162: A Question of Time
Ben never has enough time to accomplish everything that he wants to accomplish. On its own, this isn't necessarily a "bad thing". But, it can quickly lead to feelings of guilt: is he not good enough, is he not effective enough, is he letting everyone down? So much of this angst is emotional. And he knows this. But, he doesn't have the wherewithal that he needs to evolve his own perspective. The crew tries to help him out.
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With audio editing and engineering by ZCross Media.
Transcript
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[00:00:00] Highlight
[00:00:00] Ben: I was listening to an interview, and the guy being interviewed said that at one point in his life,
[00:00:04] Ben: he just said, you know what? That's not how I'm going to deal with it anymore. I'm going to lean into the fact that I always have more stuff than I will ever be able to do, and I'm just going to be okay with it.
[00:00:13] Ben: and I've been wanting to do that for about 15 years, and I have not, I've not been able to get it done,
[00:00:21] Intro
[00:00:21] Adam: Okay. Here we go. It is show number 162. And on today's show, we're going to talk about time and how there's never enough of it. but first, as usual, we'll start with our triumphs and fails, and Carol, looks like it's your turn to go first.
[00:00:52] Carol: Yeah, well first I'd like to say it's usually basil I can't find. I have lots of time in my light cupboard.
[00:00:57] Carol: Uh,It's the, the basil is always the issue.
[00:01:00] Adam: You gotta, you gotta have that fresh basil plant in the window.
[00:01:04] Carol: Yeah, not here.
[00:01:05] Carol's Triumph
[00:01:05] Carol: So, I'm going to kick us off with a try up. I decided to, clean my office and by doing so, I now only have to use one desk. So when I moved here, I didn't know which desk I wanted to keep. So I brought two desks and I set one curve monitor on my work desk and set up my laptop. And then on my other desk, I had my makeup and my other monitor and my PC.
[00:01:30] Carol: So that's like where I do the podcast. That's where I pay my bills. I do all my personal things there. So I finally cleaned it off, turned my, one, like. Sweet little cute desk into just a makeup vanity. And now my standing desk has two curve monitors on it, has my keyboards, has a setup, so I just can, unplug the dock and plug in one thing for my keyboard and it's good to switch to my personal, so I'm super proud of that.
[00:01:55] Carol: Cause it was a bit stressful walking in here every day and having to figure out which desk I was going to sit at and which keyboard I was going to have to use.
[00:02:04] Tim: you still have two desks,
[00:02:06] Carol: Yeah, but the other, yeah.
[00:02:07] Tim: it was just for, for makeup
[00:02:09] Carol: It's just for makeup and paying bills. I put the mail over there. Yeah.
[00:02:15] Adam: Yeah, this, that's not that far off from, mine, so I'll, I'll mention that later I guess. But I can, I can totally relate.
[00:02:24] Carol: We'll keep the suspense going. Cause I'm going to ask Tim what he's got going on.
[00:02:29] Tim's Fail
[00:02:29] Tim: Okay, well, I got a fail. So, uh, a coworker slash boss that I've known for 23 years at the same, we've been at the same company, pretty much started there almost the same time. he sent out an email to everyone saying that he was moving on to. A new opportunity and leaving. So that's kind of sad, like,
[00:02:48] Ben: So he's been there for like 20 years? Holy
[00:02:51] Tim: years.
[00:02:52] Tim: Yeah.
[00:02:52] Ben: moly.
[00:02:53] Tim: Yeah. He was hired a little bit before I was, and we were kind of like, you know, the main young, young guns, you know, we were both young and, and, yeah. So it's, it was kind of a shock cause I didn't see that coming. So, and it kind of makes you think about, you know, should I be doing something different?
[00:03:09] Tim: It's like,
[00:03:10] Adam: Mm hmm.
[00:03:10] Tim: you know, I've been here 23 years as well. It's like, maybe I'd go out and do something else that maybe that'll get me out of the rut I feel like I've been in. Maybe I've just been in the same place for too long. Then all of a sudden it's like, you know, I got it good here. It's like, it's pretty, pretty good.
[00:03:26] Tim: Just, just wait it out another 12, 13 years and you retire.
[00:03:30] Adam: Is that all?
[00:03:31] Tim: That all, hey, when you get in your fifties, 12, 13 years, it's like, that's nothing.
[00:03:37] Adam: You accidentally fall asleep on the couch and two years goes by.
[00:03:40] Tim: Yeah, exactly. So it's a little sad, but yeah, that's me. I'll get over it. How about you, Adam? What, put us out of suspense. What do you, what'd you do similar to Carol?
[00:03:50] Adam's Triumph
[00:03:50] Adam: So, uh,yeah, right. I just wanted to know what Carol was doing all week so that I could copy. Um, so, I spent this entire weekend in my workshop, you guys know I do some woodworking stuff, I basically, like, a third of my basement is cordoned off, it's like, got tarps all around it to turn it into, like, on one end, right, so I've got one tarp wall and three permanent walls, um,
[00:04:13] Carol: to sound like Dexter a little.
[00:04:16] Adam: and that's where my, uh, my tools are, and, it's, over the years, it has, Just accumulated, it's, it's almost like a death by a thousand paper cuts type of situation, right?
[00:04:27] Adam: Like it just accumulated so much little micro frustrations, right? Things that I wish were better, better organized, cleaner, little small projects that I started and never finished, whatever. So this weekend I did a ton of work down there and all of it was just about making the space more enticing for me so that I'm more excited to go spend time down there because like I realized, during the last big project that I did prior to my desk.
[00:04:52] Adam: that. The space itself was kind of, not dissuading me, but like it just was kind of annoying to go down there because it was, it was frustrating. It was a frustrating place to work because,
[00:05:03] Ben: Sparking Joy.
[00:05:04] Adam: yeah, yeah, very much. You know, it was, it, you can kind of think about it like, you know, if you had been, trained on how to use, how to, how to, you know, be a web developer using Mac tools, and, you know, VS code and all this other stuff.
[00:05:17] Adam: And then like somebody just drops you into like Vim on Linux and, and, you're like, okay, I mean, technically I suppose I can get some work done in here, but, you know, it just doesn't, it doesn't feel like home, right? It doesn't feel exciting and enticing. and yeah, so that was kind of the experience I was having.
[00:05:33] Adam: And when I had the realization, I was like, I really just need to Give myself permission to, to maybe make some mistakes in cleaning up. And cause like part of it was projects that I had started and left unfinished because I was worried about them not being perfect, right. You know, kind of a perfectionist stopping me from getting done.
[00:05:53] Adam: And I just gave myself permission to mess it up. And I did mess several things up. But I just, you know, fixed them decent enough and, and moved on. And now I'm excited to go spend more time down there, but my hands are like wrecked. I don't know if you guys can see all the like, scabs and crap on the back of my hands and my fingers.
[00:06:12] Adam: I just, I'm such a klutz and I'm always like smashing my hands. And so I was, I reached for a paper towel today, just off the kitchen counter. And I, in the process of reaching for a paper towel off the kitchen counter, I smashed my hand into the upper cabinet. And like, You know, give myself another little cut on the back of my hand.
[00:06:30] Adam: Just, I'm such a klutz. I don't get it, but, yeah, you know, it's just my life. My hands are always beat up.
[00:06:39] Ben: On a, on a slightly related note, I try so hard not to look at The reels when I'm scrolling through Facebook on my phone, you're a little short, they're, they're short form videos, but every now and then there'll be, there's one channel that does these really interesting wood joints that don't require glue or nails.
[00:06:59] Ben: And it's all these interesting angled. Pieces where you slide them together and then there'll be like a little square cut out and they, and they hammer a peg into that square and now the joint can't come apart. There's all kinds of variations on that. And I don't know anything about woodworking, but those are so satisfying.
[00:07:17] Ben: It's like a visual ASMR. It's really, it's just fun to see it happening. I'm like, Oh, I see where this is going.
[00:07:24] Adam: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, this is, it's the same for me.
[00:07:27] Carol: So we have a Thuma bed. I think it's called Thuma, but that's the way the joints are that connect the, the four pieces of wood together. The only screw that's there is the little middle brace of the, the mattress doesn't seek or whatever. I don't know why it's there. Anyways, nothing else has screws. It all just.
[00:07:43] Carol: Slides together perfectly. It just locks. It's so fascinating and pretty and lush. And I would never be able to do it. It would look like crap.
[00:07:53] Adam: Eh, I mean. You know, 10 years ago, I would imagine that that Carol would say you'd never, she would never be able to do half the stuff that you're doing at work every day, you know? It's not so much about like, innate talent, it's you just put in the time to learn the skills.
[00:08:08] Carol: I'm a measure once and cut twice kind of person. Let's be real.
[00:08:14] Adam: And no matter how many times I cut it, it never gets any longer.
[00:08:17] Carol: No, I just have to change everything.
[00:08:21] Adam: Alright, well, that's it for me, so I guess that leaves you, Ben. What do you got going on?
[00:08:26] Ben's Failiumph
[00:08:26] Ben: I'm going to go with a failure. So the, the triumph portion of this is that as of Sunday night, I had successfully sent out six and a half million emails, which is.
[00:08:37] Tim: Spammer!
[00:08:39] Ben: Which is by far, by many orders of magnitude, the most emails that I've ever had to send
[00:08:44] Adam: that Wednesday.
[00:08:45] Ben: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Well, this was, this was pretty, oh my God, sorry, I don't know if you can hear that quack.
[00:08:52] Carol: The dog keeps stepping on a, on a dog toy. Um,I just thought you cursed. That was all. Yeah.
[00:08:58] Ben: I've got my own personal, uh, duck. so I was just very pleased with that, that it went out and we hit a few technical hurdles. Cause we just. Didn't know what was going to happen necessarily, and we had to learn as we were going. It took about five days to send out six and a half million emails.
[00:09:15] Ben: And, yeah, so I'm pretty excited about that. The failure part of that is that the content of the email was announcing that Envision is going to be closing at the end of 2024. So in one calendar year from now, basically, which is a pretty
[00:09:32] Tim: in going out of business closing?
[00:09:35] Ben: don't know if that's the right term we are closing, but,
[00:09:39] Adam: They were, yeah, they were bought, right?
[00:09:43] Ben: Basically we were, yeah, we were bought by Miro and Miro is not interested in running parts of the business that it doesn't use relating to whiteboarding. So the entity of Envision is going to be shutting down at the end of 2024 and all of the whiteboarding tech and people have been absorbed into the Miro organization at this point.
[00:10:06] Carol: So that's very bittersweet. So where, where does that put you? Oh
[00:10:10] Ben: I have 12 months to figure that out and there might be some, collaborations available in my inner circle here, but,yeah, it's, it's, it'll be an interesting year and see how it goes.
[00:10:26] Carol: that's sad, but damn, that's a lot of emails.
[00:10:29] Ben: Yeah. There's a ton of emails.
[00:10:31] Carol: Yeah,
[00:10:32] Adam: you know, congratulations on having a life with chapters, right? Like it's just the end of a chapter. You got another one coming up after that.
[00:10:38] Ben: It's super interesting. So I was thinking if I can go off on a small tangent for a
[00:10:42] Adam: No, we don't do
[00:10:43] Ben: I am, as I often do, I was listening to an interview the other day with the CTO of Distrokid, and he was talking about how important it is in your career to be flexible and to be open to new technologies and to not be too dogmatic.
[00:11:00] Ben: And he was talking about all the places that he's worked and the different things that he's learned at different places in terms of some places he was more engineering focused and some places he was more management focused. And it got me thinking about how we become exposed. To new things. And if you work at the same place, you know, I've been here for 12, 13 years.
[00:11:21] Ben: If you work at one place for so long, it's not always easy to argue the business case for trying new things. And you know, you, can, of course, and there are reasons to choose better technologies and to evolve the way that you do things. But it's much easier, I think, to actually switch companies and go somewhere where they're just using a new technology or they're using a new type of database or they're using a new type of architecture.
[00:11:50] Ben: And I felt very conflicted as I was listening to him talk and I was thinking about how long I've been at a place and how long people are usually at a company in the technology industry. And there, it seems to be in conflict that being at a place and having a long tenure feels In a big way, at odds with the idea of being exposed to new things.
[00:12:14] Ben: And I, I don't have an answer here. I'm just more thinking out loud, but I was having these, I couldn't reconcile that very easily in my head.
[00:12:23] Adam: Well, yeah, I mean, you can't go changing platforms every other year. That's just not financially smart. And in terms of as a business, right. For our product, we can't just replatform every other year. That would be a total waste of time and money. but you know, like you said, you've been there for 10 plus years. I would expect. A replatforming or, or some significant major re architecture at
[00:12:47] Ben: Yeah. But like, did that work out?
[00:12:52] Adam: Is that what killed the company?
[00:12:54] Ben: know what I mean? It's like, it's just as easy to, to reflect on the funky choices that we made. And think, did we really need to try to use MongoDB in that case? Or did that end up being a net negative in the long run? Or, you know, did we, did we need to use microservices in that case? Or did that actually end up being a net negative?
[00:13:15] Ben: And it, I'm, you know, 2020 is always hindsight and I'm not saying that this is the reason that anything went particularly wrong,
[00:13:22] Adam: is always
[00:13:23] Tim: one of the worst years ever.
[00:13:26] Ben: it's just that.
[00:13:27] Adam: is hindsight is always a dumpster fire. No, wait, that was
[00:13:30] Ben: Anyway, I'm totally off topic now, but I was, I was just thinking about how tenure and, and experience and exposure to new things, it all seems to be at odds. And I don't know how to necessarily reconcile that. Like if I were to go to a new place,
[00:13:50] Tim: Just not enough time, man. It's not enough
[00:13:53] Ben: Just not enough time.
[00:13:54] Ben: Exactly. Exactly. Sweet. Call back to the actual topic.
[00:14:01] Patreon Stickers
[00:14:01] Adam: Well, before we get to that then, as we're rolling here out of our triumphs and fails, let me just throw in a quick reminder. End of January 2024, if you are a patron or if you become a patron, then you will be receiving stickers at some point shortly thereafter. Number of stickers and awesomeness of stickers depends on your Patreon level.
[00:14:24] Adam: so get signed up, get your address in. You can go to patreon.com/workingcodepod. And now with that out of the way, let's talk about time and how there's never enough of it.
[00:14:34] Carol: Like right now, when I cut my Pilates workout short to do this, ugh.
[00:14:40] Adam: You're welcome.
[00:14:41] Carol: Thank you. I appreciate it. Actually, my core hurts so bad,
[00:14:45] Accepting Priorities
[00:14:45] Ben: So I'll just jump in and say that. I was listening to an interview, I can't remember who or even what podcast it was, and this was two maybe months ago, and the guy being interviewed said that at one point in his life, he just decided to think differently about time, that before that moment, I don't know.
[00:15:05] Ben: He had always had too much to do, and he always just felt terrible about it. That he was always letting people down and always falling behind. And at one time he just said, you know what? That's not how I'm going to deal with it anymore. I'm going to lean into the fact that I always have more stuff than I will ever be able to do, and I'm just going to be okay with it.
[00:15:23] Ben: And he said it completely changed his life, and I've been wanting to do that for about 15 years, and I have not, I've not been able to get it done, and I definitely have way more things than I have time to even consider, and I just, I don't, I don't know how to deal with it. I don't have good tools. I feel terrible all the time.
[00:15:44] Ben: I feel like I'm letting people down all the time. I feel like I'm not communicating well with people. And, yeah, I don't know what to do about it.
[00:15:52] Adam: Yeah, I, I, for once, I don't know what podcast you're talking about, but, um, the, the concept it brings true for me, the way that I tend to think about this sort of thing is very similar. Like, yes, there's, you're never going to not. You're, you're never going to catch up, right? There's always going to be stuff that you're not going to have time to do.
[00:16:11] Adam: so the way that I tend to think about it is no matter what there's a decision involved, I have to decide this is something I'm going to do, and I'm doing it at the cost of a thousand things that I'm not going to do because I'm doing this one thing and, So no matter what, I'm making a decision, and I think that that alone, just allowing or acknowledging the fact that I am choosing something, takes away a lot of the negative feelings about having to make a choice, right?
[00:16:40] Ben: Like, making a choice is really, The bare minimum. It's, the only thing you can do. Do you have a ceremony? Like, do you, do you say something specifically in your head or do you do a little dance or, you know, like,
[00:16:53] Adam: a jig. No, no, I, I think it's just, it, it, no, like, paying attention to that fact, knowing that, okay, like, acknowledging it to myself. Not even, like, It's not even a, a, you know, harking back to the discussions we've had about, like, an inner monologue. It's not a sentence that I hear myself tell myself in my head, like, I have to make a decision anyway, so I'm just choosing this above the other things.
[00:17:17] Adam: It's just a feeling. I acknowledge to myself that I'm making a choice. And that's okay. And, you know, the choice is mine to make, right? And, you know, I pick the things. Every now and then I do try to take stock and sort of re rank the things or remind myself of what's important to me, right? You know, I'll like have a notion doc where, like, it's, I have a list of, like, these are the things that are important to me for my personal life. These are the things that are important to me in my career. These are the things that are important to me in my hobbies, whatever. and, you know, I was like, okay, family is at the top of that list.
[00:17:54] Adam: My relationship with my wife, my relationship with my kids. And then below stuff like that, it's like, take good care of my truck and take good care of the yard. Like, these are things that I would like to put some attention on, but they're less important than take, you know, take good care of my relationship with my wife.
[00:18:10] Adam: prioritizing
[00:18:11] Adam: Exactly. And then, and prioritizing within buckets, and then just like revisiting that maybe once a year, twice a year, just to, to refresh my memory of what that is, and I feel like having that just sort of in the background, recently revisited, helps me make better decisions, at those, you know, those micro decisions that you have to make on a daily basis.
[00:18:31] Adam: Throughout the year.
[00:18:33] Ben: Sounds so healthy. My, my attempt to remind myself is I star it in my inbox and I mean, I probably have like 5, 000 start emails at this point, something ridiculous.
[00:18:44] Carol: So is this mostly just work and projects or is this personal things too?
[00:18:49] Ben: It's everything.
[00:18:50] Structure vs Flexibility
[00:18:50] Ben: So I, I always refer to myself as someone who thrives within structure. If I get up at the same time every day, and I know that between this hour and this hour, I'm doing certain things. And between this hour, I'm doing certain things. And I'm going to work out at this time. And then this time is dinner.
[00:19:07] Ben: And here's when the dog usually has to go out. And I have. A bunch of reminders in my phone for taking out the trash and giving the dog medication. If my day can be very predictable, I feel like that is my, I'm in the zone. You know, I'm, I'm operating at a high level, at an optimal level. I feel like I'm maximizing my use of time.
[00:19:29] Ben: The problem is the rigidity of that structure. Inherently in opposition to flexibility, which means that if I suddenly get an email from a friend I haven't talked to in a long time, I don't know when to respond to that because if I go to respond to it now, it feels like I'm throwing my structure out of whack.
[00:19:49] Ben: Or, or if I get a,
[00:19:50] Adam: have 13 minutes in your daily schedule for responding to emails from long lost friends.
[00:19:54] Ben: I know like that's, that's what I feel like I need to do it. I feel like I need to then create a. codified time in the schedule to do certain things. Like I've tried to say, okay, Sunday, I'm not going to try to write. I'm just going to try to read. And then, and that'll give me time to catch up on blog posts and books.
[00:20:13] Ben: And, and you know, I try it once and it works kind of okay. But then the next weekend I forget and I just regress back to my old schedule. And I never know how to. I'd never, I don't know how to evolve my schedule to account for life.
[00:20:27] Carol: Yeah. So I don't know if this is going to be helpful for you or not, but I keep a list going, not like a big master list, but a list of little things on the side of my counter in my kitchen. And it'll be like, Oh, I need to go pick this up from the store or, you know, I need to prep this for dinner. And I also need to call my mom cause she's called twice.
[00:20:46] Carol: And, you know, I've tried to work through them and Steve's great about being like, Oh, I'll handle this so you can go take care of that one. You know, like I'll go prep all of the veggies that we need to cook if you'll just go sit down and call your mom real quick. That way that, you know, you're not so stressed at 10 o'clock at night when we're in bed that you still haven't called your mom and it's now midnight for her.
[00:21:09] Carol: And yeah, so we try doing some of that. So it is nice when you have someone that you can share some of those tasks with, so it doesn't feel like it is so overwhelming.
[00:21:20] Adam: That's a good system for sharing that like family duties or family, not even duties, just like, you know, this is the stuff that we have to do to
[00:21:29] Carol: we live. Yeah, yeah,
[00:21:32] Tim: mean, it's, it's no wonder that we've, we feel that way. Cause you think about in your life, there are almost an infinite number of things you can do. Right. But you only have a limited time to do it. And you only have a limited amount of energy. And, oh, by the way, you're spending about half. That time in your life, asleep, doing a thing called sleeping where you're not really doing anything productive other than recharging.
[00:21:55] Tim: So I think Adam kind of hit a bit on it. It's, it's about prioritizing. What is, what are the things you have to do? You know, the absolute things you must do that are the most important things, make sure they get done. And then. You know, add yourself a bucket of like, well, here's things that I can get done, but if I don't get them done, it's okay.
[00:22:17] Tim: I'm going to, I'm going to allow myself to forgive myself, give myself permission to put them off as long as I'm getting the main things in life taken care of, everything else is really at my discretion, because I think what's, what's most concerning is that you have this guilt that you
[00:22:35] Ben: yeah.
[00:22:36] Tim: which guilt is.
[00:22:37] Tim: Sometimes a useful emotion, but for the most part, it's wasted energy.
[00:22:42] Ben: Well, and I'll say that it's the guilt is also, I think, directly tied to my, I don't want to use the term antisocial because I don't feel like I'm. Antisocial. I am pro people. I'm just very introverted. I'm not energized by people, even the people I love. And so what happens is when I'm faced with all of these decisions about how I want to spend my time, the unfortunate reality is the people in my life get the short end of that stick because it's easier for me to, yeah, it's easier for me to motivate to go read a book than it is to get on a phone call.
[00:23:18] Ben: And talk to my mom and I love my mom. Love you, mom.
[00:23:22] Carol: 100%. Like that happened today at lunch. Steve came home. I'd been dealing with people at work. I literally was like, Hey, I'm busy. You know, we almost always talk at lunch after like 30 minutes. I just stood up, walked downstairs and laid my head on his shoulder. He was like, what's wrong? I was like, no, I was like, I'm just feeling very anti people now.
[00:23:41] Carol: But I need it to be okay that you're in my bubble and I need to like put energy into just sitting by you and let that be okay. I have to prioritize us over what I'm dealing with at work right now. And he was like, that's sweet, but you don't have to. I was like, no, I'm going to stop.
[00:24:00] Tim: Yeah.
[00:24:00] Adam: whole discussion reminds me of, like every now and then I just, like you were talking about, Ben, you know, I feel like I can maximize my productivity. by maximizing the, the focus that I put into scheduling and like everything goes on the calendar. There's a time, you know, I work out from this hour to this hour, I have 17 minutes for breakfast and 12 minutes for a shower and you know, all that.
[00:24:25] Adam: And it, it is effective at creating more, output, but it, it also, I think leads me to burn out faster.
[00:24:35] Carol: Oh, yeah.
[00:24:36] Side Projects
[00:24:36] Adam: you know, like, not, it wasn't that long ago that here on the show we were, or maybe it was after the show, I was kind of like, teasing the idea of like, I was kind of thinking about starting another podcast, and,
[00:24:46] Ben: You
[00:24:47] Adam: the working title in my head was called, what did you say?
[00:24:51] Ben: said, you crazy
[00:24:53] Adam: Well, the, you know, like, this is, this is very germane to this discussion. The, the working title for that podcast in my head was The Other Eight Hours, right? So you spent eight hours sleeping, eight hours working, and then The Other Eight Hours is how you You know, what you do with your life. and it was just like, the idea was it was going to be like a daily, just like a five to ten minute quick discussion between like one or two people, just sort of a check in, you know, like, I don't even, like, it sounds great until you start to think about the specifics of like, okay, well, what, what the hell are we actually going to talk about, right?
[00:25:24] Adam: and then it kind of falls apart, which is probably why it never went anywhere. That plus, you know, Being that rigid, like I said, it, it just, for me, it just leads to burnout, and it brings me there faster.
[00:25:36] Ben: you talked about doing a podcast and this is maybe somewhat related, but I, I oftentimes wonder if the fact that we're in the technology world. And what I mean by that is, as technologists, we often have a desire to do some sort of a side project, whether it's.
[00:25:56] Ben: Producing a podcast or building an application or, you know, running a meetup or something, and those are very time consuming and they're longitudinal. It's not like I do it once and it's done. So I think that weighs in or that contributes to this feeling of guilt where I say, okay, I have this 15 minute block of time, can I motivate to work on?
[00:26:21] Ben: This side project, or can I motivate to make a phone call? And what I think the calculation in part that goes on in my head is even if I motivate to do this 15 minutes of work on a side project, that side project might take six months. So it's, it's like all the more important that that's what I focus on because I know it's just going to keep coming at me.
[00:26:41] Ben: Whereas if I was not in the technology world, and I don't know what a good parallel here is, but if it were things that were much more finite, I wonder if I could motivate to do them.
[00:26:53] Adam: You're not wrong, but at the same time, there's other ways of looking at some of that stuff too. So something I like to think about often is projects will expand to fit the available time, right? So if you think of the side project as something that's going to take six months, then it'll take six years.
[00:27:10] Adam: If you think of it as like, I've got an hour a week for the next six weeks, then you can get something done in those six hours. And if you, if you focus on the most bang for the buck for those six hours, then maybe you'll get 90%, that first 90%, not the second 90%. done.
[00:27:27] Off Time
[00:27:27] Adam: something I want to say before we get too far away from it too is, as we've been talking about like all the scheduling stuff, like there's nothing wrong with having a somewhat rigid schedule, but I think that's something that you might consider, Ben, especially since you're, you seem to be the one with the, the hang up here, is schedule in slack time.
[00:27:46] Adam: Right? Like, just say, every day between 5 o'clock, like if we eat dinner at 6. 30, so every day between 5 o'clock, I'm, I'm gonna be done at work at 5 o'clock, and then 6. 30, I'm gonna have nothing on the schedule, and I'm just gonna give myself the freedom to pursue whatever interests me, or whatever feels urgent at that time, right?
[00:28:04] Adam: So then, that's when you Reply to that email or call your mom or write something or read something or whatever, but you're just like, this is, this is my me time. And the, the entire goal of that block of time is whatever interests me when I get there.
[00:28:19] Ben: Yeah, I do really, I would really like to be able to do that. Because even now, if I lay down and watch a movie on like a Saturday afternoon, Part of me feels guilty. Part of me feels like I could be using this time more productively, and I freakin love movies. So it's not even, it's not even like I'm not enjoying the thing that I'm doing, it's just that there's a, there's always this, this thin residue of guilt that I'm not doing something more productive.
[00:28:47] Carol: if you bur if you, if you burn out, you're gonna do nothing productive. So you should probably consider that when you're resting, that it's key for everything else in your life to be okay.
[00:28:59] Ben: I'll tell you, part of me is often quite jealous of people who like sports. I can't stand sports. I think it's the most boring thing in the world to watch other people play sports. But I am so jealous of people who just have that time carved out. I'm going to go hang out with the boys Friday night and watch the game at the bar.
[00:29:17] Ben: You know, I'm going to have people over Sunday afternoon to watch the football game. I don't have the thing that drives the ability to carve out big blocks of time to be social and to, and to not be productive. Just like, like Adam saying, like we just. Leisure and have slack built into my day. If I had something like joy of watching sports, I just sometimes think that would make a big difference in my life.
[00:29:45] Carol: I get on hob like my hobbies I want to do, I get stuck on YouTube videos of people doing that. So while I don't watch sports, I am watching a lot of like fun videos of people playing golf right now. So that's interesting. I would never watch like a PGA full on event, but A few people having beer, taking side bets, and enjoying it.
[00:30:07] Carol: That is fun.
[00:30:08] Adam: yeah. Well, it's interesting that you bring that up, Carol. the, that's something that I think about not terribly infrequently is that there is, like, this has been, scientifically studied, there is a catharsis, like, reaction that your brain has when you watch somebody do something that you want to do.
[00:30:27] Adam: Right, so, for me, I get stuck in these loops of re watching the same YouTube videos of people, like, doing specific woodworking projects. You know, I've seen, and it's just like, part of it is I really like the person, so I like their personality, I like the way they film and present things. Part of it is the project is really cool, part of it is, you know, I like their tools, or this guy lives in Australia, or, you know, like, there's all, there's a ton of different angles that could, like, resonate with my brain in any given moment, but the end result is I've seen the same videos a hundred times, and I will go back and watch them a hundred more.
[00:31:01] Adam: And I think part of it is like, you know, there's a, there's an angle of like, I wish I could do that. There's an angle of like, I need to watch that and pay attention so that I can do that. And then it's just like, no, this is cool. I, you know, I like that.
[00:31:15] Carol: So I think what I'm hearing you say, Adam, is that Ben should watch videos of people taking time for themselves, right? Like just resting, just people watching videos of watching videos.
[00:31:26] Ben: I have said that I love to watch massage ASMR videos and, and to Adam's point, it does feel like it triggers something. When I see people being massaged, I can't feel it, feel it, but like, I can, it feels like I get, I get a mental
[00:31:43] Adam: a little release, yeah.
[00:31:45] Ben: of, of the relaxation that I would feel if I was, you know, in a spa receiving a
[00:31:51] Carol: is so cool.
[00:31:52] Ben: it is fascinating.
[00:31:55] Adam: The same research too, and, and I, this is something I think about when I'm, when I've got an idea that I want to work on. The same research says that like, if you're going to do something, if you want to, to motivate yourself to do something, you shouldn't tell anybody what you're doing until it's done.
[00:32:10] Adam: Because you get like 80 or 90 percent of that satisfaction from having the conversation with people to say like, Oh, I'm working on this thing. And so. What you need to do is like, wait till it's done. Then you can be like, I made the thing here, check this out. And then you get a hundred percent of the satisfaction of having gone down that road.
[00:32:30] Perception of Time
[00:32:30] Tim: little side tangent, talking about time, you noticed that when you were like, young, really young, it's like time seemed, it seemed slower, like things seemed to take longer and as you get older Things, time kind of speeds up. Like I was saying earlier, it's like, Oh, 10, 12 years. That's nothing to, you know, right.
[00:32:50] Tim: did anyone experience
[00:32:51] Ben: Yeah,
[00:32:52] Carol: absolutely.
[00:32:53] Adam: A little bit. I mean, we talked, I think we talked about this last week, how like, you know, a year is a much smaller percentage of your life now than it was when you were three years old or eight years old.
[00:33:03] Tim: And I did, yeah, we talked about that. I found an article in Harvard. that talks about that they have a theory. It's, I don't know if it's been proven yet, but that, you kind of have a higher frame rate when you're, when you're really young. And as you get older, that frame rate kind of slows down.
[00:33:22] Tim: So it makes things seem like they're speeding up because neurons take, you know, you have much bigger, more connections in your brain, so it takes longer for the neurons to go. So your, your frame rate is kind of dropped down a bit. So that seems kind of an interesting. Interesting theory, if that's true, that your, your brain has, it's a lot more traffic up there, so it, it, it just takes longer.
[00:33:44] Adam: Gotta get some garbage collection going up
[00:33:45] Tim: Yeah. Yeah. We need to get the GC going.
[00:33:47] Ben: I've heard a similar kind of thing described when people have a trauma, like they fall off a roof or they get in a bike accident and it feels like time slows down in that instant. And I think one of the theories is Kind of to your point, the frame rate in your brain goes from being slow to like being really slow and it starts capturing as much information about what's happening.
[00:34:12] Ben: And then when you go to play it back, it's like, it's like taking a 16 frame a second video from the 1920s and playing it back at 24 frames a second. And it goes really fast. So it's, yeah, it's like you, you try to cram all this information all of a sudden when you. Falling off the roof and it feels like it's taken a lot longer.
[00:34:31] Carol: There's something too about like when you're a kid and you just kind of live in awe. Everything is big and new and all these experiences are for the first time. Well, now I look at snow and I'm like, oh, it's just cold. But when you're a kid and you look at snow, everything is just so, so like fascinating and you just
[00:34:49] Adam: and my back
[00:34:50] Carol: it up.
[00:34:50] Carol: Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, oh, great. If I slip and fall, I'm going to the ER, aren't I? Like, no, thank you. But when you're a kid, like you go to bed exhausted just from having taken in so much. And that day, and now, I go to bed exhausted because I tried taking in too much.
[00:35:05] Tim: Yeah. And everything's more novel when you're younger. I, I, you know, mentioned last week, took the kids to see the, Tutankhamen music, um, exhibit. And I just remember, I, I just, all those memories of that are in my head. Cause it was a fun vacation. We went and saw, ET was in the movie theaters. We're in St.
[00:35:22] Tim: Augustine at the beach and, you know, body surfing and doing, you know, it was a great vacation. Just, I can remember so much about that exhibit. And it just, it felt like we were there for days. We were only there a couple hours and then we went again and I was like, Oh, okay. And it's like, you know, it's so much more now when, when your brain sees novelty, it, it pays more attention.
[00:35:44] Tim: And when you're paying more attention, you know, it just takes more energy and it seems like it's, like it's lasting longer. We have less to pay attention to when we're old, cause we just like, we've lived longer.
[00:35:54] Ben: I also feel a little bit, and this is one of those things where it could be entirely in my own head, but I've built this life now with my wife. We've been together for. I don't know, 10, 12 years. I can't really remember, but we, you know, we spend most of our time together. We spend a vast majority of our time together.
[00:36:14] Ben: I work remotely, so I work from home. She's working from home. We're just home together with the dog. That's, that is the bulk of our existence. And so when I think about something like one of my goals for 2024 is to try to find some meetups to go to some technology meetups to go to, so I can start to.
[00:36:33] Ben: Interact with humans again. Part of me feels like, do I have to, I should probably run that by my wife. And like, is she going to feel weird that if I take a Tuesday night to go have dinner with rando people, is that, is that like, is she going to feel like I'm neglecting her? I'm feeling a little bit like I'm neglecting her.
[00:36:49] Ben: And it's just this, like the structure of our life has this momentum and it's, and it's hard for me to overcome that moment momentum in my head.
[00:37:00] Carol: Yep, completely get that. I tell Steve all the time, it's not his fault. The army makes him neglect me. He doesn't get a choice. he's like, sorry, formation's at 4:00 AM today. I'm like, well, I won't see you for coffee. Love. See you at dinner,
[00:37:18] Ben: It's funny. So. because we're, me and my wife are both home and we're both using the same wifi, I assume that the ads that I see are influenced by the things that she looks at and vice versa, and that could be completely wrong that maybe is not how it works, but part of me thinks that that is, and I was watching YouTube today.
[00:37:37] Ben: And one of the pre, the pre roll ads was a divorce lawyer. And I'm like, Oh, that's Brando. And then at dinner, she's like, she's like, it's really important that we schedule a date night soon. And I was like, what the F? Like, do we have something really important to discuss?
[00:37:56] Carol: On your, list of things to do in your time, you should go figure out how long you've been together before this date night happens.
[00:38:03] Adam: Yes.
[00:38:04] Ben: She doesn't know either.
[00:38:06] Carol: Okay.
[00:38:07] Ben: That's our, that's our, that's our common superpower. It's not knowing time.
[00:38:10] Adam: I remember a time when, like when I was working in Philadelphia, and we do not live super close to Philadelphia. you know, on the, at the best of times, like if you're driving into Philadelphia at like three o'clock in the morning, From where we live, you could probably get there in like an hour, hour and 15 minutes.
[00:38:29] Adam: And that's, you know, no traffic, no, no rows of hazards or anything. And so commuting, is all, it always takes, you know, sometimes as much as double. And there were, there's like this whole period of my life where my wife worked relatively local to where we lived, like 10, 15 minute drive away. And I was working in Philadelphia and I, it was, Depressing?
[00:38:56] Adam: Because like, I would get up and it would be dark, and I would get dressed in the dark because I didn't want to wake her up, like you were talking about, you know, like, trying to sort of bend over backwards for each other sort of thing. You know, get dressed in the dark, leave, and it's dark. And, you know, I commute to work and I work all day and then I drive home or, you know, commute home on the train or whatever, and I get home and it's dark and like we have dinner and watch an hour of TV and go to bed and then just do the same thing over and over.
[00:39:22] Adam: And that, that was a very depressing thing. And I, that makes me super grateful for being able to work from home, like just giving me those three hours of my day back every day. It's huge.
[00:39:33] Carol: Yeah. And I love that while I'm working at home where I am, and this has been for every job I've ever had, I get really flexible hours. So I can say, Hey, today I'm going to start at 4am because that's when my husband has to be up anyways. And then when he gets off work, I can still hang out with him.
[00:39:51] Carol: So it's not like I have to even work this schedule that competes against his schedule. And it's, it's really great for our time together.
[00:39:58] Tim: Oh, they're still in the honeymoon phase. How cute.
[00:40:01] Carol: yeah.
[00:40:02] Adam: You'll hate each other soon enough.
[00:40:06] Tim: Not hate,
[00:40:07] Adam: Yeah, hate's, hate's not the right word.
[00:40:09] Tim: mild, mild grade neglect every now and then. Well, I don't know how to help you out, Ben, but I hope you figured out. Let us know if, you know, I sympathize with you.
[00:40:18] Carol: Same.
[00:40:19] Tim: Hopefully you said something that triggered you
[00:40:21] Getting Things Done
[00:40:21] Ben: Maybe I got to try that, getting things done book. I read it, I read it like 15 years ago and, I should read it again. People seem to rave about it and I don't remember much other than I think things that take less than two minutes you're supposed to do right away. Other than that I don't remember anything else.
[00:40:38] Ben: Writing stuff down I think is also
[00:40:39] Adam: I've never read the book, but I've had it explained to me by several people. So the things that I remember from those explanations are, get it out of your head and into your system, right? So like, basically everything gets written down somewhere, and then like, if it takes less than five minutes, then just do it now.
[00:40:54] Adam: Like don't, don't put it in the system, just get it done.
[00:40:56] Ben: Yeah.
[00:40:59] Tim: and learn to forgive yourself, Ben.
[00:41:01] Ben: Be kind. Be kind to myself.
[00:41:04] Tim: Look in the mirror and say, I'm good enough. I'm smart enough and doggone it, people like me.
[00:41:13] Ben: Exactly. Love you guys.
[00:41:16] Carol: No.
[00:41:17] Tim: You too.
[00:41:18] Adam: right, why don't we wrap it up there?
[00:41:20] Patreon
[00:41:20] Adam: so this episode of working code is brought to you by a thin residue of guilt, which is,
[00:41:26] Ben: Take me by surprise.
[00:41:28] Adam: and listeners like you, if you're enjoying the show and you want to make sure that we can keep putting more of stuff like this out into the universe, then you should consider supporting us on Patreon. Our patrons cover our recording, editing, and transcription costs. And we could not do this every week. Special thanks to our top patrons, Monte and Giancarlo. You guys rock. We are getting ready to go record the aftershow. I see a couple of topics here on the aftershow list. if you're not already familiar The after show is one of the perks that we give to our patrons. so basically we're just gonna, you're going to hear the outro.
[00:42:00] Adam: We're going to keep talking. We might go for five minutes. We might go for another 30 minutes because we can't shut up. Sometimes that happens. and that just gets, delivered unfiltered to our, our patrons. And then not only do they get that, they get it early. So they get the whole show, including the after show, as soon as it's done being edited.
[00:42:17] Adam: and if that's interesting to you, then you can go to patreon.com/workingcodepod. We would love to have your support.
[00:42:23] Tim: And sometimes stickers.
[00:42:24] Adam: Yeah. so that's gonna do it for us this week. We'll catch you next week and until then,
[00:42:29] Tim: Remember, we'll never neglect you because your heart matters.
[00:42:33] Carol: No.
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