When we first published blog posts, I think a lot of people who have wanted to do a tech blog or just share their code on GitHub and contribute to open source. As soon as you're putting some sort of technical content out there, there is that fear factor of judgment, and you feel like people are going to have a go at you. They're going to leave comments and say, oh, the codes. Rubbish. That sort of stuff. We had to push through that and just say, you know, screw it. We're just going to put stuff out there and have a bit of fun while we do it. And that became the new normal. Hello and welcome to the Py Bytes 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. Welcome to another Pie Bytes podcast episode. I am Julian and. Oh, my gosh. Who's the special guest today? I think it's been very special guest. Here's Bob Valdevals. It's been a while. It's been way too long, man. Maybe do three episodes solo with guests. I think we've done three with guests. I missed you, Matt. Me too. It ain't the same. We love our guests, of course, and our friends, but, yeah, nothing quite beats us rambling on for 3 hours or 15 minutes, whatever it might be. So, how are you doing, Bob? Great. A lot of stuff going on. The fact that we separated recording was because we were very busy with a lot of good stuff. So. Yeah, yeah. Glad we came back to record this one together in a. What is it? 15 minutes time window. We've got to stick to 15 minutes, in fact, residential schedule. Yeah. When we edit this, make sure you cut out just so it sticks to 15 minutes. So people know that we are Parkinson's law. Now we have to do it. Forced Parkinson's. All right, so let's. Let's jump in. The topic this week is something that you may have heard Bob and I mention on previous episodes or in some of our training videos, but it's the. The, quote, new levels, new devils. Right? It's a. I wouldn't even call it a quote, a rule, a conundrum of whatever you want to call it. So, Bob, do you want to tell us a bit about that, what you think it's all about? I think it means that. That every time you go up, inevitably you're going to hit new problems, more challenging problems, and it takes a mindset. So in this episode, we want to talk about some specific examples we experienced and how we tackled it. Yeah. And the first thing I'll say about that is the reason it's worth acknowledging that this exists. New levels, new Devils is a way to frame your situation when you achieve something new. The reason it exists is because it's very easy to get demotivated when you reach new plateaus, when you reach a new goal, when you start a new job, whatever it is. Right. It is very easy to feel overwhelmed. But remembering that by hitting this new level, you're going to have new challenges, really frames the situation for you and can help you. I could essentially deal with it, help you find that motivation to push through it. So with that in mind, Bob, what? Do you have an example for everyone? Yeah, I think taking on a coding role, it's a massive change and you can feel totally overwhelmed, as you said, and a lot of imposter syndrome, but you have to take into account that you're joining a new team. There's people there have been doing that for quite a while. And you're coming in new and you have a lot to learn, even if you already know how to code, because that's kind of the least of your concerns, because the new things you have to learn are all contextual, contextual to the place you're going to work. So, yeah, when we switched to coding roles, that was definitely a sentiment we had, right? Yeah, definitely. When I moved from, and the thing that was really difficult for me was I went from just doing this on the site, coding as a side gig to the day job, just doing ad hoc scripts here and there, to suddenly going dedicated. Well, then it's what you're getting paid to do. It's not just a little extra bonus for you to help out the team, this is what you're getting paid to do. And suddenly there's that pressure of performance, of being able to actually solve the coding problems. Because prior to that, when you're just doing it for fun on the side of the day job, if you don't get it done, no one can judge you or give you crap because you've technically not getting paid for it. And, you know, at the end of the day, it's not your day job, but the second it is, there's a lot more pressure. There's a lot more. You put that pressure on yourself to deliver results and there's so much more to it. So, yeah, for me that was one of my major new levels situations. Can you remember how you dealt with that in a moment? Honestly, just diving straight into it. I just did everything I could. So one of the things I also did was to step back a little bit from the non coding related stuff I was doing. I set that expectation with the team of going, look, I'm just diving in. I need a few weeks to get up to speed with the internal processes on all of this. I know where my gaps are. Just give me some time. And at the end of the day, as we like to waffle on about a lot of it, was building my first project, things internally that really helped me get over that imposter syndrome and that fear of that I couldn't do it. Yeah, yeah, I think you need. That's a good point. You need that first win, that wind in yourselves, right? Then the rest becomes easier. Well, what about you? Because your situation, I imagines when you took over that coding roll oracle, right? Yeah, that was an important one and a scary one because I had been coding for years, but it was all being a one man shop. So, you know, you're kind of setting your own rules and there were not many policies as long as the code worked and stuff. But then of course, you all of a sudden you're part of a bigger team and yeah, there are, there's a lot of guidelines and practices and just more professionalism and that kind of. There's a lot to take in there. But I do remember. Sorry, what did you do? Yeah, I do remember, I should say just you have to pull through that, take it hat on, basically drop that fear a little bit. Because, yeah, in that sense there's not really failure. If you take on that role, if you put in your best, you know that you have done everything you could. But I do remember that one of my first assignments was to work on a page and that was terribly slow and to improve the performance and it was very difficult because I had to for that. I needed to know the whole stack. So, I mean, even setting up the whole thing took days, if not weeks, was very complicated. I had pulled it off and yeah, it was with a team in us, so it was working late every night, but I really pushed through it and the code reviewing as well, learned a lot and I managed to make the page faster by implementing some caching strategy. And, yeah, that got some kudos. And from there on, that boosted my confidence. So I think that's why I said, like, have that initial win is important. That's cool, man. That's a really great story. So, yeah, I guess the call here is, if you are in one of these situations, find a way to really throw yourself in the deep end. I like that idea, that concept, and then realize that that's completely normal, because, as we always say, growth happens outside of your comfort zone. So it's a good sign if you're uncomfortable. If you always would be in your comfort zone, you would not be growing and. And you wouldn't be at the new level. Right. So that's, I think if you are in the situation of new levels, new devils, right. And you are, you can acknowledge that you're in that situation. You should be proud of yourself. I'd say. I'd say that's where I would jump in and go, you know what? I'm in this tough situation because someone's seen my value. I've proven my value to the company, to the team, to whoever it might be, and. And. Or even to yourself. Right. So by being able to say that, there's a little pick me up for yourself to say, yeah, well, I worked my butt off. I'm here, so may as well jump in and do it. There's no better feeling than reaching the top of the mountain and then look downwards where you were before and realizing that a lot of it is actually easy because there's no. No magic. It's just that you need an amount. A certain amount of exposure and time and, well, speaking of mountains, it's a nice segue into the, uh, the next real world example. I love it. Thanks, man. Set me up. Uh, working out. I know. We like to talk exercise here as well. I know, I know. It's a coding. To the Piebaites fitness podcast mindset. Coding. Whatever. Next we'll talk about, I don't know, cars and stuff. Who knows? But. So when it comes to the working out, this a great example of new levels, new devils. You know, as you. You've been putting on extra weights, right? A little bit, yeah. Trying. I'm a hard gainer, so, yeah, I mean, the reality is, right, you throw the extra, um, weight on the end of your. Your bar, and then suddenly it's. It's a lot harder. It's not as easy as it was yesterday. I know this is completely obvious, but it's a true example of the. The situation by being able to lift the heavier stuff. That's the new level. But the devil is in the pain. Yeah. Yeah. The pain and the discipline to go every morning and. Yeah. To max out on your sets, basically, because, yeah, the growth outside of your comfort zone is very true for physical exercise as well. And, well, we're not going to go into physiology, but the body basically wants to be comfortable and you're telling it like, well, not, I need something else from you. Right. But, yeah, if you set those goals, there's a new level and there's a new devil and you need to change an approach and. But we love this stuff. And then the reason we bring it up here is because it requires a lot of mindset. Right? Yeah, that's it. I mean, there's no better example of this one where mindset is so key. So if, let's say we did, we go back to the coding job, right? I mean, the mindset to push through is, I dare say, is a bit easier to have because it's not physical pain. It's, um, yes, there might be some mental stress in there, but you have to show up to your day job to earn your, your salary. Right. But when we're talking about the gym here and working out, you don't have to pick up the bar if you don't really want to. And your brain might be saying, you know what? Just give it a rest. Saying, today, buddy, I'm. There's no need to inner voice, stay in bed, man. So the devil on your shoulder. Right. But the. It takes a lot more effort to then not only get up and go to that gym, but on one of those mornings where you saw you're tired, whatever, to then push through and pull up the bar, man, and do your own pull ups. Push ups, whatever. I think it's. It's a really good point. Yeah. And then a bit of a side note. Right. But I think you also have to be nice for yourself. Like, today I woke up super early, so I didn't get my full sleep, but. So I think I send you a message, like saying, I'm going to the gym. Accountability check in. We're going to take it easy. Right. And. But I still went right and turned out I got 90% in. So, yeah, I think you just have to adjust to the situation as your accountability partner. I'm saying that's not good enough, buddy. Sorry. I'll send you the metrics later and we can talk about that. Yeah, we'll take that up offline. So the last thing then is. And the perfect example for us is PI bytes. So what's the new level? New devil? Yeah. The last thing or example is the getting out there. I think we wrote that in an email last week that every developer should start to build his or her body of content inevitably these days. And getting out there for us meant going from a blog to doing 100 days of code and with visible accountability on Twitter to land a podcast interview to produce 100 days course and build a platform to become coaches. Right. And every step there were new problems, new things we had to learn, become uncomfortable. But there was that progression, right? And yeah, I think that that fits this topic pretty well. That every new level we had new devils to fight. Yeah. And they weren't easy like a lot of this was. Again, there was a lot of mindset there, but also fear, embarrassment as well, was a strong one for me because we were putting, when we first published blog posts, I think a lot of people who have wanted to do a tech blog or just share their code on GitHub and contribute to open source, as soon as you're putting some sort of technical content out there, there is that fear factor of judgment and you feel like people are going to have a go at you. They're going to leave comments and say, oh, the codes, rubbish, you know, that sort of stuff. And we had to push through that and just say, you know, screw it, we're just going to put stuff out there and have a bit of fun while we do it. And that became the new normal for us. And then as we moved into making the course, well, hang on now, this is a course that people are paying for. This is our voices being recorded for any number of people to hear and hearing our own voices on the, the first podcast we were on, plus in the courses, like, there's that, oh my God, I sound ridiculous. Is that really what I sound like? You know, and then to video. So it just keeps going up and up and. Yeah, it's definitely taken a lot of mindset to push through, but, you know, the point of this story is that anyone can do it and we all go through it. We all hit these new plateaus in our lives. It could be to do with our kids and their development, could be them starting high school versus primary school, new level. So there's going to be issues with friends and starting at a new school and all that stuff. So no matter where you look, this sort of a situation is going to be there and it's important that we acknowledge that and that we can see it happening because then we can deal with it. Yeah. Do you remember your first video message to a customer or community member? Carried advice? Yeah, those, those bonjour selfie videos. Oh, man, it was insane. I felt like I was recording, I took a bit of nerve at the start, and now it's like you just grab the phone and just do it. You take it for granted. But it was not always like that. It wasn't always that easy. You're right, exactly. So, yeah, I think the main takeaway is like every time. So first of all, look for new levels. Otherwise you won't grow. And then take it head on, knowing that that's just a temporary thing and that if you put the effort in, you will grow. You look back like, oh, this is actually easy now or relatively easy. Yep. And then look for new levels, of course. Yeah, exactly. I think that one's a key part as well, looking for new levels. Because if you find that you're not being challenged, then you need a new level. Nope. So talking about new levels, if you feel stuck in a job you don't like or you want to grow as a developer, think I'm just scripting. I'm not a developer. Then come talk to us. We want to know. Oh, yeah. Listen to the strength in that comment. I love it. Yes, please. If you are stuck, if you are stagnating, that's another really big piece of this stuff. If you are noticing that you're stagnating, there's no challenge. You're looking to get out to try something new in the field of, you know, coding and development. This is where we, we love to have conversations with people. So please, you know, make sure you book a call. The link is below. Should be below. And, yeah, we'd love to have a chat. Yep. Let me dive deep and see how we can best help you. That's what we're passionate about. Nice. All right. Well, Bob, it was awesome, as always, to finally get back here and chat with you. I'm looking forward to it. Had a blast. You're forgetting the last question. What's the last question? You're reading. What am I asking? Okay, what am I consuming? What am I reading? I don't have it with me, but I picked up a book yesterday. I forgot. Funnily enough, the book is on memory and it's a memory workbook. I've got to find the name and put in the notes. So I'll get that out there for you. But it's really cool. Workshop in a, in a book. And it works you through finding out where your current memory is at. I don't know how to phrase this. I've literally like three pages in, but essentially it gives you a level of where you're at and then gives you tips and walks. You through actionable techniques to improve your memory, which I thought was really cool. So awesome. Nice, nice. What about you? I'm still reading Jake van DER plass data Science Handbook to refresh my pandas skills and learn a bit more about machine learning and stuff, which I quit nicely used last week for data analysis on our byte data. So that was fun. You're going to have to put a blog post up about that, I think. Yeah, I probably should. Okay. Deal with all that spare time that you have, you know, so. I think so, yeah. Thanks for sharing. Oh, and shout out to Marella, who actually recommended that to me. So. Oh, nice. Go Morella. Thanks, Marilla, really appreciate it. And yeah, look, the link will be in the show notes for everyone else and that's pretty much it. So thank you for listening as always, Bob, thank you for joining me. I've really enjoyed chatting with you as always. You too, bro. Thanks everybody for listening. And yeah, we catch you in the next episode next week. We'll be back next week. Take it easy. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte, 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.