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Writing, for example, emails, blog posts, that goes best in the morning. So try to kind of do the deep work in the morning and then the meetings mostly in the afternoon, because then, you know, with meetings, it's very hard to also do deep work. Plus, there's willpower bucket, which fills every morning and gets depleted every day. Right? So even if you would have solid blocks of deep work time in the afternoon, it's way harder to do it when your bill powers down and you're going on social and do all these destructive things which typically happen in the afternoon. Hello, and welcome to the Pibytes podcast, where we talk about python career and mindset. We're your hosts. I'm Julian Sequeira. And I am Bob Baldebos. If you're looking to improve your python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, this is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of the Pibytes podcast. This is Bob Baldeboz, and I'm here with Julian Sequeira. How's it going, man? I'm back. Hey, man. Welcome back. Thank you. Good to be back. Good to be back. It's. You know, when we have these guests on, I get to take a breather, but it's always good to get back behind the microphone, so I'm happy to do it. Yeah. How are you doing? You good? Good. Much better. Yeah. Had a bit of illness to COVID last week, but, uh, as they say. Right. And more energized than ever. That's the. That's the win of the week, I think. It was a. It was a miserable week, man, with. Without you around. I tell you what. Talking mindset, right? Yeah, no, I definitely felt your pain. You. You felt a bit without energy. Like, felt drained. It was, uh. It was not the same, Bob, so. Yeah, it's not fun. It's not fun. You always want to do stuff, and it's, uh, can be debilitating, you know? Yeah, I'm glad. I. For me, yeah, well, I didn't have to, but I was, uh, just for everyone listening, I was very strict with Bob. I didn't let him log in. I tried to stop him from doing things. Although while I was sleeping, he. He jumped online and checked email, so. Shame on you, Bob. Shame on you. Speaking. Speaking of. Hey, this is a great segue to the topic of today. Speaking of getting things done, what's. What are we talking about today? Yeah, getting things done. A lot of people have asked this over, over the months, years, how we get so much done. And sometimes we don't feel productive at all. But, oh yeah, we do want to share in this episode some of the things we have developed evolved over time. How we are more productive. Well, we made a productivity course, but it's also something we constantly evolve. It's not that we are perfect at it. It's a constant struggle. So the question is, how do you and Julian manage your lives in terms of daytime jobs, pie bites and families? Because, yes, that's indeed a lot to a lot of things. So you want to kick it off how we do it as pie bytes and then maybe we share some individual hacks and things? Yeah, yeah, definitely. I can do that. So firstly, thank you, shreyas, for asking that question. As you're listening, I hope you're happy that we're talking about this. We're glad you asked the question. So again, anyone listening, if you have any questions and put it through and you want us to talk about it or answer it or give you some insight, please do so, because we'll definitely do it. We, that we wanted. We want to talk about stuff that means, means a lot to all of you listening. So. All right, so to kick it off with PI bytes. So I wanted to split this up a little bit because myself and Bob, we're in very different situations, but the thing we work on together is pie bytes. Right? And so as a pie bytes unit, how do we stay productive together on this endeavor with pie bytes? The, the main thing that we've, we've come to realize over time, and it's taken a lot of time to hone ourselves down to this, to our tasks, down to this and routine because we, we definitely did take on too much for certain times. We definitely did jeopardize relationships with, say, our families and friends where we would be working too late and so on and so forth. So a couple of the things that we do and that rules we've put in place for ourselves. The first thing that we've learned is that we need to choose one important task to tackle a week. Now, I'm not talking about the email, recording this podcast, responding to emails and all the other things that we do as part of Pibytes. And then on top of that coaching, all of the work with people that we do, that's stock standard. That's the stuff that we have to do. That's the day to day. I'm talking about growth initiatives. I'm talking about brand new products, brand new courses and trainings and anything that we want to really push outside of our comfort zone on could even be coming up with presentations, could be reviewing books, it could be anything else. Right. So with that said, we realize that we have to just choose one and we can't deviate from that because over time we were finding that if we push too much onto the side of getting these important tasks done, the other thing slipped and we dropped our quality on other stuff like that. So right now, the biggest thing is just one thing per week to tick off the list, and that's it. Gary Keller, the one thing, again, how do you think of that? Because chasing multiple things and you don't make progress, any of them. Right. So we have clear goals and clear priorities and, yeah, one big challenge or task a week and that, that works very well. And yeah, it's all about setting restrictions, I think. Right. So the second thing. Sacrifices, sacrifices. The second thing we started doing is less time on calls specifically together, because, you know, we can, again, we can then go into many, many things which inevitably happens. Creative minds. Right. But yeah, we have pretty strict stand ups now, and that means a lot of more time for deep work, and that's working very well. It's a bit less fun sometimes, but it's just the dedication you have to have. Yeah. If we want to see that growth, if we want to see that push towards our goals and that success that we've got a vision of, we need to make some sacrifices along the way, even if it means spending less time together. But, but, yeah, it's true. When we really analyzed what was happening throughout the week, we realized, well, yeah, we were meeting every single night of the week. And even though we were productive on those calls and getting things done, it wasn't leaving a lot of time for other stuff where we would work asynchronously or just our own separate duties and things like that. So we found that by limiting the amount of time we spend engaging with each other on video calls, we actually get more done during the week. It seems like a no brainer. I'm sure you're sitting there going, well, duh. But when you're running a business together like this, you kind of think that we have to be in the same room, we have to be working together. And so that our version of the same room is a video call. But no, we've been very strict. And to also bridge that gap, we've moved a lot of our messaging to audio messages. We've mentioned this before that we use audio messages, but now we almost explicitly do all theorizing, talking about concepts, talking about the state of the world, our families, our talk. Just as mates, you know, we keep that all in audio messages and then when we are on the video calls, it's extremely strict to the point, get it done and then we might indulge on a weekend night or a Monday or something and just have a quick 1520 minutes chat, you know, nice multi processing there like with the automatic. I feel like we're just hitting multiple cpu cores. It's completely async, you know. Exactly, exactly. So that's good. I think the last thing I'll say about the pie bytes work in general is that we're very strict with our. Well I wouldn't say very strict, but we have borders in place. Because when you're running your own business like we do with pibytes, you have the motivation. If you really believe in what you're doing, which we do, you could work 24/7 you really could. And it's very easy to, to just burn bridges every, on every other front. So we have borders in place on when we stop. I could work all night, I've done it plenty of times where I've been up till midnight for piebaites going, oh yeah, gotta keep going. And Bob's been like, just go to bed man. Uh, and vice versa, you know, he, he might be up late or be up super early working and I'll be like, dude, stop. So now we have decent guide rails in place, I'll make sure I'm still getting seven to 8 hours sleep a night. So will Bob. And that allows us to get more out of the time because we're refreshed, we're not burning out, we need less time away from the business and it's just actually been really beneficial to do that. Yeah. And lastly, I will also add, it's not on the list here, but automation and outsourcing. You got some great help lately with our VA coaches and that has been super exciting growing as a team because you can only do as much. Especially now with the boundaries in place, we have a finite amount of time and there's just always more to do. So yeah, start looking at offloading work and give others an opportunity as well to do cool things in the business. Yeah, get them taking part in it and a lot of them enjoy it and. Well actually not a lot of them, all of them love what they're doing and how they're supporting. So it's really good. Quick note from our sponsor and we will be right back. And the sponsor is us. We hope you really enjoy those tips. So far, it definitely helps us getting stuff done, a lot of stuff done during the week, but there's more. We actually produced a productivity course, almost 4 hours of content, in a similar vein, boosting your productivity. So if you are struggling with this and you get distracted and there are many distractions these days, might want to check it out. Pibit es productivity. And there you will find our course and with way more tips and information that will help you become a more productive developer. All right, back to the show. That's piebites, right? And that means that we have to have the time to work on pibytes. So back to the question from shreyas. We're talking about work and families and stuff now. I still work every day, Bob. You don't. And at this point in time, and we both have families and kids that need us. Right. So how, how do you work anymore? No, you're not working. You don't do anything. Supposed to be a joke. Oh, oh, it was a joke. No. So how do you, how do you get started? Where do you get, how do you balance the whole productivity between what you do for pie bytes for like your hours per day and the kids needing you and things like that? Yeah, yeah, great question. Definitely boundaries because as you said, the default is always to work more. There's always a void to be filled. Right. And you can easily work double hours and still have stuff to do. So, yeah, I think it comes with boundaries and routine and when you do what basically. So weekends off, we spoke about this many times. Gives you a chance to recharge, spend time with the family, but even one step further, like have an end time to your working day. Right. I have an alarm. I think I mentioned this before, quarter past 630. Obviously I still finish at seven, but at least it's a reminder, like, hey, your end time is coming up. And. Yeah. And also then on the other side of the day, in the morning, I have this strong morning routine. I mean, it's not that strict, right? But I do like my study first, my reading I did in the gym. But you know, that often goes over lunch break and that's fine. But you know, like once I sit down and do the pivot work, then there's just stuff I cannot do anymore. Like, like to study the reading the python. And then in the morning do most of your deep work. So writing, for example, emails, blog posts, that goes best in the morning. So try to kind of do the deep work in the morning and then the meetings mostly in the afternoon because then, you know, with meetings it's very hard to also do deep work. Plus, there's willpower bucket, which fills every morning and gets depleted every day. Right. So even if you would have solid blocks of deep work time in the afternoon, it's way harder to do it when your bill powers down and you're going on social and do all these destructive things which typically happen in the afternoon. Right. So, yeah, the willpower thing is kind of a. Yeah. An important thing to also take into account. Yep. And the willpower comes with practice. Right. You've got to really build that momentum. You've got to get sleep. You've got to eat healthy. You know, a lot of that comes with the mindset. So when you're feeling good, you have that willpower to push through. Uh, but no, to your point, I. A lot of those same things here, right? Like making sure that you, uh, do the right things at the right time. That's such a key point here about both of us. And so I'll jump. Do you mind if I jump into mine now, Bob? Sure. Do you have sleep on there? Because I did want to comment on that. The sleep thing is very important as well. Yeah, we'll go on. What did you want to say? No, just when you mentioned sleep, like, in the past, I would always have skimmed on

it and keep coding till 01: 14:51

00 a.m. And then just, you build up this fatigue, and that's actually way more costly than you then you might realize. So sleep these days is just a big priority. And I feel like everything else is just going better by taking care of your bio. So just want to make sure we cover that. But, yeah, you go, no, no. Look, a lot of what I do is very similar to Bob, so, you know, choosing when things work best for me. Right. So I know in the morning, that's when I. That's when I have the energy to do the heavy thinking tasks. Once it's past lunchtime, you can expect me to be doing more of the busy work. Maybe that's when I prefer meeting people. It's more of a relaxed time for me. So, you know, because I still have the day job and then I work pie bites at night, I really have to split those up. Right. And so that means I have to have clear boundaries. And that. That, to me, is my biggest recommendation is put blocks into the calendar. And once you've got those in place, really stick with them. Don't let be protective of them. Like, you know, imagine a dog guarding a house or something like that. Protect those slots in your calendar. Like it was life and death. Because if you don't, it could be right. It could be your life at stake. It could be your relationships at stake. It could be your health at stake. So an example for me is I have a slot in my calendar every day to exercise and what I do in that time is different. Depending on my schedule and what I can get done workout wise, it might only be a half hour workout, might be an hour. It depends what I am physically capable of doing in that day. But the point is that time block is there and I've made it clear to my team and stakeholders that, look, it's in my calendar. Please note, between this hour, I am busy and I'm going to be doing exercise. A lot of this started during the remote work and COVID and stuff, but I've kept it in there and I've maintained that respect there and no one takes it, you know, and I don't allow anyone to take it. And so what you need to do, on top of setting that, that actual block in your calendar, set the expectation with your stakeholders, with your manager, with your teammates, with your customer, whoever it happens to be. If you are lucky enough to be able to do this and you're in a position that you can do this, because everyone is. I appreciate that. But this again is about my situation and how I manage it all. Set those expectations, be ruthless and be confident. Right? And the same kind of goes for the family front. I am very aware that my evenings after the kids go to bed, I'm on pie bites all night. And so that does mean I'm not spending time with my partner. Right? But the balance to that is exactly what Bob mentioned before is that weekends are non negotiable. Weekends are sacred. No one touches our weekends. You will not get a reply from us on slack or email on the weekend because that's our time. That's our time with our families. That time belongs to our families to make up for the dedication we give to pie bytes and everything else during the week. So that we've set that expectation. We've had those discussions with our families. We've been open and honest about our goals and it works and our partners are very supportive of that. So that obviously helps too. The other thing is with the instant messengers, which we've talked about before with emails and ims and stuff, I don't respond instantly, even on my work stuff. I don't mind if people see that I've read it, couldn't care less. Again, I'm setting that expectation that I will respond when it's appropriate for me, you know, if a slack message pops up at work. Okay, great. I'll read it. That's fine. If it's something that I can't respond to, then because I'm in a meeting or because I'm in the middle of reading or something, right. I'll mark it as unread and get to it later. Right. And it's part of this whole time boxing style of doing things. I set time to do things. So my emailing I actually don't do, at the start of the day, my work emailing, I don't. I might quickly skim it to when I log in just to see is there anything that needs my attention now. Like the world is burning and there should never be anything like that. But if not, then that stuff gets pushed to much later in the morning. So the first thing I'm doing in my day is the stuff that I set out to do that I said to myself, this is what needs to be done tomorrow, on Wednesday. So I'll go and do that first thing in the morning, and then I'll get to the email and all the other distractions later and then add those to my to do list. Set the expectations on when they can be done so I'm not just taking too many things at once. So it can be a bit of a mission. You, you end up spending time organizing your day to make sure that you can get more done right. Otherwise, if you don't do that, you just have this constant flood of stuff flying your way and you never get any done. But now there's this certain freedom in sitting there and getting a task come across your plate and then saying, you know what? I'll do that on Friday. That's in four days from now. I'm going to do that on Friday because I've got a lot of stuff to do between now and then. And that new task does not take priority over what I already had in place. Unless, of course, it does. Right? And then you just roll with that change. But for the most part, it won't. So for me, just to summarize my productivity routine, I guess it's, as with Bob, do the things at the right times of the day that you can be most effective at them. Because I can tell you, my writing and everything is better in the morning than the afternoon. I can get it done twice as fast. Make sure you set explicit blocks in your calendar for the things that mean a lot to you. And I don't just mean the exercise and the workout. I'm talking about family time. So my afternoons, sacred you will. My calendar is blocked out as out

of office. In fact, between the hours of 05: 21:06

00 p.m.

And 08: 21:10

00 p.m. No one gets that time but the kids and my wife. That's dinner time. That's bath time. That's bedtime. No one touches it, not even Bob. Actually, Bob gets audio messages in during that time, but definitely nothing more than that. I don't check email, anything, and set, uh, time boxing for the tasks. And so you know what, you're doing it every part of the day. And last but not least, be ruthless with defending your time. Set the expectations with people on how you operate and be confident when you do it. That's the thing, you, it's your time. It's no one else's. No one owns that time. So you be confident with when you tell people, I'm busy from this time to this time, you will not have me from this time to this time. And you can't have me from this time to this time because I've got things to do. Right. And if you want the best out of me, you'll respect that. So that's it. There's my rampaging rant on my productivity. What do you think? Yeah, no, I think those tips are very helpful now, especially that taking control. Because as we read in essentialism, or you plan out your day, or inevitably somebody else will, it's not optional. It's like if you don't do it, then that void or that lack of planning will be filled up by others very soon. And that might not, probably is not in your best interest. So you can definitely be a bit selfish about that. And you need to protect the asset and think about, yeah, how you can make best use of that time. And obviously that's not selfish at all because probably the things you are doing is going to help people, right? So by protecting the asset, it's for the greater good. Right? So. But yeah, definitely it's a learning thing and yeah, to become more assertive with that, yeah, it takes courage, it's not easy, but as Jaco Willing said, right, discipline equals freedom. So be disciplined about this stuff, get more done, and then you will feel much, much better. And just, you know what, because you said discipline, I'll just say it's discipline. And, you know, a similar vein, the willpower, as you mentioned it, to actually do it. Because I'll tell you, there are so many nights when I've sat here after work and everything and just gone, oh, I'm so tired. I just want to go veg out on the couch and all that stuff and do nothing. And it's the discipline, it's the willpower, it's the routine that makes me go, no, no, no. That's the weekend. That's your weekend, Julian. Go. Go away and get on the computer and start working. Get the stuff done. Yeah. And you. You wrote us a nice article about that and just takes five minutes, I think it's called, so that, you know, start doing the work. And I mean, starting as the most difficult. Right. And then once you're five minutes in, you don't even notice it anymore. Yep. And if you've planned your day, you know exactly what you're doing at that point when you sit down. Very liberating. Yeah. Done. Cool. So, yes, Reyes, thanks for asking. I hope this gives you and all our dear listeners some insights. I think this whole question thing is really cool. Maybe we. Or maybe let me make a form and link it below, and then people can click the form and submit questions. How about that? That's a great idea. Let's do that. Do it now. On the podcast? No, in Google form. Yeah. Now we'll

slot that in for Friday. 11: 24:53

00 p.m..

11: 24:55

00 Nice. I appreciate that. Thank you. All right, so before we wrap it up quickly, what are you reading? And you know what? I'm going to change the question, not just to be, what are you reading, but what are you learning as well? Just in case it's not just about a book. Huh? Learning. Well, it's kind of related, right? To the book. No, just choose one. Doesn't matter. Okay. How to innovate more, be a better entrepreneur, grow the business. And that leads us to Richard Branson. Nice. So, loaded question, right? Yeah. I'm reading his autobiography. I think he has several, but the latest one, losing my virginity. Yeah. Fascinating read that this man has done and achieved. Talking about courage. Wow. Just amazing. So very inspiring. And gives me great ideas. Yeah, I think it's a mindset to think about business and helping people and. Yeah. Scratching your own itch to a certain extent as well. I think you have something more about to say about that, right? Well, yeah, no, it was just timely that you pulled that book out. At the same time that I did the masterclass with him on. I was something entrepreneurial, whatever. But I really loved it. It was just such an inspiring story, hearing all of his things. So that's my learning experience. That's why I I changed the question so that it suited me. Yeah, I finished his masterclass and it was really good, you know, for something that was, I don't know, just a few hours long, 4 hours, maybe 5 hours. It was just so jam packed full of insight and inspiration and just, I don't know how else to put it was such a pleasurable listen and watch that. I'm actually going to rewatch it this time on a computer rather than, you know, on my phone and listening to it in the car and stuff. But I'm going to sit here and actually rewatch it. That way I can take real notes on my computer and go because I just found it so inspirational. And the second time through, I'll be able to pick out the things better than when I'm still in that awe phase like he did. What? So, yeah, I'm looking forward to that. So that was something I finished. And then just to wrap it up, Bob, the one that I've kicked off, I've kicked off another masterclass, which is, um, some communication skill one from George Stephanopoulos. And I just. It just piqued my interest. I thought, let me have a quick look at this. And it was really, really well done. Like, I haven't finished it. I'm a good six or seven lessons into it, I think. But really enjoying his style of delivery. And a lot of it is about interviewing people. So not so much what we're doing right now, but so many amazing tips and stuff from there, which I could obviously talk about for a while. So I'll stop. Awesome. Awesome. Always be learning good stuff. Always be learning. Love it. Okay, what's on for next week? What's on for next week? I have no idea. You tell me. Well, folks, please submit a question. Oh, that was well done. I'll give you that one. That was good. Nice. I know. I want a final thing to mention. We're working hard on this live training, don't we? So maybe you can quickly mention it. Yeah, we have September on the 12. September. Yes, exactly. We're going live on Facebook, live from downtown New York City. No, we're going live on Facebook to talk about our python training approach, how we coach people, how we find them success, and how you can learn all about it. So please make sure you join us. Sign up and join us. Yep. We'll put the sign up page below as well. Yeah. And it'll be, you know, the two of us on camera talking about it at some odd hour of our days, so we may be a little unkempt. But the whole point is that we're going to be going live to talk all about it and really show people what we're about. And they get to, you all get to see us do it at the same time. Yep. Talking about our approach and join us and then you can ask live questions will be fun. Awesome. All right, well, I'm pumped, I'm excited. So I'm going to do no work until now, and then that's how pretty, that's how productive I'm going to be. All right, well, look, everyone, thank you so much for listening as always. We just love that we have so many people listening and communicating that to us. So thank you as always, for the feedback. And we look forward to, well, not chatting with you. Hear us next week. Like that. Done. We appreciate you all. Thanks for tuning in every week. And yeah, we'll be back next week with a fresh new episode. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pybite, France. That is Pibit es friends, and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show. And to join our thriving slack community of python programmers, go to Pibytes community. That's pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.