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Ask for more responsibility. Make yourself valuable. If you find that, say you finished a project, don't just sit on your butt going, yes, sweet, quiet time. I'm going to cruise. That's when you're vulnerable. Use that time and ask for something more. Contribute in a different way. Find a way to contribute. That's something that's within your control. 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 the Pyewites podcast. Bob eldebos here, and I'm with Julian. How's it going, man? Hey, everyone. We're on video again. We're on YouTube. We're not live, but still on video. Getting used to it. Yeah, we had. We had good feedback from last week's call. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Yeah, thank you, everyone who left us feedback, that was great. So, yeah, we're brushing our hair and, you know, trying to look tolerable for YouTube, for the stream, for the recording again. Right, exactly, exactly. So here we. So if you are listening to this, you know, through Spotify or something, check out the YouTube as well, just so you can see. See what we look like as we're recording. But, yeah. How you going, man? Week going well? Yeah, very well, actually. Yesterday was a bit of a bank holiday, so had a bit of time, still worked. Half today, of course, but you're going good. A lot going on and. Yeah, it's just exciting. What about you? Yeah, good. I'm freezing. We were supposed to be moving into summer and there's been this, like, antarctic polar vortex or something that's just chilled down the southeast of Australia, so it's back down to wintry weather, which is frustrating, but that's weird. Yeah, you're always the opposite. So here it's abnormally hot, actually. Right? Like, 26 degrees celsius in, like, November, which is kind of your may. Yeah, yeah. Well, the season wise. Season wise, yeah. So now, I mean, it's, again, like the opposite. Like that extra heat here, is that extra cold there? So it's always the opposite. Right? Yeah. Thank you for taking that from us. So, um. So that's those. That's my loss for the week. That's my loss for the week. But what about the wins? Yeah, yeah. What you win? Oh, you want me to go. Yeah. So my, my actual win for the week. Um, well, the first win for the week is that I didn't burn my house to the ground, uh, because I found this giant spider on the, on the surface of my pool laying eggs in my pool. It was horrifying. Absolutely horrifying. Something I don't think I will ever forget. And so it took everything I had not to burn the house to the ground. So we didn't. So I'm very happy. There's my. Yeah. When you, when you told me I cancelled all future travel plans, like, not going. Not happening. No, I'm out. Nope. So you come to Spain. Exactly. Exactly. So the follow on win is that we booked a pest control guy to come out. So that's happening. But the real win, I wanted to share that I'm very excited is that we have a new coach with PDM, Jesse. Jesse Brink. So welcome. I know, Jesse, welcome to the group. But we're super excited. That takes us to how many now? Seven. Excluding us, right? Yeah, excluding us. Seven coaches and one va. Yeah. So very nice. That's ten. Yeah, it's ten people. So that's it. Ten people behind pie bytes. Now, this is very exciting. So that's a huge win for us. And what about you? What's the win you've got? The big win is we got some really cool feedback on our productivity course. And I won't read it verbatimly, but basically this person said that the course, the productivity course was so helpful, got her a lot of clarity where to go, and, yeah, she even compared it to high end programs like Jim Rohn, Brian Tracy, Dale Carnegie. And she actually got more out of our course and that completely blew me away. And, yeah, that's just amazing. So, yeah, that was the best. I read that this morning and just was like, oh, my goodness. So cool to get feedback like that to rank us up there amongst the, the people that we look up to in some way, you know, is just incredible. So I'm very excited about that. It also reminds me that to tell everyone listening and watching, we have a productivity course that's actually pretty good. So straight at 7 hours. It's pretty concise and, yeah, it tackles a lot of stuff people are struggling with. So, yeah, it really, you can really earn a lot of time back into your weekly schedule. So very practical as well. Yeah. Nice. Okay, well, let's. Let's kick it off for the wins. That's it. Save. Oh, yeah, two wins. I had one win. Well, yeah, save. Your second win for the for the books at the end. Smart move. Smart move. Thinking, thinking. The planner. The planner. Here. Nice. All right, so let's jump into the episode, everyone. Thank you, as always, for listening. What we wanted to talk about today was just things that were getting tough out there in the world. News this week of more companies tanking in shares and value and people. We've been emailing so many people recently, you know, as we do, and chatting on calls and hearing people say things like, you know, their teams are being laid off. You know, certain percentages of workforce is being laid off. It's. It's scary. It's absolutely scary out there. And it can really mess with you. You know, it can really mess with us. It can put a lot of fear into everything that we do. We hold back from doing things. We worry about personal finance. We worry about whether our job is safe. We worry about whether we even take chances. Is it worth, say, approaching a brand new job? Is it worth moving to a new company? Because things aren't secure anywhere, apparently, according to, you know, everything that you read out there online and stuff. So the question that everyone's asking is just, what do we do? What do you do right now? So we wanted to just put together a quick list of a couple of things that you can do to calm yourself down in a way. And I don't mean like, go and meditate. I mean, of course you can do things like that. But the first thing, I'll kick this off. And then, Bob, you jump. You can jump to the next one. The first thing I just want to say is so much of what is going on in the world and what people are worrying about is so far out of their control. Right. A lot of the stuff that's happening in the world is largely due to things slowly going a little bit back to normal after COVID. And so all the companies that made a boatload of money of the past two years starting to normalize again, and that is making them shed loads and stuff. But again, all of this stuff is so out of your control. Worrying about it is just going to run you into the ground. You're going to burn out. You're going to stress out. So my first thing is to just remember, and you've probably heard this a million times, hopefully, this is just a timely reminder for you. Focus on the things you can control. And there are many things that are within your control right now. You just have to remember to find out what they are. So that's. I can't tell you what they are because everyone's different. Right. But focus on what you can control and let that guide you. Let that get you through the day when things might be scary and tough out there. Are you still watching the news? Nope. Haven't watched the news in I don't know how long. I mean, I'm very picky about it as well. If I go and google something, it's about something I specifically want to know the news about. So I really mess you up. Right? Exactly. It can be extremely. I mean, it's good to be aware of what's happening. I definitely scan the news a little bit from here to there from time to time. But, yeah, that's. People usually spend an hour a day on that. Right. And that could actually be an hour that you are studying or coding or doing things that make you know, you better or that you have control over. Right? Yep. Yep. And we're not saying stick. Yeah, don't stick your head in the sand, of course, but be specific, you know, be intentional about it. So for me, I might set ten minutes aside to go and skim through the headlines of things that I want to know about. That's it. So turn off those notifications. You know, remove news apps from your phone. There's no need to have them. You know, you can just browse the website and if you've got something like, actually mainly the iPhones and Samsungs out there. Right. They have a new section you can just scroll to. You don't even need a dedicated app. So remove those notifications and set up specific time to do that. Otherwise it's going to run you into the ground. Yeah. Tim Ferriss in the four hour work week calls it to go on information diet. I like that. That's a good one. That's a good one. Boundaries. Yeah. So weekends off. We spoke a lot about that, but definitely, like, there's just also. It's very tentative now to work more hours because there's this anxiety. What's going to happen? Will they fire me? But, yeah, there's also, like, the balance aspect and running a marathon versus a sprint. Right. So, yeah. And having that time for yourself. Right. To. To work on your future and not only on making somebody else rich. Well, there is that temptation, you know, as you alluded to, that when you're scared and you're worried about your job being in the firing line, you know, it is very scary. And you think, I'm going to work an extra 5 hours per day to show them that I'm valuable, but that's not actually doing that. That's just going to burn you out. So setting boundaries and then actually being protective. And we've talked about this on plenty of other episodes, but protecting your schedule during the day, protecting your calendar and making sure you're not wasting time on things that don't add value to yourself and your manager. Right. So do those things during the day and then set the boundary and be explicit. Have the confidence to say,

yep, 05: 10:48

00 p.m. I'm done. You won't get me until tomorrow morning, but then when you have me, you'll have all of me. You know, we also talk a lot about that in the productivity course. Oh, nice. Nice one. I didn't even think of that. Very good. Fantastic. There we go. So secondly, closely related, like ask for personal developers, meantime, to skill up. Most companies have training budget. There's just money they put aside to train you. Right. And you have the right to have a certain budget allocated to your personal growth or the growth of your technical skills, whatever is relevant to your job. And yeah, it's kind of staggering how many people don't know that or not really use that opportunity. Right. To, to use that budget. That's also a bit of assertiveness. Right. Some people might not want to speak up like that's just an extra cost for the business, but no, I think we also spoke about this before, but it's not only what you do today, but it's also for a company what you do in a year. It's not only about doing the work that's in the job descriptions, also how you're going to be promoted or evolve as a leader, as a person. And that all comes with that upscaling. Yeah, and don't be afraid to ask for it. You constantly hear that things are expensive and we're cutting costs and we're minimizing spend on this and blah, blah, blah. Right. But don't forget it costs them, any company, so much more money to hire someone new. Just think about it. Right. So if you were to leave your current role, they're going to have to backfill that position. They're going to have to put out a job ad for legal purposes. They can't just hire someone internally to fill you without advertising the role they have to spend for that. There's the time investment of doing that. There's a recruiting team, there's HR, there's everything involved with hiring someone. And on top of that, they want to hire the right person. So that's going to take time. And then don't even forget the impact to the team that you're leaving, because they're all now having to pick up the workload of you leaving a gap. So think about how much money it's in. The. I think. I can't remember the stat I read it was in the Harvard Business Review or something, but it was tens of thousands of dollars. Getting closer to $100,000 per person in a professional environment to fill that spot. And you might just be asking for a couple of $1,000 for training course. And when you make that argument and you compare the two, not that you're threatening to leave, but when they realize that, hey, we need to invest in our staff, or they will leave, then suddenly that thousand bucks, couple of $1,000 just becomes nothing. Right? So just remember to have that confidence. You are an asset. Right. Don't let yourself be the cog in their machine. You are more than that. So it doesn't matter how volatile the world seems, that's always the case. They always need people. So have that confidence in yourself and build time into your schedule every day for personal development and to skill up. You are an asset. I like that. Yeah. I have that tattooed on my back. Framing it that way from an opportunity cost, right. But if they don't keep you happy, and the higher turnover rate is very expensive, so it's good to keep in mind. Yeah, that's a good one. I could talk about that one for ages. So, thirdly, on that same note, about being an asset, right. Where. Where possible, without burning out, always having balance. Ask for more responsibility. Right. Make yourself valuable. If you find that, say you finished a project, don't just sit on your butt going, yes, sweet, quiet time. I'm going to cruise. You know, that's when you're vulnerable. Right? Use that time and ask for something more. Contribute in a different way. Find. Find a way to contribute. That's something that's within your control. And what it looks like to you is. Is going to be different. So I can't go further than that. Yeah, I think I've read that many times in Brian Tracy's work. Right? Like, asking for more responsibility. Like, they don't know that you're capable of it or that you have what it takes. Do it. Right. So speak up. And it's a good challenge. And obviously, the more responsibility and the more things you accomplish in a job, the safer you become. Right. You become more valuable. I mean, everybody is dispensable in a sense. Right. But you can definitely reverse that a little bit. Now, I think the responsibility thing is also going with making your job interesting because you might have, what you say, a boring job, but yeah, maybe just look at your tasks from another perspective and see how you can make it more interesting or more engaging. There's always opportunity. So think outside of the box and you can turn a boring job into a more interesting one by adding more features to it, which usually comes with more responsibility. Yeah, no, I like that. That's a good one. Right. You take the next one. Right. Number four, choose how to respond to situations. Mindset, one of my favorites. So going back to the situation, there's more stress, more skin in the game, more at stake, right. So I can imagine tensions going up and that just requires us to be a bit more stoic about things. So where there's more emotion, right. Maybe step back. No, we always say with the email, right. Write email. And outside of your email client, save it in draft, not send it, put in notepad, get it out of outlook, completely write it in vim. And maybe next day you reduce it to two lines and just stay to the facts, not the emotion. Yeah, I think this is all emotion management, right. That's your thing. So you go, yeah, yeah. Look, I keep knocking my microphone. Look, it's high stress, right? It is highly stressful out there. Things are, like I said, up in the air and seemingly very volatile. But you don't have to be. That's the key point here, right. You choose how you respond to any situation. Like for example, interest rates going up again over here in Australia. We just got that announcement the other day from the Reserve Bank. I could respond by freaking out, by getting upset, by getting cranky, by being moody, whatever. Or I could just say, yeah, that's cool. Okay. Thats just whats happening right now. I cant control that. What can I do about that? And so for example, the first thing im doing tomorrow morning is calling the bank, right. To talk about it. This is something you and I discussed earlier, Bob, but just getting. I know thats very personal but thats the reality of it. It is high stress to know that your interest payments might go up another $50 to $100 a week. It's whatever. Yeah. And however you feel it, it's happening, right? It's happening. So what's my alternative? Sell the house and not live somewhere? Like of course not. So I'm going to do something about it within my realms of control. Yeah, yeah. So choosing how I respond to that is important. I'm not going to let that ruin my mood. I'm not going to let it affect the people around me and how I talk to them. So, yeah, I was reading again that in one of Tony Robbins, the books. Right. And I think, as a man think it, that's another author. But all those books talk about, like, it's. And I think we have mentioned this as well, like, it's, a, what happens and b, how you respond to it. Right. So. And Ryan holiday, obstacles, the way, like, bad things are going to happen, obstacles are going to come in your path. Right. That's just a given, but you can just be defeated by it, or you can say, okay, this is the reality, how I'm going to deal with it. And that second mindset is very powerful, especially these days. Yep, exactly. Right. So the last thing then, that I'll touch on before we wrap this up is focus on what's important to you. Not just what's within your control, but what's. Because, you know, it's in your control to just go and sit there and watch Netflix and stick your head in the sand. Right. But focus on what's important to you. And a quick exercise for everyone. So unless you're driving, pull out a pencil and a piece of paper, right. Surprised me. I didn't think there was homework. Well, this. This was something I did on the mindset call last week, and I thought, let me share this out. It's a great exercise. A friend, uh, taught me, you know, somewhat recently that I really enjoyed, and I just thought, I can't wait to share this out. So, write down on a piece of paper what roles you play, right. In life, from every day for. Throughout a week, what are the roles that you play and put them in order of what's most important to you. Just do five to start with and go one, one through five. Right. So some examples. Your role. So, for me, top number role is to be a good dad. Right. That. To be a dad. Right. That's roll number one. Role. Number two is to be a good husband. Be a supportive husband. That's the second role. And if you're wondering why those two are in that order, it's because if I keep the kids happy, it keeps me as a great husband. Right. So they're sort of intertwined. You could argue they're one in the same. And oxygen masks order. Exactly. Exactly. So number three is, for me, is to actually be a good friend. Right? So I'm thinking of you here, Bob. I'm thinking of you. So, being a good friend. And notice that none of these top three are my job, any of my jobs. Right. And that's something I encourage everyone here to do for themselves. Right. Write them down. It can be whatever order. And if it doesn't matter what order you put, just think about it for. About what's important to you. Right. And if you don't have kids, of course kids. And being a good data is not going to be number one. It might, you might be, say, in your mid twenties, chasing the career. So, yeah, being a solid employee or a solid manager or whatever is going to be your number one. And that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Uh, the point is, by doing this exercise, it allows you to take control of how you do your day, how you focus your time during the day. So you can sit there and with the mountain of things happening in front of you, you can sit here now and start to say, okay, I'm going to shed all of the things that have nothing to do with those top three roles. Now, obviously I can't do that because I, I have mouths to feed. I can't just say I'm going to be a good dad, husband and mate, but, you know, nothing else. Exactly. So I have other things down that list, you know, like pie bites, the job and so on and so forth. But the point is, is that when you go through your day now, with all the things happening in the world, you can look at what role you play and don't forget. Roles might be something like being a great member of your community, it might be being a great member of a church, it might be being a great volunteer doing some amazing project. So get that down, do it, put it in an order that's meaningful to you and then let that guide you through your day. That's a great little exercise that I think I should add to the productivity course, I think. Yeah, yeah. Upgrade. That's awesome because it forces people to really think and step back and then see if their actions actually align with that order. Right. Yeah. Which often is not right, because we stay in the office till

08:00 p.m. 09: 23:10

00 p.m. And what about the family? Right? Or that's exactly how I have the confidence to switch off at like five every day and be at the dinner table with the kids. You're at the top of your mind, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. So focus on what's important to you. 80 20. Yeah, yeah. Love it. Awesome. Okay, so that's that. So, everyone, I hope you enjoyed it. Got a bit of inspiration out of that. And as always, before we wrap it up, though, we're going to. We did not mention the word python in this whole episode until you just did. Until I just did. Damn it. But. But these topics are pretty universal and I think they will help any developer because. Oh, yeah. A lot of it is mindset. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Love it. Picking justification the books because we have to go. Yeah. How are you reading me? I don't know, actually. Nothing new since last week. Oh, you know what I did pick up? I've been really enjoying that. I mentioned the body book, I think, last week, but I've been tag teaming between that and back to. What was it? Oh, my goodness. It was the book I said, and Hugh liked it. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Fiction book. But it's great. Okay. Mentioned a couple of weeks ago. I forgot. Whatever. Reading fiction as well, which is nice. Yes. It's fiction. Winds me down before bed. What about you? Yeah, I'm reading some software essays Joel Spolsky put together. It's a pretty old book, I think. 2004, but just timeless stuff. Right. You know, pal Graham, some of the big names. It's pretty interesting. Tony Robbins already mentioned unlimited power. Kind of a classic if you're into that self help stuff. And. Yeah. Talking about Bryson. Right. We really like his style. Engaging. So I ordered down under to learn a bit more about that country out there that tries to kill you. Nice. Nice. I'm expecting an update. I did find that funny that you said a book from 2004 was classic and old. That's the new ism bias, right? Yeah. You make one of these biases. Yeah. 1800. Yeah. Yeah. We can go back to Seneca. Yeah. Nice. Oh, by the book, by the way, I remember the book, the wizard of Earth, Sea. That's. That's what I've picked up again. So it's bringing back a lot of memories. I remember reading this when I was a kid. So we're going to add them all to the. We have this playlist right on another playlist, a book list on our piebytes books.com. So we'll link all those there. Exactly. And it's quite a list after almost 100 episodes. So I love it. It's a nice website to use as well. There's a slight plug for it on the episode. But you know what? It's a great tool. And the best thing, it's one of our first Django apps. It's open source. So that's definitely why we want to get the word out. Because if you use pybytes books.com mentioning the name again and you see something, you don't like, you can actually go into the code base and open a pr and we will be more than happy to review that and merge it. But also, the only information that we take. I'm doing rabbit, is here. That we take air quotes. Here is just your email address and what is a username? That's it? Yeah, something like that. Just. Just to create your account. And we have somewhere to email when you have an issue with your account. That's it. Right? So we don't need names. None of the stuff that the other platforms out there needs. And that's partly why this was built. Right? We were sick of the bloat of the other ones that exist. So, yeah, beautiful. We didn't plan for this promo. We didn't plan for this promise, but we'll take it. Hey, speaking of promo, I just have to point out how cool is my shirt? This is for all you. All the YouTube watchers out there. Such cool shit. That's us. That's us. Look at us. I can't recognize you, but like me, you look. For anyone listening, the shirt I'm wearing has Bob and I in adventure time style artwork. So Bob is looking a lot like Jake adventure time, and he. I love it. Shout out to Sarah. Yeah. Bob has no pop culture. Um, he doesn't have a pop culture bone in his body. So I took. I'm getting there. I'm getting there. I'm going through the Marvel movies. We can look at the difference. You've got a wall of books behind you. I've got video games, a guitar of gun. I'm just boring, you know? No, I'll take it. I'll take it. Not at all. No. Anyway, thank you, everyone, for listening, as always. It's always wonderful to chat with you, Bob. And next week we have a guest. Is that right? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there are definitely a couple of guests lining up, so I'm pretty sure about that. Yeah. So that will be cool. Excellent. Excellent. Thanks, everybody, for tuning in. We appreciate it. Any feedback, welcome, and we'll be back next week. Yeah, that works. We'll see you next week. Adios. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte Friends. 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 pybit es community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.