Balancing Time As A Software Engineer And Navigating Hustle Culture

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all right heavier traffic than usual on your route home great but that's life right that's okay um kind of have to expect that's going to happen uh basically most of the time considering where I live it's basically one Highway that goes north and south so I'm just leaving the office now from from Redmond yeah it's kind of inconvenient um if you leave at a decent time so this morning actually filmed for this morning right so um that was after that was while after rush hour cuz I had to do an interview and uh makes it not so bad when it's not during rush hour but anything remotely close to uh to rush hours pretty bad uh just because the the volume of people and the fact that there's one Highway unless you want to try and take windy back roads the whole way which would

be a nice Scenic Drive I'm sure but I don't think it's that effective um yeah I think I don't know I don't have like set topics that I'm going to be doing on all of these but I was kind of thinking through like workload balancing things and stuff uh just in general right because I think some of this stuff you could apply to like your work life specifically or just like things that you're doing kind of in and out of work so you know when I when I talk with my wife like she's she does a good job of letting me know what I'm taking on too many things which is good I really appreciate that and I don't I'm not saying that sarcastically either it's very bright um like she she holds me pretty accountable for that right honest with myself and like I

get excited about opportunities and I'm like oh I'm going to do this I'm going to do that for example the fact that I'm filming this in my car right now oh man this guy is rolling around on the ground you can't see it sorry but there was a there's a big truck like a fuel truck sitting in the the Middle Lane on the road and I thought that I saw like garbage or something kind of float underneath and this guy has a wrench in his hand and rolls out from underneath his truck into my lane like he's just on the ground like as I'm about to pass by so I to going move over anyway you can't see these things I'm just letting you know yeah my wife does a good job of like letting me know like hey like you sure but I was

just saying that like the fact that I'm recording this is is one of these things where I told her like you know I'm not I'm not complaining about the hybrid work situation I the first thing I filmed for this was kind of talking about how I think there are lots of benefits to to getting to be with people in the office so it's not like that but I don't like commuting I think it is the biggest waste of time and you can like sorry if you're on a bus or a train or something like sure like that could be awesome you can you could try to find ways to get stuff done but for me like if I'm driving a vehicle that's just not a good use of my time I don't I'm not doing anything now for some people they might say okay well

I'm going to listen to to podcasts or Audi books to learn about things and that's great so I'm not I'm not saying in general for every single human I don't like generalizing things but I do it a lot it feels kind of gross but not saying for every single human it's ineffective right like for me it's not effective I feel like I'm like purely wasting time when I'm commuting I understand the goal like the end goal is to have time in the office which is really good it's valuable but the the fact like if I weren't filming this right now I just be sitting here at this red light contemplating life and instead I can try to turn it into something I'm there's benefits from me sitting here talking about my thoughts and trying to think through them articulate them in different ways hopefully there's

benefits to someone watching listening and maybe that benefit is just like you're you're filling your time right maybe it feels like you're uh maybe you're listening to this or watching it on your commute now it's a little less lonely right like maybe that's maybe that's good enough I don't know but at least I'm doing something that's kind of how I feel about this is it super effective I don't know but at least it's something so I do a a pretty bad job of like taking on too many things and yes this is yet another thing that I'm taking on and I think depending on your personality type like you might also kind of struggle with this too uh you know for me what am I doing like I got I got my there's a lot of stuff going on right like I got my 9

to-5 job so work as an engineering manager at Microsoft so that's good that's my that's my like my main priority right and I say that not as in like my wife is not my priority but like my wife can't just turn to me and say hey like I just want to hang out at home today and then I don't go to work right so like work is my my priority for like during the week it just has to be I need to keep my job and that's that now outside of work time which should be my priority is my wife right should be um and I say that because obviously I love my wife and I like spending time with her but she's got stuff that she's doing well we're not doing that together I got stuff I'm doing we're not doing that together that's

fine like we're allowed to have our own lives too but one of the big challenges is like taking on too many things and then taking away from that time and I did a conversation recently on my my podcast with Andrew Peacock who is uh he's like he's another kind of person who's taking on a lot of stuff and trying to you know do side businesses trying to YouTube things like that which is great and uh he was kind of sharing some perspective on this right like he the way he framed it and I'm driving in a car so I can't just like quote him perfectly but the idea was like when you're when you have a family it's not just taking when you're busy doing stuff it's not just your time it's also like you're by being occupied with things you are also taking that

time away from being with your partner and he had kind of framed this like I think the situation for them again I'm sorry if I'm not recalling this exactly right but they had just had a child and he was uh doing this was kind of like during Co he was like doing some hardworking stuff and that was going really well just like on the side right and he's kind of said like I basically kind of like almost like turned his wife into a single parent uh in those early stages and it was like that's not okay and these are his words right like so he's like kind of realizing that he's not prioritizing that and I've heard other people talk about Concepts like this and the way they frame it is like like I think like Alex rosi I think probably everyone knows who Alex

Heros is if not uh he's very successful entrepreneur uh social media and like content creator kind of personality um and him and his uh his wife are very successful as entrepreneurs and sort of uh people that create content and I've heard him kind of frame it as like seasons of work so instead of thinking like there's this steady state of all the time like I will carve out X hours and it's going to be consistent he's like we work in Seasons there's going to be times where we're buckling down and trying to get stuff done and that is a season where you are extra busy and like your partner ideally like you work with your partner to understand when you're in your you know air quotes like busy season and I I think that's interesting because I think that like in TOT totally align with

the idea that that not everything has like a consistent ask of your time right so I'll give you an example like if I'm right if I'm building out a course for Dome drain I don't uh that's not like a permanent thing like I'm building a course that's going to take time it's there's going to be a you know quote season where I'm building that out and that's going to be an extra sort of taxs on my time and you know if I can be transparent with my wife about hey this is a busy busy season for me cuz I'm doing this course then like you know we need to communicate that so I think conceptually I I like that a lot you know you're focusing on communication you're prioritizing uh and and just being transparent with people about like the the asks they have going

on this is the part of the Highway by the way like I really hate this part because as I get onto the highway I need to move over like three four lanes to get into the fast lane because I'm basically sitting here not moving but if I get over to the fast lane the express lane I can fly and I need to be able to get in front of people which is really tricky cuz no one's moving no one I don't want to say no one wants to let you in but it's like kind of a pain in the butt and then you get all the way to the left lane before the express and you're basically going from a really slow speed or almost stop to like I got to jam on the gas to take off here and this is where having a

car that can accelerates really handy but I need to wait for an opening and it's kind of scary there one coming up though go not so bad today but I don't like it okay so yeah Seasons now that I'm in the the fast lane which is also now stopping which is cool working in Seasons I like that idea I think it resonates with me I think it resonates with this idea of being able to deliver projects and things like that but where it where it falls down is when there's these other types of things where like they become longer term commitments and to give you an example example like creating content in general and trying to make sure that I constantly have content to put out that's not seasonal and it's kind of weird right because I think that to be creating content and putting

it out online and stuff like that's not a seasonal thing the the way to be successful at that is to keep putting out content when people talk about consistency yeah sure there's some people that'll say oh it's the time you post it's not like that's a that's a optimization but the secret that no one wants to like admit to themselves is like you just have to keep doing it for a long time and doing more of it and that means time commitment it's not a season unless of course you say like I want to create content for a year and it's my season to do that sure but I don't I don't see a lot of people that are like going to be successful at that unless you happen to like go viral and great now you can retire from your content creation cuz you

went viral I don't know so for me I got a lot of things going on where they're no longer necessarily becoming seasonal oh man this guy is not very smart I'm in an express lane and you're not supposed to drive back over there's solid lines set up this way and this guy just moves over like at a random spot just kind of like Slams on the brake so he can cut in to the the normal traffic so I'm not expecting someone in front of me in the fast lane to just slam on the brakes when there's nothing in front of them so that was fun but when you have yeah you have all these things where it's like they're no longer seasonal things yes I have a bunch of seasonal stuff still so like currently uh like at this very point in time I'm wrapping

up doing two Dome train courses at the same time I am wrapping up one of them so all of the content has been edited I just have to go through a couple of extra videos and double check them but then that's done so that season That season is done that's that's excellent right it's good to get that out of the way I'm proud of what I've done good that season is done but I still have another Dome train course that is a seasonal thing okay now on top of that what else is going on well work you know my 9 to5 at Microsoft that's not seasonal I hope I hope to God it's not I want that to be a consistent thing so not a seasonal thing I have um brand ghost that I'm creating now one could argue that might be a seasonal thing

like if it doesn't work then you know good run seasonal right you put in some effort it's gone but like I really believe in brand ghost and I think probably any person who's trying to create a service or whatever is going to say they really believe in it but like if I compare it to um let's say to meal coach which I was building before my nutrition platform I say my just because you don't know the other people that are working on it with me and I don't want to just say our cuz you'll say well who's who's us who's our um so I'll say my even though I I don't like trying to take credit entirely like that's not fair but with meal coach we would talk to people and they would say hey it sounds cool but then no one would use it

and right now with brand ghost we have people going that sounds cool and they're onboarding big difference we have people that are excited to try it and use it now are they converting like we're not there yet we're not at the point where people are converting and saying yes I'll give you money for this every month so I'm still early but one could argue this might be seasonal if we try to do it and people are like yeah I'm not paying you for that maybe it's seasonal and we're done now the reality of that though is like I use brand ghost this is how I post content so it's not going to be seasonal in the sense that brand ghost get shut down but it might be seasonal in the sense that the people that are working on that with me they're they're like hey

this isn't a viable business and that might just be the reality you know hard reality but um we'll find something else to do that might become another season or it might turn into something that's that's big so brand ghost right now could be argued seasonal might be something that's a consistent thing that I'm doing outside of work which is cool um there's a couple of other things that I that I dabble in so uh one is like I don't know if you when you'd call it necessarily but I am doing like a I have a good friend um from back home who is doing some software development and I'm trying to help him sort of build out this software for uh this uh this deal that he was able to kind of get which is which is amazing so he wanted me to try and

kind of like help give him guidance so like you know I have to be able to to support him through that and so that's a cool opportunity is that one seasonal to start to start that is seasonal because I'm just dedicating some of my time to him and there is a fixed timeline for delivery so like my definition it's seasonal if that turns into something bigger and he needs me on longer term maybe it's not seasonal anymore then there's another piece of software that I'm helping prototype um kind of on the side so again like because it's a prototype is it seasonal absolutely right maybe it goes nowhere maybe I get the prototype to them and they go hey thanks but like I guess yeah we're not going to fly like we don't like the business idea anymore but they need something to work with

so could be seasonal could turn into something longer term so Point here is that when you have all these things getting stacked up I got to move Lanes but all these things snacked up like the seasonal stuff is one part but we only got so much time so when these things stop becoming seasonal now that's taking away from just like the core time so to give you an example like I reached capacity like turning brand ghost into a full-time not a full-time thing sorry like a into a real like product that we want to try offering to people when we started writing code for brand ghost versus me just having my sort of AD hog solution when we started writing code that's where like I was already at my capacity so something had to give right so for me what I had to do was

kind of prioritize all the things I have going on and I said content creation is a priority of mine this is like one of the things I set out to do and said I need to be creating content um courses are they remain seasonal so I'm like hey if I'm doing a course like I'm not stopping that um should I be taking on more courses no not if I'm at capacity right so kind of like a a check for me to say hey like you're at capacity if Nick chaps just came to you and said hey one more course right now I'd say no I got to wait but I already agreed to do the one that I'm doing and um and this second one technically so these got to happen and that's cool they're seasonal so for me I reached this point with content

where I said okay well I'm not I'm not not doing the content so something's got to give though pardon me so when I look at what I'm creating for Content I said you know what like what takes the like what's the most time what's the lowest Roi and it turns out blogs blogs take so much time and I don't see any return on them and like it sucks because I think blogs are very valuable I like the idea of having useful information on my website people can search it like I was getting really into seeing like my clickthrough uh search results on Google search console coming through and being like yes like it's working I can see the graph going up of people going to my site super cool but the reality is like that's not converting anything so the number of people going to

my site while it was growing like compared to me like okay if I had to drop writing blogs or posting on LinkedIn like a post on LinkedIn is significantly lower effort than writing a blog post significantly so like why would I not like if I have to cut something out blog post wor a thing and like I said it sucks cuz I I think that there is value in it so for you like if you're listening to this or watching it right you might say well okay I am the capacity like I think you have to do a little bit of like soul searching and feel like hey what's what's important to you right now so if you were doing some stuff on the side let's say and it was like that's extra income and you really need money like maybe you want to prioritize

like like what's what's not making you money um so well I want a car about you know X number of hours an evening for video games okay like maybe maybe it's time to say no um or maybe uh you know for family maybe you're like hey like and like take the case with Andrew Peacock right for that podcast I was talking about he had to make the decision he's like no I'm prioritizing family makes a lot of sense right but you have to do a little bit of that soul searching and be honest with yourself and then and then do it so mine was a pretty easy thing it was just like hey blog post so it was a lot of work it was not a ton of return um it's funny I was running ads on my website and people hated it this is

just Google's default like you place the ads and people hated it and I don't blame them cuz it's spammy I would just tell people use ad block if you really care but um people hated it and I turn turned it off cuz it was making me like $1 to $2 a day so I'm not making any money off my blog in fact it costs me to host it I pay for word press plugins I lose money off my blog um so you know not writing blog post now that's fine I I'd like to go back to that once brand ghost is more stabilized and stuff um that's what I'd like to do and maybe this is a good segue cuz like as a as a software developer like you got a you got a superpower right and it's also like it's also your Kryptonite and

most software developers love building stuff they like automating things and we'll automate stuff that does not need to be automated but this might be a good opportunity for you to look at what you're doing and where you're spending time and this is how I created brand ghost I said I I am prioritizing posting content and I don't have time to go post my content across all these platforms and I don't have time to go scheduling it every week either because if you're doing one platform and you want to go schedule your seven posts a day okay like that kind of sucks but you could do it but I posted 12 platforms a day so what do you want me to do go schedule content 7 Days * 12 like that's a carving out a whole Sunday like I'm not doing that so I basically started

by saying let me do it the hard way for a couple platforms and as soon as I can manage to do a little bit more um I would try it reach a point where I'm like it's hard to keep up and then I would automate the posting and when I say automate by the way I don't mean automatically creating content I mean like Auto automating the the actual action of posting and scheduling and I just kept doing it until until I was getting more time back and that's kind of how I got into this spot of like I got to make two courses at the same time and build like a software prototype and build a platform and do my 9 to5 job like it's too many things but um I'm kind of saying this out loud cuz I think it's kind of funny in

hindsight where I was just trying to focus on being efficient and what happened was I started filling my time with so many things for work like not Microsoft work just like things that are work in general that as I was freeing up that time I just kept filling it with different work so I recognize that I'm doing that I kind of saying this too so like I don't know depending on who you are uh you know people chasing productivity hacks and stuff like I think you have to decide like do you you always want to feel like you're constantly busy and trying to get stuff done like part of me likes it cuz I like feeling productive but I know like it I end up making trades that way right like just to give you an example my my in-laws are visiting right now and

they're awesome I love hanging out with them they're great um my father-in-law is hilarious is super awesome guy my mother-in-law is awesome woman and I find myself like you know we come we go out for dinner and then we come home and first thing on my mind is like okay like what am I going to get done what am I getting get done like what videos am I going to record do I have to Can I code anything right now like I'm immediately going to how do I be productive I only got a couple of hours before I go to sleep what have I got to do and it's just how I've kind of trained myself to go do more work and it like it it seems kind of crappy right because like my my in-laws are visiting like they're from Canada we don't see

them all the time especially like in person right if we wanted to do a video call that's one thing but we're not in person together often so why why is my go-to like hey better go figure out what to go code next or what content to create when it really should be like how am I going to enjoy more time with them before we go to bed and we can do this again tomorrow so that part's kind of crappy right so I'm kind of like I said I'm saying this out loud so you can think about it from your priority perspective cuz I think it's it needs to be said so I think another thing that's important and I'm pretty pretty fortunate this way um for the most part like I oh sorry I thought someone was going to merge into another car all these

things that you're not going to see on the camera but I'll I'll you know um I'm pretty fortunate in the sense like I think it's a important to try to focus on on problems you want to solve and uh I didn't like come up with this uh but like it's sort of like a a philosophical thing and I don't know where I heard it originally and I don't have an exact quote but the idea is like in life there's always going to be problems right there's always problems there's different levels of problems you know you could have have um you could have financial problems you could have health problems you could have uh relationship problems there's all sorts of problems now the goal is not to have no problems because it's a it's a false goal like you're always going to have problems but instead

if we can have problems that we want to focus on so for example I don't want to have money problems I don't want to have health problems I don't want to have relationship problems the problems I want to have are like I want to have software problems I want to have problems where someone is saying I would like this situation to be solved and I can go think through it like I want to spend time on those problems I don't want to have problems that are like I got to go fix my car like these are things that I don't want to spend time on so again I'm fortunate that I'm in a position where for the most part I can sort of pick the problems I want to solve there's going to be stuff at work that I'm you know there's stuff I love

about work there's going to be problems I don't want to go solve at work but they got to get done so you know it's not perfect I don't think it's ever going to be perfect but if you can find you know you want to take on more things you want to start a side business you want to build open source software whatever whatever the thing is that's extra the the extra work you want to do I would just encourage you to think about like what problems you want to solve and I say that because if your goal if you're like well I just going to build something on the side cuz like I need money like that's the goal I just feel like that is a path to Burno so this is coming from someone who is doing tons of things I say tons of

things just because it's a lot of lot of time I'm not saying I'm doing the best things in the world but spending a lot of time doing stuff and for the most part it does not burn me out at least not traditionally and it doesn't because I'm picking problems I want to solve um I like making courses like I like creating the content I don't like feeling stress that there's a deadline like that part I don't like that's also why YouTube is good like I can go make tutorial videos and uh and that's good right like I kind of put the pressure on myself to deliver three a week kind of thing but I don't have to so I'm I'm picking for the large majority of what I spend time on picking problems I want to solve and I I think that's important um there's

going to be situations where you don't have that right maybe maybe you're like I do need extra money I need extra income I'm going to work on some stuff that I don't love but like it's going to help and that's fine but I I would encourage you back to the seasonal thing maybe that's a seasonal thing for you right spend some time on that make it work make it happen awesome and then that season's over and then maybe take a little bit of time for yourself maybe do it again so you just don't want to be in a position where you take on all this extra stuff to be productive and then you hate you hate all of the things you're doing because that's where you're going to burn out for sure so I think that's mostly what I wanted to say about that getting

close to home couple minutes away today was pretty short in the office um I I mentioned this this morning my my video but like the uh my office days are usually a little shorter so I leave try to like Dodge traffic ideally and I'm doing a good job of that today um but I left a little bit earlier so I'll be home my in-laws last evening that's good not much traffic today which is nice just getting on the highway is kind of crap um but we are moving pretty good the wholeway like how long I can't even see how long this recording is it's filmed upside down looks like it's 30 32 minutes something like that 33 minutes so that's not bad um when I get into my car like when I started this and I said oh it's more tra or traffic heavier than

expected uh whatever it said from Google Maps it's like yeah cuz it said like 55 minutes like almost an hour um cuz it's not accounting for the fast lane so so there's a question right like is it worth paying for the fast Lan like I don't know I put a put a dollar value on my hourly rate and if it's going to save me that much time I'm trying to fill that time with being productive so uh is it truly translating into money no um maybe someday but I don't want to sit in traffic maybe it'll help me make longer videos you can hear me rambling here but I don't think that's super valuable so now I'm off the highway and stuck in a red light no one wants that yeah in-law's last night here um I don't know if my I don't know if

my wife has plans we were supposed to uh one of the things my wife asked me to do is get our smoker going and uh I took out big pork shoulder for that but like we've just been doing other things so there hasn't been a a good uh sort of time to smoke it uh so that's kind of crappy but I I got this big pork shoulder I got a smoke still so I got to set that up I was told uh well we got our we got our smoker last summer yeah it's been a year with it and when I was talking about it with uh one of my wife's name is Leah so when I was talking with Leah about it and uh some of her friends have a smoker so they were kind of like oh like once you get a smoker

like it's going to become your personality like you're going to want to smoke everything everything's smoking um still hasn't happened um it's convenient it's convenient because like I like to meal prep like I'll eat the same thing every day multiple times a day I don't care um so like to meal prep so like going to smoke a pork shoulder and then having pork every day for a week I'm cool with that um cook a bunch of rice at once have pork like I'm totally cool with that so that's been cool but otherwise like I'm not necessarily in like in love with like everything has to be smoked is this a convenience thing I think like some people you could argue the same thing about a barbecue or sorry a grill um I've been I've been told by the US folks got to say folks now

too y'all um I've been I've been told by by people down here that it's actually inaccurate to call to call it barbecuing because barbecue is a type of food and in fact it's called a grill and it makes sense I just I don't think I grew up my entire life referring to the device strictly as a grill like a grill is a part of the barbecue but uh yeah apparently that's how it is so I got to be careful how I say it now so my point was maybe some people they like to grill and if even if they want a meal prep they'll cook a bunch of stuff on the grill all at once but the the smoker is nice cuz it's like just leave it leave it for a long time and it's good to go probably if anyone's watching this or listening

and they smoke stuff they're like oh man like you're obviously doing it wrong you got to be spritzing it with apple juice or something acidic like I'm it's it's not my personality right that's what I said I said it didn't happen I don't care I just want to cook meat cook a bunch of meat and eat it later it's going to taste good no matter what could it taste better I'm sure but it's all good so I got to do that tonight's not going to be the night for that that's for sure maybe this weekend but man this pork shoulder's been in the fridge now probably got to probably got to cook it probably got to cook it tonight you know maybe uh maybe what I'll do is before bed I'll toss it on the smoker CU I usually do the big chunk of the

second half of uh of that in the oven once it's reached whatever temperature after like few hours like five hours or so put in the oven for the rest so maybe I'll do that this is going on way longer now that we're almost at 40 minutes because stupid traffic in my little town here is uh completely backed up it's very silly see and if I wasn't filming this I'd just be frustrated sitting at this light but now you get to enjoy that with me which is pretty cool so what else we got going on tomorrow was a working from home day for me so it's Thursday tomorrow be working from home Thursdays are a big one-on-one day for me uh it's pretty it can be pretty overwhelming cuz a lot of one-on ons but uh I like kind of blocking them out that way trying

to kind it's almost like a when I schedule things instead of having things sporadic and just like a mix of everything it's almost like a state of mind to be like I'm focusing on one-on ones today it's going to be I'm going to say the word exhausting not because like I don't like people but it takes a lot of energy out of me so it's a it's a long day it's exhausting but at least like my focuses people for the day and there's other days where like I might have quiet um you know few meetings and then I have dedicated time to go work through stuff I have a feeling there's something wrong at this light as I get closer I see people moving over Lanes accident stall car something I can't see this car is quite low so I got two pickup trucks in

front of me SUV beside me just what I needed Yeah tomorrow's a one-on-one day so that'll be good I have to I do early in career mentorship so I got to get that scheduled and uh I think it'll be cool um we're getting close to the time where I can do like a sort of like a 12-month review with people I think it's always really cool to do this where kind of working with the same mentees for a year and uh and then after it's been like 12 months being like hey like let's reflect on all of the stuff that like you know you kind of grew through over the past year because it flies by and uh you know people going through their first reward cycle some people getting promoted some people having manager changes reorgs like there's so much stuff that happens and

um you know these people for early and career mentorship they're not my employees right these are employees from other teams and uh I I think it's super cool because like I get excited hearing about everyone's kind of growth over the years uh Year sorry not years uh and you know it's a good reminder for me like for where they started and some of the challenges they had and it's like hey yeah like you had a difficult manager and look at you now where you had these team challenges look at you now or you didn't know how to navigate these types of things look at you now so I I really enjoy that but it's probably coming up usually usually it's right around now but I think they uh the organizers of the program reminded me that it's actually like November so um I don't sure

if we're going to go the whole duration of that but we'll see but I'm excited for that conversation so I'm saying it out loud so I can uh remind myself to schedule it but folks I think that's it I am at home so thank you so much no one else is home apparently that's okay and I will see you next time