.200 Why don't you go spend time with your family? 00:31:08.200 --> 00:31:10.060 And then I just get up and do it. 00:31:10.060 --> 00:31:10.220 Yeah. 00:31:10.220 --> 00:31:10.860 That's a good part. 00:31:10.860 --> 00:31:11.100 Yeah. 00:31:11.100 --> 00:31:12.240 Yeah, for sure. 00:31:12.240 --> 00:31:15.280 And you find like, sometimes you come back, that thing you were stuck on is like easy. 00:31:15.280 --> 00:31:17.120 You go, well, why didn't you do it this way? 00:31:17.180 --> 00:31:17.400 Okay. 00:31:17.400 --> 00:31:23.260 So another one that is, you know, popular in the startup space, but I think has a lot 00:31:23.260 --> 00:31:24.960 of merit is fail fast and fail often. 00:31:24.960 --> 00:31:25.700 Absolutely. 00:31:25.700 --> 00:31:31.880 This is actually, I gave this advice on another podcast I was a guest on called Originality. 00:31:31.880 --> 00:31:36.760 And I think like since then it has, it's taken its own little life. 00:31:36.760 --> 00:31:39.100 I've wrote it, I've written it down on like my notebooks. 00:31:39.100 --> 00:31:44.280 You know, I've, you know, talked to my wife about possibly tattooing it on my body. 00:31:44.600 --> 00:31:50.060 You know, it's, I really love this advice and because it's so true. 00:31:50.060 --> 00:31:58.260 I have, I have failed so many times in my life and I look back and I'm so grateful for 00:31:58.260 --> 00:31:59.260 all of those failures. 00:31:59.260 --> 00:32:03.740 Before productivity and tech, I actually ran a blog called Keeping Junk Managed. 00:32:03.740 --> 00:32:07.420 And I did that for about two years. 00:32:07.420 --> 00:32:10.620 I would write a blog post almost every single week. 00:32:10.620 --> 00:32:13.700 I think I wrote, at one point I was writing three blog posts a week. 00:32:14.060 --> 00:32:18.420 And eventually I just took it all down and I learned an easy lesson. 00:32:18.420 --> 00:32:19.740 I hate writing. 00:32:19.740 --> 00:32:25.440 So it was, it was like, hey, you know, I failed with this, even though it was starting to grow. 00:32:25.440 --> 00:32:30.560 I felt like it was a failure, but I learned an extremely valuable lesson and I've built 00:32:30.560 --> 00:32:31.800 many, many projects. 00:32:31.800 --> 00:32:34.760 I'll go, hey, I'm going to build this little project out in the weekend and I'll work on it 00:32:34.760 --> 00:32:35.620 and work on it, work on it. 00:32:35.620 --> 00:32:39.780 And then at the end of the week, if it's not done, I set it down and I forget about it. 00:32:40.100 --> 00:32:43.920 And I look at it as, okay, hey, I didn't finish that, but what did I gain from it? 00:32:43.920 --> 00:32:44.760 Yeah, for sure. 00:32:44.760 --> 00:32:48.580 You need to have these broad experiences, even if you don't make them a big thing. 00:32:48.580 --> 00:32:48.880 Right. 00:32:49.660 --> 00:32:55.640 And I guess one of the takeaways is, you know, failure is seen as really, really scary. 00:32:55.640 --> 00:33:00.680 Another show that I listened to that I really like is How I Built This from Guy Raz. 00:33:01.420 --> 00:33:05.740 And they interview all these people that started companies and the guy, gosh, I can't remember 00:33:05.740 --> 00:33:08.760 what company it was, but that's unfortunate. 00:33:08.760 --> 00:33:09.760 Maybe I'll link to the episode. 00:33:09.760 --> 00:33:11.220 I can dig it back up. 00:33:11.220 --> 00:33:16.520 But he said, there's a difference between risky and scary. 00:33:16.520 --> 00:33:21.240 Some things are not scary, but very risky. 00:33:21.240 --> 00:33:25.640 Some things are not particularly scary, but they're actually really, really risky. 00:33:25.800 --> 00:33:32.540 And so, you know, the analogy he gave was, look, I could stay at like a pretty safe job 00:33:32.540 --> 00:33:35.260 my whole life, but I don't really like it. 00:33:35.260 --> 00:33:39.800 And I could wake up when I'm 65 and go, I spent my whole life doing something I didn't like. 00:33:39.800 --> 00:33:40.620 Can you believe that? 00:33:40.620 --> 00:33:41.300 How bad is that? 00:33:41.300 --> 00:33:41.500 Right. 00:33:41.500 --> 00:33:44.560 And that's not scary at any given moment, but it's totally risky. 00:33:45.340 --> 00:33:49.800 So I think there's a lot of these things that we can do that seem risky, but they're really 00:33:49.800 --> 00:33:50.320 just scary. 00:33:50.320 --> 00:33:53.180 And so trying these different things and have these different experiences. 00:33:53.180 --> 00:33:54.040 Yeah. 00:33:54.040 --> 00:33:56.760 Just embracing that for here's another experience. 00:33:56.760 --> 00:33:59.900 I'm going to get an awesome lesson from this or I'm going to have something successful. 00:33:59.900 --> 00:34:00.380 One of the two. 00:34:00.380 --> 00:34:00.860 Let's go. 00:34:00.860 --> 00:34:01.560 Right. 00:34:01.560 --> 00:34:01.920 That's great. 00:34:01.920 --> 00:34:06.860 You know, one of the things that I've always, you know, told people that I've mentored 00:34:06.860 --> 00:34:11.060 is it's only failure once you deem it a failure. 00:34:11.460 --> 00:34:15.060 And I know that kind of goes counterintuitive to the fail fast, fail often portion. 00:34:15.060 --> 00:34:20.740 But if you look at the times where you didn't, where you fell short a little bit, if you don't 00:34:20.740 --> 00:34:24.580 look at them as failures, but you look at them as, you know, just opportunities to learn from, 00:34:24.580 --> 00:34:26.060 it's not a failure. 00:34:26.060 --> 00:34:29.940 And the only person that can tell you that you failed is yourself. 00:34:29.940 --> 00:34:31.520 You can only fail yourself in life. 00:34:31.520 --> 00:34:32.360 Yeah, that's a great point. 00:34:32.360 --> 00:34:32.520 Yeah. 00:34:32.520 --> 00:34:36.240 There's definitely things I look back on where at the time I'm like, God, this thing didn't 00:34:36.240 --> 00:34:36.600 work out. 00:34:36.600 --> 00:34:37.420 This is such a bummer. 00:34:37.420 --> 00:34:40.400 And really they just, you know, looking back, they look like stair steps. 00:34:40.880 --> 00:34:43.520 So another one that you talk about is doing your own thing. 00:34:43.520 --> 00:34:44.600 What do you mean with that? 00:34:44.600 --> 00:34:46.120 Oh man, I love this one. 00:34:46.120 --> 00:34:50.020 I absolutely love this because this kind of goes in line with specializing. 00:34:50.020 --> 00:34:58.700 If you try to emulate others in anything that you do, it will always feel like you've emulated 00:34:58.700 --> 00:34:59.360 someone else. 00:34:59.360 --> 00:35:01.320 I'm not saying that you shouldn't steal like an artist. 00:35:01.320 --> 00:35:05.780 I think that that's, it's a really great book for one, but it's a really great idea. 00:35:05.780 --> 00:35:11.020 Look at what other people are doing and say, what would that look like if I'm doing it? 00:35:11.020 --> 00:35:13.920 But at the end of the day, do your own thing. 00:35:13.920 --> 00:35:21.000 I've definitely struggled to find my voice in the podcasting space because I listen to a 00:35:21.000 --> 00:35:21.880 ton of podcasts. 00:35:21.880 --> 00:35:25.440 I mean, I listen to hundreds of podcasts every single week. 00:35:25.920 --> 00:35:32.460 And a lot of those voices start to come out when I'm hosting an interview. 00:35:32.460 --> 00:35:38.780 But what I always try to do is say, you know, hey, when I'm asking questions, when I'm talking 00:35:38.780 --> 00:35:42.040 with a guest, I'm doing it with my level of excitement. 00:35:42.040 --> 00:35:46.160 I'm doing it with my level of concern for my audience. 00:35:46.160 --> 00:35:48.440 I'm not trying to run a gimmick. 00:35:48.440 --> 00:35:52.740 I'm not trying to be like Gary Vaynerchuk, who's just yelling at everyone and saying, 00:35:52.740 --> 00:35:55.040 hey, you got to get out there and just freaking do it already. 00:35:55.040 --> 00:35:59.020 You know, I'm, I'm being myself when someone says it's scary. 00:35:59.020 --> 00:36:02.200 I can go, I can definitely vouch for that because it is scary. 00:36:02.200 --> 00:36:03.600 I've been scared. 00:36:03.600 --> 00:36:06.240 You got, you can't be afraid to just do your own thing. 00:36:06.240 --> 00:36:12.960 And then from a technological standpoint, as developers, people will appreciate you putting 00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:14.180 your spin on things. 00:36:15.180 --> 00:36:18.460 This portion of Talk Python To Me was brought to you by GoCD. 00:36:18.460 --> 00:36:24.520 GoCD is an on-premise, open source, continuous delivery tool to help you get better visibility 00:36:24.520 --> 00:36:27.220 into and control of your team's deployments. 00:36:27.220 --> 00:36:32.420 With GoCD's comprehensive pipeline modeling, you can model complex workflows for multiple 00:36:32.420 --> 00:36:33.760 teams with ease. 00:36:33.760 --> 00:36:39.360 And GoCD's value stream map lets you track changes from commit to deploy at a glance. 00:36:39.360 --> 00:36:43.580 Say goodbye to deployment panic and hello to consistent, predictable deliveries. 00:36:44.060 --> 00:36:47.380 We all know that continuous integration is super important to the code quality of your 00:36:47.380 --> 00:36:47.900 applications. 00:36:47.900 --> 00:36:51.520 Choose the open source local CI server, GoCD. 00:36:51.520 --> 00:36:55.440 Learn more at talkpython.fm/gocd. 00:36:55.440 --> 00:36:58.240 That's talkpython.fm/gocd. 00:36:58.240 --> 00:37:04.280 You know, I look at one of my favorite companies, Trello, who were purchased by Atlassian recently. 00:37:04.520 --> 00:37:09.800 I've actually applied to Trello and I got rejected, but it was the coolest rejection ever because 00:37:09.800 --> 00:37:15.820 in the email, it talked about like rejection raptors coming in and eating up the entire human 00:37:15.820 --> 00:37:18.860 resources department and the building burning down. 00:37:18.860 --> 00:37:21.120 So unfortunately, at the moment, they couldn't hire me. 00:37:21.120 --> 00:37:23.380 And I'm just like, I'm not even upset. 00:37:23.380 --> 00:37:24.140 This is awesome. 00:37:24.140 --> 00:37:24.600 Yeah. 00:37:24.600 --> 00:37:25.920 It's hard to be upset when you're laughing. 00:37:25.920 --> 00:37:26.460 Absolutely. 00:37:26.600 --> 00:37:31.000 But in having that unique personality to your own thing, that's what really makes stuff 00:37:31.000 --> 00:37:31.600 valuable. 00:37:31.600 --> 00:37:32.040 Yeah. 00:37:32.040 --> 00:37:32.300 Yeah. 00:37:32.300 --> 00:37:38.300 It's certainly worth having an opinion about things and not just, you know, playing it safe 00:37:38.300 --> 00:37:39.120 all the time for sure. 00:37:39.120 --> 00:37:43.760 So I had a guy I worked with a long time ago, enjoyed working with him. 00:37:43.760 --> 00:37:47.140 And we worked at this office and got rearranged. 00:37:47.140 --> 00:37:48.720 We ended up moving to the same office. 00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:53.680 And after like the first day of working together in the same office, Michael, you talk to yourself 00:37:53.680 --> 00:37:54.920 while you're programming a lot. 00:37:54.920 --> 00:37:56.280 That's like, really? 00:37:56.280 --> 00:37:56.880 I'm really sorry. 00:37:56.880 --> 00:37:57.820 He's like, no, no, it's fine. 00:37:57.820 --> 00:37:58.900 But it just, did you know? 00:37:58.900 --> 00:37:59.840 Like, I don't even know. 00:37:59.840 --> 00:38:02.060 So you say we should talk to ourself. 00:38:02.060 --> 00:38:02.820 Maybe I was doing all right. 00:38:02.820 --> 00:38:03.520 Absolutely. 00:38:03.520 --> 00:38:07.140 You should, you should definitely talk to yourself, not only in real life, but also in your code. 00:38:07.140 --> 00:38:10.120 No one thinks like you do. 00:38:10.120 --> 00:38:12.220 No one reacts like you do. 00:38:12.220 --> 00:38:18.680 When you are going to achieve something, you have to be the one that picks yourself up and 00:38:18.680 --> 00:38:19.980 gives yourself that PEP talk. 00:38:19.980 --> 00:38:23.520 When you're writing code, leave notes for yourself. 00:38:23.520 --> 00:38:27.760 Trust me, as someone who picks up projects, sets them back down, and then like a year later 00:38:27.760 --> 00:38:31.760 picks them up again, it's really great to see that message that I left myself. 00:38:31.760 --> 00:38:34.760 That's like, hey, this probably isn't the best way to do this. 00:38:34.760 --> 00:38:37.000 You might want to look at refactoring this down the road. 00:38:37.000 --> 00:38:38.880 And there's nothing wrong with that. 00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:41.400 Now, maybe in your production code, you might want to clean that up a bit. 00:38:41.400 --> 00:38:47.980 But at the same time, it's really important that you keep a line of communication with yourself. 00:38:48.640 --> 00:38:53.960 And the biggest reason for that is if you don't, you'll wind up hearing everyone's voice, 00:38:53.960 --> 00:38:54.620 but your own. 00:38:54.620 --> 00:38:55.740 Yeah, that's really good advice. 00:38:55.740 --> 00:38:56.140 That's cool. 00:38:56.140 --> 00:39:03.020 So another thing you propose is that we should learn from outside the realm of art, of our 00:39:03.020 --> 00:39:04.800 development projects and things like that, right? 00:39:04.800 --> 00:39:05.360 Absolutely. 00:39:05.360 --> 00:39:07.300 I mean, learn from outside of your own realm. 00:39:07.300 --> 00:39:14.340 One of my favorite conversations in the pit podcast was I interviewed someone who was a productivity 00:39:14.340 --> 00:39:16.920 coach, but she was also a trapeze artist. 00:39:16.920 --> 00:39:19.640 And where does that come from? 00:39:19.640 --> 00:39:23.820 Like, what lessons can you learn from someone who walks on a high wire? 00:39:23.820 --> 00:39:26.840 That's absolutely phenomenal. 00:39:27.240 --> 00:39:32.140 But when you start to think outside the box, you start to get results that are outside 00:39:32.140 --> 00:39:32.680 the box. 00:39:32.680 --> 00:39:35.100 And when people see that, they get inspired. 00:39:35.100 --> 00:39:35.660 Like... 00:39:35.660 --> 00:39:37.660 Yeah, I'm sure it gives you some really interesting... 00:39:37.660 --> 00:39:38.900 Yeah, for sure it does. 00:39:38.900 --> 00:39:39.880 Yeah, that's awesome. 00:39:39.880 --> 00:39:42.180 So merge your passions. 00:39:42.180 --> 00:39:43.560 So that's kind of... 00:39:43.560 --> 00:39:45.560 Well, what do you mean by merge your passions? 00:39:45.560 --> 00:39:47.440 It sounds great, but I won't put words in your mouth. 00:39:47.440 --> 00:39:51.700 So for me, merging my passions are combining the things... 00:39:51.700 --> 00:39:55.340 I have a few talks or a few proposals that I've put out about this, actually. 00:39:55.340 --> 00:39:58.020 For me, I have a few passions. 00:39:58.020 --> 00:39:59.300 Obviously, the tech side. 00:39:59.300 --> 00:40:00.640 Obviously, the productivity side. 00:40:00.640 --> 00:40:02.460 But I also love working in communities. 00:40:02.460 --> 00:40:07.480 Ever since I've started learning to be a developer, I've gotten involved in communities. 00:40:07.480 --> 00:40:09.460 And I said, you know what? 00:40:09.460 --> 00:40:11.980 Why don't I merge the two of these things? 00:40:11.980 --> 00:40:14.440 Why don't I start developing for communities? 00:40:14.620 --> 00:40:19.120 One of the first projects I ever put out was an app called Shownoter. 00:40:19.120 --> 00:40:20.960 It was a little web app that I built. 00:40:20.960 --> 00:40:25.960 And I built it with the intention to help one of the online communities that I was a part of. 00:40:25.960 --> 00:40:27.700 We were having a problem keeping notes. 00:40:27.700 --> 00:40:32.040 We were basically putting a bunch of comments inside of like a Google Hangout that we did 00:40:32.040 --> 00:40:32.640 once a week. 00:40:32.640 --> 00:40:35.860 And there would be a ton of links in there of valuable information. 00:40:35.860 --> 00:40:37.260 And I was like, you know what? 00:40:37.260 --> 00:40:43.080 I can build an app that sifts through all of this text and just finds those links and shares 00:40:43.080 --> 00:40:43.480 those. 00:40:43.900 --> 00:40:45.940 So it turned into a full project. 00:40:45.940 --> 00:40:51.360 But I couldn't be afraid to say, hey, you know, I know I want to be a community manager. 00:40:51.360 --> 00:40:52.780 I know I want to be a developer. 00:40:52.780 --> 00:40:55.880 Why don't I just build stuff for community managers? 00:40:55.880 --> 00:40:58.660 That works because then I get to use what I made. 00:40:58.660 --> 00:41:01.580 Yeah, that's a really cool way to look at it. 00:41:01.580 --> 00:41:06.400 And, you know, a lot of times people want to advance their careers by doing something outside 00:41:06.400 --> 00:41:09.140 of what they do with their regular nine to five. 00:41:09.560 --> 00:41:13.700 And I often say, like, look, go find something that you care a lot about and just go build 00:41:13.700 --> 00:41:13.980 that. 00:41:13.980 --> 00:41:14.220 Right. 00:41:14.220 --> 00:41:15.560 It doesn't have to be successful. 00:41:15.560 --> 00:41:16.820 It doesn't have to be commercial. 00:41:16.820 --> 00:41:21.780 But, you know, find something that you care about and, you know, bring your programming talents 00:41:21.780 --> 00:41:22.040 to it. 00:41:22.160 --> 00:41:26.760 One of the guests that I've had on the show, his boss got him into skeet shooting. 00:41:27.420 --> 00:41:32.280 And they had like this issue to where like their skeet shooting machine was broken and 00:41:32.280 --> 00:41:33.460 you couldn't get it repaired. 00:41:33.460 --> 00:41:34.960 And he said, you know what? 00:41:34.960 --> 00:41:36.480 What if we just built our own? 00:41:36.480 --> 00:41:42.480 So they actually built their own skeet shooting like clay tosser and they built an app for it 00:41:42.480 --> 00:41:46.780 that you could control when and where it threw like the clay pigeons. 00:41:47.160 --> 00:41:53.280 And I was just like fascinated because I had never thought of merging like programming with 00:41:53.280 --> 00:41:54.040 skeet shooting. 00:41:54.040 --> 00:41:54.900 That's awesome. 00:41:54.900 --> 00:41:57.700 I've never thought of that as being a technical thing either. 00:41:57.700 --> 00:42:00.500 Like you put it in there and some time later, it flings it out, right? 00:42:00.500 --> 00:42:01.100 Exactly. 00:42:01.100 --> 00:42:03.860 And it's like it rotates on like 360 degree access. 00:42:03.860 --> 00:42:05.700 So it can literally throw it in any direction. 00:42:05.700 --> 00:42:08.300 And you have your friends and you can keep scoring. 00:42:08.300 --> 00:42:12.760 It's like all of these different things that, you know, I get excited just talking about it 00:42:12.760 --> 00:42:14.780 and I'm not an avid skeet shooter. 00:42:14.780 --> 00:42:19.980 So for me, like when you go out and you do your own thing and you merge your passions 00:42:19.980 --> 00:42:24.920 like that, when you combine all of these things that we've talked about, what happens is not 00:42:24.920 --> 00:42:29.080 only do you get excited about the things that you're doing, but other people get excited about 00:42:29.080 --> 00:42:29.300 them. 00:42:29.300 --> 00:42:29.980 Yeah, that's right. 00:42:29.980 --> 00:42:32.920 You definitely already have this built-in community around whatever you're passionate 00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:33.140 about. 00:42:33.140 --> 00:42:33.580 That's cool. 00:42:33.580 --> 00:42:34.900 All right. 00:42:34.900 --> 00:42:41.300 So that is a bunch of good advice for people to be more productive and more focused and really 00:42:41.300 --> 00:42:46.040 kind of inspired, which, like I said, I think is really the key for a lot of this kind of 00:42:46.040 --> 00:42:46.280 stuff. 00:42:46.280 --> 00:42:48.620 Let's talk about some of the tools that you use. 00:42:48.620 --> 00:42:52.980 You said that actually pen and paper is one of your main go-tos. 00:42:52.980 --> 00:42:53.580 Absolutely. 00:42:53.580 --> 00:42:54.560 I am. 00:42:54.560 --> 00:42:57.480 I'm a pen and paper fanatic. 00:42:57.480 --> 00:43:01.160 I think that kind of came more and more with the sketchnoting side. 00:43:01.160 --> 00:43:06.600 I've been on a few podcasts about, you know, bullet journaling and analog productivity. 00:43:06.600 --> 00:43:10.300 The thing that I like about it is it's so diverse. 00:43:10.680 --> 00:43:16.300 There are very few apps where you can have like a task list, a funny drawing, a note to 00:43:16.300 --> 00:43:22.380 yourself, and then like a bunch of just weird things that you've found and collected over 00:43:22.380 --> 00:43:22.900 the ages. 00:43:22.900 --> 00:43:28.340 Like my notebook has 32 yen on it from where I lived in Japan. 00:43:28.340 --> 00:43:33.200 So every time I pull out my notebook, I immediately go back to, you know, the three years that I 00:43:33.200 --> 00:43:34.080 spent in Okinawa. 00:43:34.500 --> 00:43:38.160 And, you know, I get to play around with fountain pens and try out different paper. 00:43:38.160 --> 00:43:45.420 And it takes my mind away from the arduous task that I'm working on at the moment. 00:43:46.780 --> 00:43:49.460 I think it's interesting to work with pen and paper. 00:43:49.460 --> 00:43:50.620 I don't do it very often. 00:43:50.620 --> 00:43:55.920 Maybe a lot of times when I'm on a plane or I'm somewhere kind of isolated, right? 00:43:55.920 --> 00:43:59.060 And I'm not necessarily on the internet. 00:43:59.060 --> 00:44:03.920 But I find it to be helpful because I can't get easily distracted. 00:44:03.920 --> 00:44:07.500 I'm sort of forced to like think my thoughts and then get it out. 00:44:07.960 --> 00:44:12.320 Whereas if I do it in, say, Google Docs, it's like, oh, notification, notification. 00:44:12.320 --> 00:44:13.820 Oh, you know, that one thing I should have done. 00:44:13.820 --> 00:44:14.920 And that reminds me of this. 00:44:14.920 --> 00:44:15.800 You know, oh, geez, I better. 00:44:15.800 --> 00:44:16.440 Right. 00:44:16.440 --> 00:44:19.420 It's like it's easy to get distracted with other tools. 00:44:19.420 --> 00:44:20.920 They're great, but it's hard. 00:44:20.920 --> 00:44:21.520 Absolutely. 00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:27.080 And the other if you wanted to use an app, the one app that I do like a lot is Task Paper. 00:44:27.080 --> 00:44:30.900 And I like it for that exact reason is it feels more like paper. 00:44:30.900 --> 00:44:34.420 It's you're not getting hit with notification after notification. 00:44:35.020 --> 00:44:36.440 I have anxiety issues. 00:44:36.440 --> 00:44:40.540 So whenever I start getting like little blips that say, hey, you need to go do this. 00:44:40.540 --> 00:44:41.280 And then you need to go do this. 00:44:41.280 --> 00:44:42.060 And you need to go do this. 00:44:42.060 --> 00:44:44.520 Like that become that makes me really anxious. 00:44:44.520 --> 00:44:49.300 But when I control my list and I go, OK, what do I need to do? 00:44:49.300 --> 00:44:53.080 And then I just write it down, whether it's in Task Paper or on pen and paper. 00:44:53.080 --> 00:44:55.660 And then I just look at just that. 00:44:55.660 --> 00:44:58.360 I don't have to think about anything outside. 00:44:58.360 --> 00:45:00.980 I don't have to worry about random pop ups. 00:45:00.980 --> 00:45:04.800 And every once in a while, someone will call and say, hey, you're supposed to do this thing. 00:45:04.820 --> 00:45:08.460 And I go, OK, I'll add it to my list and just leave it at that. 00:45:08.460 --> 00:45:08.880 Right. 00:45:08.880 --> 00:45:10.640 Yeah, that's awesome. 00:45:10.640 --> 00:45:12.160 Very cool. 00:45:12.160 --> 00:45:14.180 So Task Paper sounds great. 00:45:14.180 --> 00:45:16.940 Another one that I like is called Liquid Paper. 00:45:16.940 --> 00:45:20.460 And that's just fantastic if you're like learning something written. 00:45:20.460 --> 00:45:25.620 It lets you, especially if you have an Apple Pencil, but you can do it with your finger as well. 00:45:25.620 --> 00:45:30.880 Like it lets you highlight and circle and call out little sections of like really long PDFs and things. 00:45:30.880 --> 00:45:33.960 And that's definitely a recommendation for me. 00:45:33.960 --> 00:45:34.360 Very cool. 00:45:34.360 --> 00:45:36.540 So let's talk about some of the podcast episodes. 00:45:36.540 --> 00:45:38.400 Your last one was with Tom Merritt, right? 00:45:38.400 --> 00:45:38.900 Yeah. 00:45:38.900 --> 00:45:43.260 At the time of recording this, the last guest that I had was Tom. 00:45:43.260 --> 00:45:47.680 And he's definitely someone that I've looked up to for a long time. 00:45:47.680 --> 00:45:50.600 As I mentioned before, I listen to a lot of podcasts. 00:45:50.600 --> 00:45:52.960 I think that was what gave me the idea to start my own. 00:45:52.960 --> 00:45:57.940 But one of the podcast, one of the very first podcasts I started listening to was Tom's with 00:45:57.940 --> 00:45:59.120 the Daily Tech News Show. 00:45:59.720 --> 00:46:01.660 And since then, I've been a fan of that. 00:46:01.660 --> 00:46:03.820 I've been a fan of some of his other work as well. 00:46:03.820 --> 00:46:07.180 And I never thought he would be on the show. 00:46:07.180 --> 00:46:12.180 But one day, they were having a conversation and he started talking about his own productivity system. 00:46:12.180 --> 00:46:16.420 So then I had to email him because I was just hoping he would read my comments. 00:46:16.420 --> 00:46:19.480 But it was mostly saying, hey, you know, Tom, you're doing a great job. 00:46:19.480 --> 00:46:21.660 And then he replied back and said, hey, thanks. 00:46:21.660 --> 00:46:22.440 That was awesome. 00:46:22.440 --> 00:46:25.040 And then I go, well, I do run this show. 00:46:25.040 --> 00:46:28.180 I'd love to have you on it to talk more about this. 00:46:29.180 --> 00:46:30.120 Yeah, that's cool. 00:46:30.120 --> 00:46:32.020 And he's had such a great legacy. 00:46:32.020 --> 00:46:33.200 Several shows. 00:46:33.200 --> 00:46:34.700 He's been on several different networks. 00:46:34.700 --> 00:46:40.080 And currently, you know, Daily Tech News Show and a lot of his other shows are doing some 00:46:40.080 --> 00:46:41.600 really fascinating things. 00:46:41.600 --> 00:46:44.360 Yeah, Daily Tech News Show is really great. 00:46:44.360 --> 00:46:46.460 So Tom hosts Daily Tech News Show. 00:46:46.460 --> 00:46:53.840 And if you guys are looking for a non-developer, just general tech space, like give me the quick 00:46:53.840 --> 00:46:58.420 news of the day, 15-minute sort of conversation, I can totally recommend that show. 00:46:58.420 --> 00:46:59.160 That's a great one. 00:46:59.160 --> 00:47:02.940 I actually was somewhat inspired to start Python Bytes from that because I'm like, you know, 00:47:02.940 --> 00:47:04.440 why don't we have something like this? 00:47:04.440 --> 00:47:05.980 Because DTNS is really, really great. 00:47:05.980 --> 00:47:09.920 But he does a bunch of podcasts and he writes books and he does all sorts of things. 00:47:09.920 --> 00:47:13.600 So there's a lot of cool lessons to learn from listening to that episode. 00:47:13.600 --> 00:47:16.640 What other ones would you recommend people check out? 00:47:16.900 --> 00:47:19.940 Well, for my shows, that's so tough. 00:47:19.940 --> 00:47:22.640 I've had so many great guests. 00:47:22.640 --> 00:47:26.800 And right now, I'm kind of cheating and I'm going to go to my website and look at some of 00:47:26.800 --> 00:47:27.380 those names. 00:47:27.380 --> 00:47:30.420 There was this one guy named Michael Kennedy. 00:47:30.420 --> 00:47:32.360 He did really good on the show. 00:47:32.360 --> 00:47:33.560 Like, I really enjoyed his. 00:47:33.560 --> 00:47:34.220 Thank you. 00:47:34.220 --> 00:47:37.740 Just looking through this, of course, I've had Brett Terpstra on the show. 00:47:37.740 --> 00:47:39.560 A lot of people say he's like internet famous. 00:47:39.560 --> 00:47:42.220 So I think there's a drinking game named after him. 00:47:42.220 --> 00:47:46.220 I like enjoy talking with him because he's a very realistic person. 00:47:46.220 --> 00:47:48.100 And he's also a mad scientist. 00:47:48.100 --> 00:47:50.840 He does a lot of little projects that are really cool. 00:47:50.840 --> 00:47:58.700 But other than that, I mean, I'm like scrolling through these and there's so many great people 00:47:58.700 --> 00:47:59.120 in here. 00:47:59.120 --> 00:48:00.920 People ask me these questions as well. 00:48:00.920 --> 00:48:04.380 And it's always like, well, which one of your kids is prettier or something, you know, 00:48:04.380 --> 00:48:05.060 something like that, right? 00:48:05.060 --> 00:48:05.740 It's hard to say. 00:48:05.740 --> 00:48:06.520 But yeah. 00:48:06.520 --> 00:48:07.740 Exactly. 00:48:07.740 --> 00:48:08.520 Exactly. 00:48:08.520 --> 00:48:15.660 I would say the one right before Brett too, Kenneth Rotter, he hosts the, what is it called? 00:48:15.660 --> 00:48:17.720 The Dumbbells and Dragons podcast. 00:48:18.600 --> 00:48:23.000 And this is where I was really inspired by the do your own thing, you know, just 00:48:23.000 --> 00:48:24.740 really just embrace your own thing. 00:48:24.740 --> 00:48:26.500 He loves working out. 00:48:26.500 --> 00:48:28.040 He loves nerd culture. 00:48:28.040 --> 00:48:30.480 He loves, you know, Sigourney Weaver. 00:48:30.480 --> 00:48:37.340 They did like a whole series on the alien sequence of movies and having conversations with 00:48:37.340 --> 00:48:40.600 him came at a very, very difficult time for me. 00:48:40.600 --> 00:48:45.080 I was struggling with a lot of social anxiety stuff and I felt like I couldn't become that 00:48:45.080 --> 00:48:45.700 real developer. 00:48:46.380 --> 00:48:52.020 And then I got him on the line and learned that like, okay, I can just be myself. 00:48:52.020 --> 00:48:56.220 And if that means I'm not a real developer, as long as I'm having fun, that's what really 00:48:56.220 --> 00:48:56.760 counts. 00:48:56.760 --> 00:48:57.040 Yeah. 00:48:57.040 --> 00:49:00.720 I think if you're building things, right, it doesn't have to be what you necessarily do 00:49:00.720 --> 00:49:03.060 day to day, but I think you are as well, for sure. 00:49:03.060 --> 00:49:03.740 So that's cool. 00:49:03.740 --> 00:49:07.160 Let's go back to your always be learning part. 00:49:07.160 --> 00:49:09.200 And a big part of that is reading, right? 00:49:09.200 --> 00:49:14.500 So you're an avid reader and I know there's a bunch of books that developers could, should 00:49:14.500 --> 00:49:16.780 maybe read for this kind of stuff. 00:49:16.780 --> 00:49:18.180 What do you got in mind for that? 00:49:18.180 --> 00:49:22.760 So I have a few development books that are sitting on my shelf. 00:49:22.760 --> 00:49:25.580 I think I've cracked the spine on a couple of them. 00:49:26.260 --> 00:49:32.780 So I can't really give you the best advice on development books, but I can tell you of some 00:49:32.780 --> 00:49:37.240 really good books that I've read that can just help you in life in general. 00:49:37.780 --> 00:49:43.160 And one of my most recent, you know, really, really, really good books is How to Be Everything. 00:49:43.160 --> 00:49:45.600 And this is by Emily Wapnick. 00:49:45.600 --> 00:49:51.980 And this is where the idea of being yourself and merging your passions came from. 00:49:51.980 --> 00:49:57.660 Emily is what she would call a multi-potentialite, which means that she could really be doing a 00:49:57.660 --> 00:49:59.860 couple of things and she likes doing those things. 00:49:59.860 --> 00:50:01.040 I'm the same way. 00:50:01.040 --> 00:50:02.320 I've already mentioned it before. 00:50:02.320 --> 00:50:04.160 I could just be doing podcasting full-time. 00:50:04.160 --> 00:50:05.420 I could be a full-time developer. 00:50:05.420 --> 00:50:11.340 I could be a full-time community manager, but I find ways to kind of combine these things. 00:50:11.340 --> 00:50:14.460 And I learned that little tip from Emily's book. 00:50:14.460 --> 00:50:15.500 Yeah, that sounds really cool. 00:50:15.500 --> 00:50:20.020 I haven't read that one, but I have read some of the next one you have up for us with The 00:50:20.020 --> 00:50:21.020 Accidental Creative. 00:50:21.020 --> 00:50:24.220 Yes, this book was phenomenal. 00:50:24.220 --> 00:50:31.360 I think that I like Todd Henry's books, Die Empty and Louder Than Words, I think is the 00:50:31.360 --> 00:50:31.660 other one. 00:50:31.660 --> 00:50:35.340 I haven't read that one yet, but The Accidental Creative was the first book I read by Todd. 00:50:35.340 --> 00:50:39.720 And even at the end, he just wraps it up of like, you know, don't be a cover band. 00:50:39.720 --> 00:50:40.780 Do your own thing. 00:50:40.780 --> 00:50:46.320 Kind of like, as you can tell, a lot of these lessons that I pick up, they're not from me, 00:50:46.320 --> 00:50:50.720 but he really does show like, hey, think about things outside while you're doing them. 00:50:50.720 --> 00:50:54.420 Think about how can this translate to other areas of your life? 00:50:54.420 --> 00:50:57.620 Think about the things that you don't want to be doing and what can you gain from them that 00:50:57.620 --> 00:50:59.700 makes the experience overall more pleasant. 00:51:00.020 --> 00:51:00.420 Yeah, absolutely. 00:51:00.420 --> 00:51:06.580 I think creativity definitely in, at least in the sense of that book and not necessarily 00:51:06.580 --> 00:51:11.920 the traditional, you know, art major type creativity, but the creativity that a lot of people have 00:51:11.920 --> 00:51:17.980 in their work, you know, it's, I think it's undervalued or maybe under, underdeveloped, 00:51:17.980 --> 00:51:18.160 right? 00:51:18.160 --> 00:51:23.800 Like we don't spend enough time like just focusing on being creative problem solvers and creative 00:51:23.800 --> 00:51:24.200 thinkers. 00:51:24.760 --> 00:51:25.160 Right. 00:51:25.160 --> 00:51:27.140 So it's good to remind you to do that. 00:51:27.140 --> 00:51:27.620 Absolutely. 00:51:27.620 --> 00:51:28.000 Yeah. 00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:32.340 So the next one is how to be positive when telling people, no, I'm too busy. 00:51:32.340 --> 00:51:32.860 Yeah. 00:51:32.860 --> 00:51:36.720 The Power of a Positive No by William Ury is, is, it's an older book. 00:51:36.720 --> 00:51:40.920 He's actually written some other really good books that I'd highly suggest you check out. 00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:46.040 But, but this one, this one really helped, especially if you're dealing with social anxiety. 00:51:46.040 --> 00:51:50.300 If you feel like you have to please everyone, I would highly recommend reading this book. 00:51:50.720 --> 00:51:57.480 William is someone who, he's been a negotiator and he's negotiated a lot of peace treaties. 00:51:57.480 --> 00:52:00.060 He's negotiated international conflicts. 00:52:00.060 --> 00:52:03.700 He sat down with the people that were involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis. 00:52:03.700 --> 00:52:11.380 So he brings a lot of knowledge in and really teaches you how to develop this system around 00:52:11.380 --> 00:52:16.880 saying no and really unlock the things that you want to say yes to and, and really having 00:52:16.880 --> 00:52:18.200 the power to do that. 00:52:18.480 --> 00:52:20.660 It's called the power of a positive no for a reason. 00:52:20.660 --> 00:52:25.680 Once you learn some of these techniques, you start to realize like, wow, I didn't even 00:52:25.680 --> 00:52:26.620 know I could do that. 00:52:26.620 --> 00:52:26.940 Yeah. 00:52:26.940 --> 00:52:27.820 That's interesting. 00:52:27.820 --> 00:52:32.860 You know, I feel like a lot of times people miss opportunities because they come by and 00:52:32.860 --> 00:52:33.780 they're like, ah, I'm so busy. 00:52:33.780 --> 00:52:34.620 I can't deal with this. 00:52:34.620 --> 00:52:34.940 Right. 00:52:34.940 --> 00:52:37.160 Like I would love to go do that, but I got X, Y, and Z. 00:52:37.160 --> 00:52:37.460 Right. 00:52:37.460 --> 00:52:41.280 And so this sounds like it might keep a little slack in the system for that. 00:52:41.280 --> 00:52:42.000 It definitely does. 00:52:42.000 --> 00:52:42.260 Yeah. 00:52:42.260 --> 00:52:42.540 Nice. 00:52:42.540 --> 00:52:44.300 The next one's about running. 00:52:44.300 --> 00:52:48.120 I think you can learn a lot of life lessons from these types of endurance things. 00:52:48.120 --> 00:52:48.480 Yeah. 00:52:48.480 --> 00:52:53.620 And this book, what I talk about when I talk about running by Haruki Murakami, I picked 00:52:53.620 --> 00:52:56.540 this book up years ago and never read it. 00:52:56.540 --> 00:53:00.880 And then I finally sat down earlier this year to read it and was mad at myself for waiting 00:53:00.880 --> 00:53:01.460 so long. 00:53:01.460 --> 00:53:03.340 Haruki is an author. 00:53:03.340 --> 00:53:04.240 He's a fiction writer. 00:53:04.500 --> 00:53:07.180 And I've read several of his fiction books. 00:53:07.180 --> 00:53:09.000 He's one of my favorite fiction writers. 00:53:09.000 --> 00:53:15.520 But in this, he talks about the life that he has outside of writing, which is, you know, 00:53:15.520 --> 00:53:19.240 he's a marathon runner and he does this every day. 00:53:19.240 --> 00:53:24.620 And it teaches, you know, it teaches you a lot about the power of creating a habit and really 00:53:24.620 --> 00:53:27.440 having that habit work for you. 00:53:27.440 --> 00:53:30.180 You know, we can't be developers 24-7. 00:53:30.180 --> 00:53:34.060 I know some of us try, but we cannot be developers 24-7. 00:53:34.060 --> 00:53:39.180 And when we do these other things, kind of like what Ken Rotter was doing with, we're going 00:53:39.180 --> 00:53:43.220 to the gym or joining a D&D group or reading a good book. 00:53:43.220 --> 00:53:48.820 When you do these things, it really helps not just with your mental health and your physical 00:53:48.820 --> 00:53:53.640 health, but it also helps on the development side because it helps keep your brain engaged 00:53:53.640 --> 00:53:55.240 in learning different things. 00:53:55.240 --> 00:53:55.560 Yeah. 00:53:55.560 --> 00:53:56.740 That sounds interesting. 00:53:56.740 --> 00:53:59.280 And the last one, what's this last one here? 00:53:59.800 --> 00:54:02.140 So the last one is a fiction book. 00:54:02.140 --> 00:54:08.780 It's, I've always been fascinated with the counter-revolution that happened in China about a hundred years 00:54:08.780 --> 00:54:10.300 ago at this point. 00:54:10.300 --> 00:54:13.340 But this book is called Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. 00:54:13.340 --> 00:54:16.820 It's by a Chinese French author named Dai Seji. 00:54:16.820 --> 00:54:21.740 And I've read this book once a year for the past five years. 00:54:21.740 --> 00:54:24.900 I'm actually about to come up to the point where I'm going to read it again for this year. 00:54:25.380 --> 00:54:27.640 And it's just a really beautiful story. 00:54:27.640 --> 00:54:31.960 And it takes place in the ancient villages of China. 00:54:31.960 --> 00:54:37.320 For those that don't know about the counter-revolution, what Emperor Mao used to do was he would take 00:54:37.320 --> 00:54:44.680 some of the smartest people, the doctors, the politicians, the activists, the lawyers, and 00:54:44.680 --> 00:54:50.300 he would take their children and put them in a re-education system where they would send them to 00:54:50.300 --> 00:54:55.560 these remote islands, or not islands, but these remote villages where there were maybe like 20 00:54:55.560 --> 00:55:00.560 people and there was no electricity and no television and no radios and anything else. 00:55:00.560 --> 00:55:05.000 And in the book, they even, they become fascinated with an alarm clock because it allows them to wake 00:55:05.000 --> 00:55:10.020 up on time early without having to ignore everything, you know, without sleeping in. 00:55:10.020 --> 00:55:10.820 I don't know. 00:55:10.820 --> 00:55:15.280 Every time I read this book, I just, I look at my life and I just think about how good I have it. 00:55:15.280 --> 00:55:19.640 Because I grew up in an era that I did not have to deal with some of these things. 00:55:19.640 --> 00:55:23.800 And, you know, as an African-American, as a minority in the tech space, there are a lot of 00:55:23.800 --> 00:55:24.780 issues that are out there. 00:55:24.780 --> 00:55:30.920 And I look at those issues and I acknowledge them, but I continue to push myself regardless 00:55:30.920 --> 00:55:33.240 because I know that it could definitely be worse. 00:55:33.540 --> 00:55:36.360 Yeah, that sounds like a really interesting set of life lessons in there. 00:55:36.360 --> 00:55:37.380 That's, that's cool. 00:55:37.380 --> 00:55:39.260 And I love the lesson that you're taking from it. 00:55:39.260 --> 00:55:39.660 That's great. 00:55:39.660 --> 00:55:43.480 So I actually have two books I want to throw onto the list here. 00:55:43.480 --> 00:55:45.240 These are not your books, but, but mine. 00:55:45.240 --> 00:55:49.280 And I recently read them and I thought they were just incredible and related to this. 00:55:49.280 --> 00:55:52.040 One was the biography of Elon Musk. 00:55:52.040 --> 00:55:55.900 It's called Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, and the quest for a fantastic future. 00:55:55.900 --> 00:56:02.020 And just reading what Elon Musk has done and continues to do makes you feel like, 00:56:02.260 --> 00:56:06.300 oh my gosh, I've got to get out there and do something because he's, he's starting a space 00:56:06.300 --> 00:56:08.240 company, a car company, a solar company. 00:56:08.240 --> 00:56:12.300 You know, he's just like, you read about the passion and the drive and the focus. 00:56:12.300 --> 00:56:15.820 And it's like, you can't help but want to like go do more. 00:56:15.820 --> 00:56:17.580 So that's really cool. 00:56:17.640 --> 00:56:21.600 And then the other one is a surprising book I ran across somewhere right before I jumped 00:56:21.600 --> 00:56:25.200 on a plane called hustle, the life changing effects of constant motion. 00:56:25.200 --> 00:56:34.580 And this guy, Jesse Tevlov wrote this book and basically he's been working on like productivity, 00:56:34.580 --> 00:56:42.460 focus, creativity type things, creating things in the creative space and super relevant for 00:56:42.460 --> 00:56:45.620 people in development and projects like that. 00:56:45.620 --> 00:56:48.780 And it's just, it really touches on a lot of, a lot of cool things. 00:56:48.780 --> 00:56:55.120 Basically, you know, inspires you to keep moving, always take a step forward, always get at least 00:56:55.120 --> 00:56:57.880 some progress on whatever your, your real important goals are. 00:56:57.880 --> 00:56:58.400 It's great. 00:56:58.400 --> 00:56:58.920 Absolutely. 00:56:59.100 --> 00:57:04.420 And I think that a lot of developers are afraid to embrace their creative side. 00:57:04.420 --> 00:57:10.200 I mean, there's, we were supposed to think logically and analytically, but really we're, 00:57:10.200 --> 00:57:11.080 we're creative. 00:57:11.080 --> 00:57:15.260 I mean, it, it takes creativity to build a website. 00:57:15.260 --> 00:57:20.300 Like, I mean, sure you can follow a template, but that's boring and you want to make it your 00:57:20.300 --> 00:57:22.000 own thing and you try all these new things. 00:57:22.000 --> 00:57:24.740 And the only way you get to those things is by truly being creative. 00:57:24.740 --> 00:57:25.120 Yeah. 00:57:25.260 --> 00:57:28.600 That's the surprising thing about, I think, programming is you think of all these rules 00:57:28.600 --> 00:57:33.380 and you've got to follow what the programming languages and the APIs sort of boxes into. 00:57:33.380 --> 00:57:39.800 But once those boxes and that, that space is built, then it's just full of creative problem 00:57:39.800 --> 00:57:40.880 solving and creative thinking. 00:57:40.880 --> 00:57:42.500 And it's, it's really a wonderful space. 00:57:42.500 --> 00:57:44.420 So definitely important. 00:57:44.420 --> 00:57:48.320 So Jay, we're getting short on time and getting near the end of the show. 00:57:48.320 --> 00:57:50.060 So you mentioned your course. 00:57:50.060 --> 00:57:52.120 Why don't you tell everybody what you're up to with your course? 00:57:52.560 --> 00:57:55.040 So my upcoming course is called learn to say no. 00:57:55.040 --> 00:58:03.560 It is designed for people like us, like developers to learn how to embrace no, kind of like what, 00:58:03.560 --> 00:58:05.360 uh, the power of a positive no was saying. 00:58:05.360 --> 00:58:10.400 however, this comes from a position specifically in tech. 00:58:10.400 --> 00:58:15.020 You know, we're going to be talking about saying no to yourself when you want to stay up late 00:58:15.020 --> 00:58:16.320 and burn the candle at both ends. 00:58:16.320 --> 00:58:21.540 Saying no to your boss when they want to add a ton of work onto your project and, and 00:58:21.540 --> 00:58:27.860 kind of takes us to take things off the rails and, and saying no to being that resident 00:58:27.860 --> 00:58:30.880 IT guy for your family or girl. 00:58:30.880 --> 00:58:36.600 But ultimately we're learning to say no so we can eventually say yes and say yes to the 00:58:36.600 --> 00:58:39.660 things that we want to and the things that are going to continue to empower us. 00:58:39.660 --> 00:58:42.220 But you can't get to yes before you get to no. 00:58:42.760 --> 00:58:46.000 And I've learned a lot just preparing for this course. 00:58:46.000 --> 00:58:48.660 And I think a lot of people are going to learn from it as well. 00:58:48.660 --> 00:58:48.900 Nice. 00:58:48.900 --> 00:58:51.080 People are interested how they find out when it comes out. 00:58:51.080 --> 00:58:53.220 So we do have a landing page up. 00:58:53.220 --> 00:58:56.440 If you go to productivityintech.com, if it's your first time visiting the site, you're going 00:58:56.440 --> 00:58:59.460 to get a little pop-up at the top of the screen that says learn about our upcoming course. 00:58:59.460 --> 00:59:02.500 And if you click on that, you can sign up for our waiting list. 00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:09.020 In there, I will, I will send you some sneak peeks down the road, but I'll also will let 00:59:09.020 --> 00:59:11.920 you know the status of where I'm, where I'm at with the course. 00:59:11.920 --> 00:59:15.840 And when I expect it to come out right now, we don't have a release date at the time of 00:59:15.840 --> 00:59:18.160 recording, but the plan is to have it out by the end of the year. 00:59:18.160 --> 00:59:18.500 All right. 00:59:18.500 --> 00:59:18.980 Sounds cool. 00:59:18.980 --> 00:59:20.300 All right. 00:59:20.360 --> 00:59:22.080 I think we're going to have to leave it there for the topic. 00:59:22.080 --> 00:59:23.920 So let me ask you the two questions. 00:59:23.920 --> 00:59:27.740 So if you're going to write some Python code, what editor do you open up? 00:59:27.740 --> 00:59:28.860 It really just depends. 00:59:28.860 --> 00:59:33.640 When we first started preparing for this conversation, it was one thing and now it's another one. 00:59:33.640 --> 00:59:40.080 I normally use Atom or I'll use Vim for quick fixes, but Sublime Text 3 just came out. 00:59:40.080 --> 00:59:42.800 So I'm giving that a shot and I like it. 00:59:42.800 --> 00:59:44.880 There's a lot of cool things about it. 00:59:44.880 --> 00:59:45.740 Oh, that's really cool. 00:59:45.740 --> 00:59:46.800 I'll have to go check that out. 00:59:46.800 --> 00:59:47.580 I haven't even noticed. 00:59:47.580 --> 00:59:48.260 It's awesome. 00:59:49.340 --> 00:59:51.260 Notable PyPI package. 00:59:51.260 --> 00:59:57.360 I love requests and I love requests because I am always like trying to connect to an API. 00:59:57.360 --> 01:00:03.140 I'm always like for some reason, constantly pulling in like traffic. 01:00:03.140 --> 01:00:09.040 BeautifulSoup would definitely be a close second because that's where those were like the two 01:00:09.040 --> 01:00:14.480 big packages that I used originally, like when I first started developing in Python. 01:00:14.480 --> 01:00:19.100 But yeah, at this point, it's BeautifulSoup, not as much, but I still use 01:00:19.100 --> 01:00:21.100 requests in almost every single project. 01:00:21.100 --> 01:00:29.120 Yeah, that project is, of course, one of, if not the most popular PyPI packages, but it really captures 01:00:29.120 --> 01:00:34.660 the essence of the import anti-gravity KCXD comic. 01:00:34.660 --> 01:00:37.040 So it's great. 01:00:37.040 --> 01:00:37.720 All right. 01:00:37.720 --> 01:00:38.700 So final call to action. 01:00:38.700 --> 01:00:40.380 People want to be more productive. 01:00:40.380 --> 01:00:41.580 What should they do? 01:00:41.780 --> 01:00:45.840 So I would highly suggest that you center yourself around a community. 01:00:45.840 --> 01:00:48.780 Don't think that you have to be productive on your own. 01:00:48.780 --> 01:00:52.700 Don't think that you have to try to make a bunch of life changes all on your own. 01:00:52.700 --> 01:00:57.760 And when you fail, don't get discouraged and feel like you're just a massive failure. 01:00:57.760 --> 01:01:01.120 Instead, get out, get involved in a community. 01:01:01.340 --> 01:01:05.040 I happen to know one called the Productivity and Tech Premium Group. 01:01:05.040 --> 01:01:06.980 It is a paid for group. 01:01:06.980 --> 01:01:12.180 But the reason that we pay for it is because we want everybody in there to feel like they 01:01:12.180 --> 01:01:16.800 have to contribute to the community and they have to grow with each other. 01:01:16.960 --> 01:01:21.360 And it really has created a lot of amazing things. 01:01:21.360 --> 01:01:27.000 A lot of life changes have happened in that group that I don't think would have happened. 01:01:27.000 --> 01:01:32.820 I've had people say, you know, I was afraid to do this thing until I joined this community. 01:01:32.820 --> 01:01:35.720 And I had people cheering behind me saying, hey, you can do this. 01:01:35.720 --> 01:01:36.220 You can do this. 01:01:36.220 --> 01:01:36.680 You can do this. 01:01:36.680 --> 01:01:38.440 And in the end, I did. 01:01:38.440 --> 01:01:40.280 So don't do it on your own. 01:01:40.280 --> 01:01:41.420 Get involved. 01:01:41.420 --> 01:01:42.580 Get plugged into a community. 01:01:42.580 --> 01:01:47.040 If you want to join the Productivity and Tech community, start by listening to the podcast 01:01:47.040 --> 01:01:50.840 first to make sure that we're going to provide you what you need. 01:01:50.840 --> 01:01:56.060 And then go to productivityintech.com slash premium slash talk python. 01:01:56.060 --> 01:01:59.480 And I'm going to give you two thirds off for life. 01:01:59.480 --> 01:02:03.480 So instead of paying the $30 a month, you'll only have to pay $10 a month. 01:02:03.480 --> 01:02:06.760 And that is for the life of your membership. 01:02:06.760 --> 01:02:07.360 Yeah. 01:02:07.360 --> 01:02:08.140 Yeah, that's really cool. 01:02:08.140 --> 01:02:10.660 That's a nice project you got going there. 01:02:10.660 --> 01:02:16.620 And it definitely helps to have someone who's sort of at your level trying to solve the 01:02:16.620 --> 01:02:20.100 same problems or work on the same types of things or reach the same goals that you are. 01:02:20.100 --> 01:02:24.320 So I have people that I meet up with weekly or every other week or something like that. 01:02:24.320 --> 01:02:28.220 And we can share and exchange notes and see how we're doing and keep each other motivated. 01:02:28.220 --> 01:02:29.780 So yeah, very, very cool. 01:02:29.780 --> 01:02:31.080 All right, Jay. 01:02:31.080 --> 01:02:32.740 Thanks for being on Talk Python. 01:02:32.740 --> 01:02:38.080 It's been great to chat with you and catch up with you on all these topics and suggestions 01:02:38.080 --> 01:02:38.480 are great. 01:02:38.600 --> 01:02:38.960 Absolutely. 01:02:38.960 --> 01:02:43.360 And I plan on keeping you as a recurring member on my podcast as well. 01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:45.580 So be on the lookout for another invite. 01:02:45.580 --> 01:02:46.200 Sounds good. 01:02:46.200 --> 01:02:46.740 Thanks. 01:02:46.740 --> 01:02:47.720 Talk to you later. 01:02:48.860 --> 01:02:51.740 This has been another episode of Talk Python To Me. 01:02:51.740 --> 01:02:53.820 Today's guest was Jay Miller. 01:02:53.820 --> 01:02:56.420 And this episode has been brought to you by Linode and GoCD. 01:02:56.420 --> 01:03:00.580 Linode is bulletproof hosting for whatever you're building with Python. 01:03:00.580 --> 01:03:04.920 Get your four months free at talkpython.fm/Linode. 01:03:04.920 --> 01:03:07.460 Just use the code Python17. 01:03:07.460 --> 01:03:12.260 GoCD is the on-premise open source continuous delivery server. 01:03:12.900 --> 01:03:16.400 Want to improve your deployment workflow, but keep your code and builds in-house? 01:03:16.400 --> 01:03:22.760 Check out GoCD at talkpython.fm/gocd and take control over your process. 01:03:22.760 --> 01:03:25.420 Are you or a colleague trying to learn Python? 01:03:25.420 --> 01:03:30.080 Have you tried books and videos that just left you bored by covering topics point by point? 01:03:30.460 --> 01:03:36.080 Well, check out my online course Python Jumpstart by building 10 apps at talkpython.fm/course 01:03:36.080 --> 01:03:38.700 to experience a more engaging way to learn Python. 01:03:38.700 --> 01:03:41.660 And if you're looking for something a little more advanced, 01:03:41.660 --> 01:03:46.020 try my Write Pythonic Code course at talkpython.fm/pythonic. 01:03:46.020 --> 01:03:48.740 Be sure to subscribe to the show. 01:03:48.740 --> 01:03:50.940 Open your favorite podcatcher and search for Python. 01:03:50.940 --> 01:03:52.180 We should be right at the top. 01:03:52.560 --> 01:03:57.580 You can also find the iTunes feed at /itunes, Google Play feed at /play, 01:03:57.580 --> 01:04:01.480 and direct RSS feed at /rss on talkpython.fm. 01:04:01.480 --> 01:04:03.380 This is your host, Michael Kennedy. 01:04:03.380 --> 01:04:04.740 Thanks so much for listening. 01:04:04.740 --> 01:04:05.800 I really appreciate it. 01:04:05.800 --> 01:04:07.740 Now get out there and write some Python code. 01:04:07.740 --> 01:04:28.320 I really appreciate it.