You have to adopt one of those growth mindsets where instead of taking it to heart and beating yourself up over it, realize that every mistake, every failure, every difficult situation has some sort of a learning experience in it. 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 Pybuys podcast. Here's Bob Eldavos. I'm here with Julian Sequeira. How's it going, everyone? Hey, and you, Bob, how are you? Yeah, always the audience first. Love that. I forgot about you. No, I'm great. But yeah, on the occasion. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. And today we going to talk confidence. Hang on, hang on. Before we jump into confidence, we're going to do wins. You forget. Has it been that long since. No, no, no. I'm going to introduce the episode, and then we're going to go into wins. Oh, okay. Yeah. All right, so we got a structure this week, everyone. A very strict structure, and we have to stick with it. We're, like, super prepared. No, we have been lately talking with a lot of people that come to us for help. They want to improve as python developers become python developers. And we distilled some common struggles and feedback we're getting. And, yeah, it often comes down to the confidence. In this episode, we have nine tips lined up to work on that and to become more confident in your skillset or in your career. All that's needed to advance as a developer. But, yeah, before we go into that, let's do a quick round of wins. That's how I had it in mind. I'm sorry, man. Everyone, please take this as my public apology to Bob for not trusting him. Yes. There you go. Well, are we recording this? It's not video. What's your win? All right, my win. I'm actually really proud of this, actually. Our win. We got to share our win first. We just hit 50,000 lifetime combined downloads on this podcast. So congratulations, man. Yay. 50,000 times. Some sort of download animation hit somewhere. That's amazing. And it wasn't even because we wrote a script to spam the endpoint. It was just natural organic download. So I'm very, very grateful to everyone who's been listening. We didn't even know it was coming. We just got an email the other day saying, hey, you hit 50k off. Sweet. On a Friday afternoon going into the weekend. Yeah, we almost didn't launch it. Right. He said like, yeah, it's good enough, you know, confidence. And it almost went on the back burner as someday will kind of project about ten years. Screw it. And now it's part of the routine. It's part of the routine. A week without recording is weird. Really appreciate, especially in the mindset. I have to give that to you. No, thank you. I appreciate. That's a big shared win. Quick individual wins. Oh, yeah. Okay. So my individual win is for the PDM program that we're always talking about. Everyone. As you know, I'm actually working with someone now to bring in a new coach that will specifically be supporting our clients with the sort of recruiting cv, resume type requirements that people have if that's their goal. Right. So if someone's goal is to land a python developer job, I'm speaking with a contact to come in and do that work with us. And that way it's not just Bob and I doing it. We now have a professional from the industry coming in with industry experience other than our personal experiences. So I'm very excited for that. And we will have more detail in if she decides to accept and if we work it out, a nice little system here. So I'm very excited about that. It's my win. What about you? Yeah, no, I really love that because, you know, we really want to work on these things. It's a lot of work, though. I know we always want to stay technical in the domain, but. Yeah. Come to a point where we have to think getting the experts for that kind of stuff and us focusing more on the scaling. Yep. My win. Yeah. So in person meetups, networking. So last week I had two in person meetings stuff and it was just awesome. Right. Like sitting together. It's possible again after two, three years of pandemic and you just go deeper, you spend more time together. There's definitely also a face to face effect that helps with that. Yeah. So met a friend, met Antonio Millay, could see him in the last episode. We did a beach episode, which was. They gave you a lot of fomo. So jealous. So freaking jealous. Thank you. But yeah, I just noticed like meeting with people, you have deeper discussions and it usually happens face to face. So yeah, I highly recommend seeking that again. That's awesome. Yeah, I love it, man. That's where the greatest gains are made, greatest connections, even just progressing the friendship. That's why you and I were kind of on the rock sometimes because we don't get to meet face to face in person. But, you know, if we were, it'd be better. I mean, don't get me wrong. Right? Like long Zoom calls, it definitely works as well. But there's something to the face to face component. Just sitting down and having a. Being in the same place as having something to that. Yeah, there's the environment as well. Right. You're getting that fresh air and you're in a restaurant and that, that restaurant you guys were in, or the cafe looked incredible as well. I looked at the menu on Google maps and was like, I shouldn't have done that. Damn it. So anyway, very exciting. So you're right, I love that. Thanks for sharing. And lastly, you wouldn't typically go 2 hours on a Zoom call. Two, 3 hours. Right. So that only happens when you really are in a place. So. Exactly. You're kind of distraction free too, which is good. Awesome wins. Okay, let's dive into it. So nine tips to build up confidence as a developer. You want to go first, number one? Yeah, I'll go first. And again, for perspective, these are literally coming from the calls that we encourage people to get on to talk about their python journey with myself or Bob, depending on your time zone. And again, the, the underlying mammoth concern that people have is their confidence with their development. So this is why we've put this together. So the first thing is start with small, achievable projects. So it's always take the small bites out first and do things that are actually achievable. If the first thing you're trying to do is this gigantuan gigantic project, you're going to find that much harder to get anything done. It's going to be too much at once, too technical, way outside of way, way, way outside of your comfort zone, and you're more than likely going to fail. You're going to stop, you're going to find it too difficult, and then your confidence takes a hit. So start with something small and achievable. I'm not saying boring, right. You don't have to go and write a thermometer app for the 50th time, but do something that's achievable and that's going to be different for everyone. But. So, yeah, plan it within your technical range and then go with achievable and small. Okay, cool. So you have your small project. Number two, break down complex problems into smaller, manageable tasks. Because even though you now scale down your project and you build something smaller or simpler, relatively, then still you can hit a lot of complexity, especially if you go into python packaging and ecosystem. But get something to work first, right? Like pibyte search, the new open source tool we just launched, by the way. Check it out, Pip. Install pibytes search and you can search all our public content from the command line. Pretty useful. I could have started with TDD, I could have started with talk setup, and that all happened, but not till I had something working. So I started with the smallest, and it's exceptional project as well, in the sense that I did classes first, which I usually don't do. But get something working, make it a little better, and then worry about all these stuff about test coverage and setting up your talks. I mean, you should do it, but get something working first, right? So break down complex problems into smaller, manageable tasks, get it working first, then optimize, etcetera. Nice. Love it. Okay. And on that note, number three, practice regularly. So practice doesn't just mean doing exercises, right? It means coding regularly. Right? So just doing, as Bob saying, you're breaking down these larger projects into manageable, smaller pieces, that's practicing regularly. So if you're working on those every day of the week, and as we do in the PDM program, we say you should be coding Monday to Friday, take your weekends to relax. But that regular practice, you're building a habit and it's just going to help you solidify everything that you're learning. If you take breaks and you code once a week, good luck. You know, if you code once a month, don't even bother if you're doing it five days a week or you're doing it at least regularly enough that you're staying in that flow and you're excited and you're building, that's when you're going to actually see that progress. And it's same thing with any skill. Really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you look at chess grandmaster, right, they're constantly practicing and honing their skills. And it's no different from coding or the guitar. Yeah, the guitar back there. Actually, what I'll throw in there quickly. And this is a plug because it's us. We got to do this. If you are in between projects and you're looking at something to do, that's where something like our code challenges the Pibytes platform comes into play. Because we have those real world exercises that you can do that aren't just sort of pointless exercises that lead to nothing but things that actually teach you real world libraries that you'll be using and so on and so forth. So give that a crack. Cool. Number four, a bit of a mindset one. So thanks for giving me that one. Celebrate small victories, because this can be a really long journey. Even like, a small project can take months. And it can feel like when you're in the middle, that you're in sort of a desert. Right. And. And you're not hitting that end result. So it can be demotivating. But acknowledge or recognize the small victories in between. Like, today I built this class. Today I finished this issue on the repo. If you're working with issues, I had a test. I like small things, but really document those. Like, we have our success wall. We do our wins file every week, just overall, for personal stuff and business, and it's super motivating. Right. It keeps every week that lit like a fire under us. Right. And you really have to just celebrate victories, even if they're small. The motivation here is super. The constant motivation is really crucial because it will get tough, you will get stuck, you will hit imposter syndrome. There are technical issues, and you have to go through that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That also includes some of the smaller victories, such as actually completing your regular practice. So if you manage to keep it up three, four days in a row, you know, celebrate that win, that's something to celebrate, too. And to the. To your point, Bob, number five is learn from mistakes. So as things do go wrong and as you do, inevitably, I'll use the words in quotes here, fail. Uh, learn from that. Don't let that get you down. Change. You have to adopt one of those growth mindsets where instead of taking it to heart and beating yourself up over it, realize that every mistake, every, um, failure, every difficult situation has some sort of a learning experience in it. So, learn from the mistake. You know, even I find one thing that's helpful, uh, and this is because I've been journaling lately, is. Is just writing down what happened. And if we're talking about code, you know, it's. There's not that much to write, but it can at least help you get it out of your head onto paper so you can read where that mistake happened and how you can actually learn from that. What's the lesson there? So. And it's often those lessons when we make a mistake, that we learn from those the most, and they stick with us for the longest amount of time. Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. You learn more from your mistakes than from your successes. Hmm. Yeah. Cool. Six, contribute to open source. So we don't write code in a vacuum. It's actually a people thing with teams and contributing and working together with people. And open source introduces you to that whole workflow. Right? Like git, GitHub issues, pull request, working with others, understanding, communicating about requirements, get your code reviewed and all that stuff. Like code reviews only for the code reviews. It's already worth it. Right, because you learn so much from them, but yeah, but also just really getting a taste of how real world software works and all the implications. But just far beyond python, right. So the sooner you can start moving in that space, the more you're going to learn. Right. And that can be scary. So if you want kind of a nicer entry level thing, then we have an open source where we increasingly put more projects. So if you want to contribute to some pibytes code basis, then maybe that's the place for you to start. And we'll link that below. Yeah. And the reason we encourage you to do that is sometimes one of the biggest hurdles to contributing to open source is again, confidence and the fear that you're going to be crucified and essentially ridiculed by pushing code that may not be, say, up to standard or may not be what they expect. And then that feeling of getting rejected is a real pain. Right. And that's why we created this organization, because we wanted people to be able to do it in a safe learning space. So if your pull request to one of the projects doesn't meet again the standard or what was expected, then there'll be a learning process in there. Right. We don't just decline everything and reject it. We actually have a bit of a teaching moment in there, so it's pretty cool. Yeah. Okay, number seven, reflect on progress. This is kind of similar to number four, the celebrate small victories. But the big one here is more about comparing yourself to your yesterday self. So look back on where you came from, look back at how far you've come. If you've been coding, lets talk small scale. If youve been coding, say four days a week on the Thursday, look back at where you were on Monday. If youve been doing this for three months, look back at where you were three months ago and reflect on that progress, because that gives you a massive confidence boost. 110%. Youll feel a huge gust of wind in your sails as you realize, oh, wow. All these tiny little steps along the way have led to this moment where I realized, wow, ive actually learned an entire library or framework off the top of my head and I can do these things without needing to check the documentation now. Yeah. And its important to compare yourself to your yesterday self. Because on the flip side, if you start to compare it to others, and I will never code like this person or look at that person, how far. That's like the number one way to actually get your confidence down. Right? Because there will always be people. Faster, better. No, compare yourself to yesterday's self and then it will really work. But yeah, the comparison game is dangerous. It's dangerous. And we have a dedicated episode about that as well. So we'll link that as below as well. Yeah. Would you say it's insidious? Totally insidious. Yeah. Well, the event happened to me last year, right? I had this episode, so that happens to us all. And it's definitely not good for your competence. Yeah. So number eight, build a portfolio. I think we wrote an email about this last week, how crucial it is, because it's not only that you build it and they will come view your awesome thing. That's not going to happen. One thing is to work on your technical skills, the other is to portray it, to let others see what you're capable of. And that starts with a portfolio. So you have to put those projects on there, show them, talk about them, and that will just increase your chances, but also will boost your confidence. Because with every piece on that portfolio, you will convince yourself that you are more than capable of doing it. But that only comes with that tangible proof which a portfolio will give you. Love it. And that builds the confidence in things like interviews, throwing that out there. Um, awesome. Actually, before I move on to the 9th one, Bob, I just want to reflect on the fact that so much of this is mindset related. Uh, it's, it's one thing to say I do it. It's good to take away the mindset. Yeah, you go, you go. I mean, you can easily say, here's your soapbox. Yeah, let me just climb up on this soapbox. There we go. Now I'm a bit higher. The reality is, script, is that something you could say things like, okay, go and code this, do these exercises, build this project and so on. Right. But so much of this is what you tell yourself, the habits that you build, how you frame your mind around the situation at hand. And so I would be willing to fight anyone. Doesn't matter how cynical you are about these sorts of sunshine rainbows, woo woo topics. Doesn't matter if you're the most hardcore coder that doesn't believe a minute of this stuff, right? I will fight tooth and nail because it is so true that the most successful people in this space have a strong mindset. They know how to deal with difficult situations. They know how to, even if theyre feeling that stress and that frustration or that embarrassment or fear or whatever it is, they know how to handle themselves and they know how to pick themselves up and keep pushing and move on. And then the success comes. And thats such an important piece of this. So as I was just reading through the list, I was like, oh yeah, mindset trumps again. Excellent. Okay, so on that note, simply said, people come for the taking. A staple in the mindset. Yeah, that's right. I'm going to learn some python and then they have this whole inner awakening by the end of it. It's actually in a mindset. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So number nine. Number nine is a no brainer. And I think you all knew this was coming and you should, I would hope, by now, seek guidance and support. And I'm going to say that is coaching, which is what we do with the PDM program. But the reality is forgetting PDM for a second, you want to seek guidance and support because you learn most from the people around you. You learn from working with people, working on projects with them and from their expertise. The people around you have been through things that you haven't. And so being able to be coached and supported by them and guided based on the real experiences they've had over sometimes decades that you haven't had is huge. And it is worth every minute of time that you can get from them. So, yeah, I'll always say coaching is a, is a fantastic, and I use this term loosely, but shortcut to the success that you're after and the goals that you want to reach. So there you go. Happy with that? Yeah. Mic drop? Hopefully not. We're recording. No. So that's it. That's the tip. So I'll just list them out really quick before we go. Start with small achievable projects, break down complex problems, practice regularly, celebrate small victories, learn from your mistakes, contribute to open source, reflect on your progress, build a portfolio and seek guidance and support. Coaching join PDM. Sorry, I had to throw that in there. That's weird. Don't know where that came from. You can just go much faster. Yeah, yeah, sure. So there you go. All right, with that said and done, we got four minutes, but we'll cut it. We'll cut it from there. What's, what are you reading? Let's get into that quick. Still on Dostoevsky, but also picked up a dead simple python. Heard a recent podcast on talk Python and was kind of interesting. So, yeah, a lot of refresher, but well written. Getting a lot of ideas. So it's a pretty solid book. Nice. How many pages was the. How do you. How do you pronounce name? Dosto. Dostoyevsky brothers. Karma Mazov. Yeah. The dutch translation, at least is 940. Yeah. So there's. Yeah, of course. You're still reading that. I think most people be reading that for three years. How far are you into it? 600 or so. Oh, well, it's in Dutch. Right? So that's already an easy read. Yeah. Oh, my goodness, man. I don't know how you do it. It's a good story, word by word. You got me on the fiction. You got me on the fiction. So, yeah, it's still a big book. Yeah. I'll take credit. I'll take credit. Okay. What am I reading? I'm reading the psychology of money, recommended by this guy I know named Bob just a week ago. So thank you for that recommendation. I've got that on the Kindle and I've kicked it off this weekend, so I'm not that far into it. I mean, the kids didn't let me read that long, but so far so good. I'm enjoying it. Timeless lessons on wealth, greed and happiness. So I think it's kind of funny to link with all this. Right. Like, although money and stuff can be very tangible, there's a lot of mindset in that book, actually, so, yeah. So it's interesting. Nice. I would think about money. I can't wait to get through it. It's going to be a good read. Yeah. All right. Well, that's it. So you got anything else for our wonderful listeners? No, I think that's it. Hope these tips are helpful. And of course, as always, don't just consume it. Start implementing right now. Yeah. And of course, you know, we're here if you want to talk about it. That's what we do. Yeah. So, yeah, join our community. Right. Bybit es community. We're there. You can just hit us up as well, or just book a 15 minutes call and we're happy to talk with you and quickly do a bit of, you know, see where you at and give some additional advice. Yep. Love it. That's all in the show notes, by the way. Perfect. And, you know, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Don't forget about that. We're trying to grow it. Oh, yeah, that's growing. Yeah. So when people ask you, hey, what are you watching on Netflix? Send them this YouTube channel instead. If you hide it in a hyperlink of a Netflix show. Even better would be a big compliment, right? If people drop their Netflix. Yeah, please. That's what we want. All right, everyone, thanks for listening. And again, thank you all for the support over the past couple of years. 50,000 is huge for us. We're so grateful and excited and can't wait to do another at least ten episodes. So it's going to be more like 110,000. All right, thanks, Bob. We'll be back next week. Yeah, right. Cheers. Thanks for watching. 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 Pybytes community, that's pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.