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It all comes down to having a plan, because if you don't plan your week, somebody inevitably will. 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, you, your career, and learn the mindset for success. This is the podcast for you. Let's get started. Hey, dear listeners, welcome back to the Pyewites podcast. I'm here with julian. How are you doing, man? I'm good, man. What's happening? Yeah, good. It's a Monday, and we're starting fresh, having an exciting week. Some really cool things we're working on. Yeah, favorite day of the week. So, speaking of which, this is what the whole episode is about. Tonight, it's about a. Or today, depending on our time zone. It's about getting stuff done, and one of the things that we constantly get. So you have to correct me if I'm wrong, Bob. I'm pretty sure it's both of us, but people always come up to us, and they say things like, how do you guys have 25 hours in your day? How do you get so much stuff done? You do this, this, this. You're constantly getting stuff out there. You're writing, you're coding, you're helping people out. You're coaching, all of that stuff. How do you do it? That's what I'm getting a lot of, Bob. What about you? Yeah, is your day actually longer because you're down under? Right. So I'm sure the earth rotation is kind of weird. It slows down time. Like interstellar. Yeah. No, I do hear that question quite a lot, because, you know, we're pretty vocal about all the things we're doing, and we have many things on our plate. Yeah. Let's talk about it today, like how. What hacks or methods we use to be productive. Do you want to kick it off? Yeah. So. All right, so I'll start with this. You have all the things that you do, the coding, the business. You've got your family. You've got all this. Not even just the family time, but the things that you have to do for your family. You know, the standard chores around the house and whatever it might be. How do you plan out your week? How do you manage your time so that you can not fail or that you don't lack in any one of those areas. Yeah. It all comes down to having a plan, because if you don't plan your week, somebody inevitably will. So on Sunday, I make my plan and you have to kind of work backwards. So we have our goals and that keeps us focused. That really gets us down to the 80 20 or the Pareto principle. This is the stuff we need to work on. This is what we really not have to work on that much, like, not that urgently. So what I started doing this year is open a spreadsheet, make a matrix of the days horizontally and the hours vertically, and, well, we have quite some meetings, right, with the strategy sessions and the clients and the content. So I go to our calendar and I populate all the meetings that have to happen to kind of see where we are realistically. And then I'm working backwards. So I put in blocks of tasks I need to do my content to produce and, yeah, and then it's having the discipline to stick with that schedule. But really what I found is you really have to kind of set your work hours because if you work too late, family suffers and fatigue builds up over the weekend. Then on Thursday, Friday, you're not going to stick to the schedule. And then it's pretty detrimental. So to visualize that for people, I mean, this is a podcast, right? We can't see anything, so let's share our screen. No. So if I was to visualize this, I can picture a spreadsheet. And when you block out, if you have the hours of the day down the left, you would be blocking out cells for every half hour block and labeling those with the task that you're doing, right? Correct. And you say work backwards from the goal. So that would, if we go back to goal setting here, you're not just filling your calendar or your task list. I should say, whatever this you want to call this, you're not filling this plan with arbitrary items like, you know, oh, I feel like coding this app today. So I'm just going to write this or I'm just going to go read this random book. You're actually working backwards from the goals that you set and that we set in the first week of January. Is that what you're doing? Correct. Yeah. Because if we say, feel like, then I will be reading books all day. Right. But yeah, like working on a course, then it's very specifically, like by this date, we want to finish the course, what needs to happen, and then you chunk it down in specific tasks and you set those out over the weeks. Well, tips is a good, we spoke about tips, but it's still a good example. Like, we have release four coming up, should be out 1 February. I was short 25 tips. Last week I did ten, this week I'm doing ten, and next week I have to do five. So ten tips. The difficult part, like one tip can take 20 minutes, 30, 40 up till an hour if there's research involved. So you have to kind of estimate and be a bit, little bit flexible. But, you know, this week goes ten tips. So I could make maybe that's 5 hours, make an hour a day or maybe two blocks of two and a half hours or three blocks of one and a half, something like that. Okay, now that makes sense. So, yeah, I like that method because it keeps you honest. And I think one of the biggest productivity hits for people, the hardest things when you get to your day is if you don't have a plan, you're really tempted to just do the first thing that comes to mind when you get to that hour point. So let's say you don't have a plan for what happens between ten and eleven. You know, we're all working from home. We'll likely head down to the kitchen and grab a snack. But if you have a plan in front of you, you're going to sit on your butt and you're going to go do whatever it is you said you're going to get done between ten and eleven. So I really like that. Cool. So what I guess, what would you do if you had something come onto your plate that's not in the plan? How would you manage that? Like, if it's urgent, has to be done now, right? That happens and then I'm just shifting blocks around. So it's not that static as I might make it sound like. And there's definitely some flexibility. It's like a tool, right? It's like if you do a diet tracking tool, the goal is to kind of see what you're eating and cut calories. But obviously when there's a pizza, is your pizza, you know, like they're there. It's a tool. So you're striving for 80% completion rate, not 100. That's impossible because if you're pretty ambitious with the tool, then that's not going to happen. So definitely things come up and you shift things around, but overall you're still making a big win. Cool. Also, I want to add, like previously I would be working with task list and then if I just go through the task sequentially, I might have 50% completion rate on the task. But it actually took me like till the end of the day. So I think by blocking the time, there's also a law called Parkinson's law that kicks in and. Which makes you kind of speed up. Like, I need to finish this in the. A lot of time. And then that automatically drops perfectionism a little bit. So I think it's good to set a start and an end date for tasks. Yeah, we use that lore a lot, maybe more often than we'd like. Sometimes. I think you read it in the four hour work. We read Purito and Parkinson's law. Yeah. I've sticked with it since. I love it. So let me ask you the same question then. Like, how. How do you manage to be productive and get stuff done? I don't. No, I'm kidding. So, with, with me, especially now, it's really tough. Obviously, with the newborn baby and two other kids and school holidays, it's. It is difficult. Right. But at the end of the day, taking the emotion out of that, those are just excuses for not getting stuff done. You really have to. For me, there's a lot of mindset that comes into it of being able to say, I need to make this a priority. So I'm not going to hide anything. But today, as an example, I had to make the choice not to do my workout. In fact,

it's almost 10: 8:54

00 p.m. Here in Sydney. I'll probably go do some stretching or something after this just to get something done, you know, so I get some movement in. But the thing is, for me, first and foremost, it's that mindset of saying, what is the priority? So I do the same thing as you. I plan out my week. I don't do it as strictly as you, and that's purely because of the baby. And, you know, the day job and everything else that I'm doing, I do find it much more difficult to plan it out to the t. But what I do do is I have a physical book, so I I have a notebook. I'd hold it up, but there's no point. So I have a notebook that I'm using. It's just like a diary desk, diary type thing, day to a page. And it's got the hours of the day on every line, every half hour block. So I plan out at the start of the week. I decide what are the priorities for the week. And I generally do that in unison with you. And so I know what we have to work on this week. And then I know my personal things I have to do this week as well. And when I factor in my work meetings, I fill all those in in this book, similar to the way you do on your calendar. But then I fill in all those other, I guess, tasks. I'll call them tasks, not activities or topics. Right. So I actually have to put in the concrete task, and that's just because I've got quite a lot on my plate with the family. Right. But what that means is I have to be very strict with my time because I'm sacrificing a lot of personal time. So things like video games, tv shows, I don't fit that in, I don't put it in on that calendar. And what generally happens with me is from the moment the baby goes to bed, whatever time that happens to be, I can't guarantee it, as anyone

with kids will know. Let's just call it 08: 10:52

00 p.m. From that moment till almost bedtime, it's just pie bytes in my calendar, in this notebook, what I do in that pie bytes time, that's something that I work with you to figure out what needs to be done, and it might be what we've decided we're going to work on every day of the week. So I'm a bit of a hybrid. I can't guarantee, but I can sort of guesstimate what's going to happen every single day. And that's, again, just the fluid nature of having a baby. So before the baby was born, it was much more rigid, like yours. Where I had every line was something, but these days it's a little more casual. But, yeah, I definitely. It's kind of. Everybody has a plan till they're hit in the face, right? Yeah, I'm pretty sure we've had a couple of days since the baby was born where I've just said, no pie bites tonight, man. Sorry. Yeah, just 4 hours. Not going to happen. Exactly. I've only slept 4 hours tonight. I'm a walking zombie. That was last Friday, I think. But, you know, one thing I do want to throw in there is it takes a lot of mindset, you know, because when. When the baby's got you that wrecked and you're that tired, you know, anyone out there again who's had kids, you. Just the second that baby goes to bed, you don't even want to do the dishes. You just want to collapse on the couch, watch tv, or go to bed yourself. So you really have to focus. For me, a lot of it is less the planning and more the focus on what is the outcome that I'm aiming to achieve. You know, if I go down this path and watch and watch tv, what am I getting from that? If I come upstairs to the office and get on a call with you. What is the outcome of that? And every time, you know, I make that choice to come up here and work because it's worth it in the long run and not sacrificing family time for that, not sacrificing time with the kids again, that's all scheduled in for the weekend. So yeah, that's pretty much how I do it. Yeah, I like that. Like it almost is like there is a certain time you can do certain things. Like for you the pie bites is in the evening and if you skip that window you might, you know, especially with the time zones, we just have to miss progressing together on something. For me, like the gym is like a no negotiable in the morning because I know if I don't go at eight before I take the kids to school then it's not going to happen. Like the whole day I'm procrastinating, feeling bad about it. For me,

the 08: 13:28

00 a.m. Is the gym window. The pie bytes windows with our time zones, the movies for example, we ditch them pretty much during the week. But you know that in the weekend you have time for that. So it's still there, but it's just parked so I think that works really well. The restrictions and rewards, I guess. Yeah, that's, that's a good point. Rewarding yourself with something to at the end of the week. I think you just mentioned that to me over this weekend, how important that is. And it means it's guilt free as well. You know, that you busted your butt to get there. So that's why, you know, when I'm all in with the family, I hate to say it, you know, I ignored you all Saturday. Felt so good. Yeah. Thanks. So it was much. It's good though. It's, it's a great way to do it. And you come back on, on your Monday or whatever your work day, start day is, you come back to see you fresh. Yeah, yeah, I know. Can't wait to see you by Friday. I don't want to see you anymore. So there's that. The other thing I want to throw in there as well. You mentioned the flexibility, right? It's a tool to be used, not a tool to own you. It's something to be used for your success. And I think we both do this, if something doesn't go to plan and you miss out on that time block or you don't quite get it done, that's it. It just didn't happen. Move on, go focus on the next day, reshuffle things around, you know, maybe give yourself an extra half hour the next day, whatever you need, but use it as a tool and don't let it rule you, just let it guide you. And if it doesn't work, edit it. Change it. Yep. Because you're reminded me over deadline we missed two years ago, and you forget about that. It doesn't really matter. So the deadlines are arbitrary. It's good to have them right to push you forward, but things come up and that's fine. 80%. Did we complete? Did we meet that deadline eventually? We did. We're not still outstanding on something two years later. Okay, just check it. Cool. Awesome. Well, that was awesome. Thanks heaps for the tips. I think we'll call it there. And I hope anyone listening to this, you know you're inspired by this, to just get a bit more focus on your day, get a bit, take a bit more control of your time and use it wisely. Use it wisely. Great power comes great responsibility. Get in there and get some stuff done. Yep. And if you want to chat more about this, I think there's a productivity channel on our slack. And if not, I will create it. Things are common thing people worry about. So I'm happy to chat a bit more. Dare. Yeah. And if you found this interesting, just send us an email, send us a message, let us know we love talking about this stuff as much as we love coding and everything else that we do. All right, cool. Well, have a great week. Be productive. Yeah, you be productive. I'm going to bed. Cheers. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to bye bytes 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 Pibit es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.