Simen: 0:00

You need to take your own stuff a little bit with a grain of stuff to have a bit of fun with it. Because if you if you put a little bit of humor in it where people recognize I tried to let people see the stuff and what they were writing. I had one person tell me on LinkedIn that he had read my newsletter. He didn't think that he was near the agent, but he was gonna go to the doctor prank and go check it out because he felt so resonating that I was writing that it's like so many.

Julian: 0:28

Hello and welcome to the Pie Bites Podcast where we talk about Python, career, and mindset. We're your hosts, I'm Julian Seguira.

Advert: 0:36

And I am Bob Veldeboard. If you're looking to improve your Python, your career, and learn the mindset for success, statistics podcast for you. Let's get started.

Julian: 0:46

Welcome back to the Pie Bites Podcast. This is Julian. I'm here with another guest for the podcast. Today I'm joined by Simon Dalen. Did I say that right, Simon? You did. I did say right now. Excellent. I should have checked that before we hit record, but that's all right. That's all right. Um so everyone, Simon is very kindly joining us. He's a senior software developer and also the founder, editor, curator, everything behind the new newsletter from 2025, Almost Done, which is a newsletter for neurodivergent people, specifically developers, but obviously open to anyone. And it's just a really, really cool story that I wanted to highlight on our podcast and try and get people to come and subscribe to Simon's newsletter to Almost Done. But Simon, welcome to the Pie Bites podcast. So good to have you here today, tonight, whatever time zone it is. Um, why don't you introduce yourself for everyone? Yeah, yeah, no, thank you for having me.

Simen: 1:43

So yeah, uh, time zone wise, 10 in the morning, 10:30 at mine. I think you're PM time or different sides of the globes. But yeah, uh, Simon, uh been a software engineer for oh Jesus, 14 years. Anything from JavaScript to TypeScript to Python to pick it in name it, I have probably doubled into it. Uh, but yeah, no, I uh I started a newsletter. Oh, it's been about 25 weeks and a half, six months now. It's been growing and growing. About 500 people so far that like what I write. That's uh I think you're one of them as well. But you know, it's I am yeah, there we go. So it's it's been a fun ride so far. Uh I have had some cooler plans, I presume we can dive a little bit into them. But yeah, I think I hit maybe a little bit of a market with people that are like like I like to say my newsletter that are not on the side of the normal brain. It's a fun way to say, or a spicy brain. There's somebody that or my readers told me once that it's called we're supposed to say it's a spicy brain. I like that. That's pretty spicy brain, spicy brain. It's a nice way with it. Yeah, it is, but yeah, no, that's so that's that's kind of like been mean with it. It's um been doing uh, like I said, been doing a developer for ages, like two decades, and then I started off on my own and thoughts. I wanted to write about how it is to be neurodivergent, like how it is, especially in software development. I think there is a lot of people out there that are either developers and not developers, or might think they're neurodivergent or are neurodivergent, they have the whole umbrella in it. And when I dove into it, I was diagnosed when I was four, so I have had it for like 30 35 years plus turning 40 in January, so the long, long time of doing it. Um, and I when I was starting newsletter and I was writing it, I I started off with calling it like the ADHD type of style because that's that's what I know, how I thought. And I was checking it, and somebody on Twitter hit me up and said, like, oh yeah, you should have this ADHD. Um, I gotta stick it out. I remember it now. Uh, is it different terms of what it is? Like it's it's still ADHD, but it's still like uh um let's say a spice of autism in it and things like that. So it's it's many things into it. I found it's a whole umbrella of the whole neurodivergent problem. I think it was so fascinating to do. So that's why I changed it very much from saying the first things where I said ADHD to say neurodivergent because it's it's actually kind of covering a lot of people. So yeah.

Julian: 4:21

But it's it's been that's cool. No, I love it, man. It's it's it's really, really cool. And I am, as you said, I'm a subscriber and I read it every week. Uh, I did notice a couple of weeks were missing, but uh no, I'm joking.

Simen: 4:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, it was it was it was almost done, wasn't it? It's in the name.

Julian: 4:39

That's why I uploaded with it. That's where it started. Oh, that's why. Okay, so you picked the name so that if you ever missed an week, yeah. Um I'm almost done with it. When's it coming out? Almost done. Almost done. Okay, yeah, um, I love your I love your logo, by the way. So for everyone uh listening, you know, maybe we can have something show up on the screen for this for the YouTube watchers. But um, the logo is like a brain with all these post-notes on it and one that says to do on it. So where did that come from?

Simen: 5:07

Yeah, so so the whole thing was when I was starting with it, I mean a lot of a lot of the ideas came in my head with it. Now I'm not an artist, so you know, Derek Claude and GPT and Gordons of the AI started nice to draw things, but I it's there's fun things to kind of use AI to kind of have the drawings of it. But I kind of sat down and thought, what's the colours? I did, I actually used it slightly before I started with an experiment where they had to kind of go deep research into things that I was interested in, or what I thought I have problems with, or how I'm feeling, you know, how I can do things. So the logo actually came from the like literally the term of spicy brain. And you might, for those that have seen it, to touch upon the logo and the colors and whatnot, is you might have seen that the I have different mascots, and that was, like I said before, different types of neurodivergency. So some are can be autistic, some can be ADHD, some can be oh Jesus. I'm not gonna sit and name them on the podcast because there's so many of them. But but literally, I have I I created four personas or four brains. So you have uh buffer, which is the main brain that you will see on it, which is technically very neat. Uh I'll we'll toss up the link for those that are listening. Well, there's like a meet the team type of thing that I made into it, but um, buffer is very like me, very like chaotic, and you're thinking along and you deal with everything, and it's like very pulsing and things like that. You have um you have ping, and ping is uh in the sense the brain is what you would call, I think you would go under autistic. It's very like lists and things are very shaped in the way you want and it's structured, and everything is it's it's literally uh the opposite of how I would have been. Uh, you have um, oh Jesus, I have to think now with all the other ones. Uh you have uh you have zap, and zap is the epiphany of anything that is chaotic. Like, like if you can like have a brain that just like it goes 200,000 miles an hour and you think before you do, and you say before you you will resonate with the how you type of stuff, and you have echo, which is very calm and everything's very quiet, and it's supposed to be very the the opposite of what zap is. Uh, some of the neurodivergent that I was reading about has a mix of both. So for me, it's very much like it can be very chaos to kind of like organize things in your mind, and somebody else in neurodivergent tree is the complete opposite. You have to have like peace and quiet. I will put on music to calm my head while I do things. Other people will be like, I don't put on music because like that you have to have a complete silent room with anything that does it, like the tiniest sound of a pin will make you literally go, What happens? Yeah, and there is a trait where there's some people have a mix of them, and I was I was blown away and thought about it. How would you think if in your head half your head is thinking, Oh, I have to do this thing and this thing and this thing and this thing, and the other half is like, Yeah, yeah, but let's do it very calmly, very structured, very like, and then it's an internal battle of who's gonna be. So one side you're super efficient. Um, but yeah, that's what it started with. So I thought with the personas, I made the personas up. It's still me writing them, but it's me to try to explain how I feel or cover topics or things that happen to me in my real life, or anything really. Uh, the biggest one I had was I wrote about just um being human. That was the biggest one that I got a lot of feedback about, and it was just I was so overwhelmed uh with uh my little one, which is two, and and as much as as parents, we know there they can be a lot and everything else, but it was just so nice and so calming in my head. The time he just came and gave me a hug. It just it's it's 10 seconds of just complete silence, and regardless of how overstimulating everything it is, it just turns quiet, and it's such a nice feeling. So, yeah, it's it's different personas, and that's kind of like what I came with them. The colors themselves are also built upon uh a lot of neurodivergent things, so a lot of people read different colours and different things, just like it would say if you put red up, you think warning, danger. So it's not like a lot of those colours, and I also try to make the website and the things a little bit more playful. I yeah, I don't sit and like to read websites where very like, oh, this, this, this, this, this. I tried to think about how I would read it. I can't sit and read a thousand, fifteen hundred words in one go. I lose focus, I lose what the point was about it. So, purposely, the whole essay section that I write is between 500 to 700 words. So this is also a little bit of background research. I I will just verify I am no psychologist at all. This is all you came up with your own idea of it.

Julian: 10:12

No, I like it, and that's that's why I wanted to ask you the about the logo and the different personas and everything first, because this really is a labor of love from you. This is your experience, this is the stuff you're learning, you're figuring these things out as you go, figuring out what works. Um, I I that's actually one of the reasons why I love reading your newsletter. I actually started reading the one from today and was like, oh crap, I'm actually interviewing Simon today. I gotta, I gotta stop reading. Um, but the one from today, you know, you have a short, very short, brief summary of the topic you want to talk about, a dev topic, whatever it is, and then you push out to the website if you need to, right? If you want to read more. And I think that's such a wonderful way of doing it because yeah, uh the timing these days, you kind of just need to short, sweet, pick whatever you need, and then you're moving on to the next thing, right? But from your perspective and with what you're writing about, you're writing about your experiences. Um, your newsletters are so packed full of uh interesting uh goodness, uh tips, tricks, everything, um, specifically pointing at neurodiverse people, right? How do you first of all? I I guess my question just for me personally, aside from asking, like, what do you normally write about? I will I'm gonna ask you that in a second, but for me, how do you come up with these ideas? Because you're doing this every week, and these are such beautiful, beautifully written emails.

Simen: 11:42

I I will say that the the way I kind of write with them is I I think about normally for me, it it really depends when I write them. Sometimes like it's almost done, I will write them the day before because then I look back at what happened. Yeah, exactly. We'll write them on the Monday or release them. Well, it depends on it's the benefits. So for me, it would release Tuesday 7:30 in the morning. And I'll explain why in a second. But the way I started with it is I I start with uh with Chat Chick PT in the start to just go like make up my personal how I like to write stuff, right? Because for me, I'm not a writer, I had a software engineer, right? But what I don't like is to just have AI come up with a fiddle diddle that has nothing to do with anything because that just makes it fake and not what it is. So, what all I have it do is to I have it structured up in the way that I write every single newsletter with all the similar things, and I sit and go through and I toss it a couple of ideas, right? These are my thoughts of the last week. What happened? And I kind of take think of it like having a thousand thoughts in your head, and you've got to just feed it there. Here's a thousand thoughts. And by the way, this week I did these cool things. What do you think? Right, it's like your rubber duck, it's like what I would ask you like what have you done, right? And you would tell me, and I would take some of it. So, like last week we were talking about um ranks in um software engineering because there is uh I had some people that are um non-developers that came and asked me as well. They're like, Oh, yeah, you know, there's a lot of people going, like, oh, there's maiden, there's juniors, there's seniors, and there's principles and stuff, so there's a whole bunch of everything. And what triggered it actually, the last one was um a LinkedIn post that I read. I actually found really interesting. Um, but the whole point of building them was I wanted to have an easy summary, so you could just like this is the intro, right? And a lot of people, like myself, will open your phone in the morning and you go read it, right? So that's why I do 7:30 because and they're a divergent person. I'm gonna microfer ADHD here because it's gonna refer to me just for those that are listening and whatnot. Um, yeah, is I thought first the first time I released it, I did it on a Friday at like two. Bad idea because nobody reads their emails at 2 p.m. on a Friday. Don't go, it doesn't go in, right? And then I thought that's a bad idea. So I then released a second issue. That's when I kind of like started and go, okay, we're gonna do Tuesday, we're gonna do 7:30 a.m. UK time, so that'll be 8:30 Europe time, and they will be Jesus, middle of the night for you, right? Yeah, exactly. Most people will have their fire mostly on silent, right? So when you wake up and you're gonna go through your email, the email will be there, and then you will read it because you'll either be in the mood of like, oh my kids, I have to I have to do so many things, so you're not gonna read it, right? But you'll be maybe like me. You read it in the email, you hit the read online, right? So now you're gonna just open your browser and go like, okay, I'll look at it and put in the tab, read it afterwards, right? But it gives the people options. Some people love to see it and read it on their phone, so it's not too long, it's not too apart, and some people don't like to read on their phone and they just use the website and they use it. So I built the website purposely with a lot of accessibility in mind, so you could take off all the focus, you can narrow it down, you can kind of like less clutter and everything else because some people that actually matters. Um, but yeah, it's it was interesting to come up with the idea of writing about the titles because I thought about it afterwards. So, working as a senior, my career goal has been to go towards staff or or uh principal, so more like a IC um individual contributor technical side of things, and not a lot of people management. I am more writing code than I am sitting meetings and day-to-day business stuff, I guess. Yeah, um, but somebody wrote this little thing in it, it made smallest thought in my head. And they said, if you are a junior and you start off as a junior, right? Your thoughts will be you want to prove yourself, you're gonna learn, so you're gonna do make the most complicated thing on the planet, right? Because you're just gonna make it work, okay. And you pass down, you give it to a mid, and he's gonna look and go, like, oh, this is really simple, it's just an if-else, you know what I mean? Like, like you can do you could you can fancy it, you can do make it short terms, you can do it in this, you can do that. So now you kind of take the complexity of what you're learning, right? And you kind of make it a little bit better because you learned things as a junior, now you've done it for a while. You come to seniors, they'll be oh, we need scalability and we need to have like this super overcomplex, but like it's it's not even an if statement anymore, it's like seven files of an if statement. Whereof when you get to principal again, you sit and don't really care about all of those things. You go back to the part of do we actually need it? Like, did we actually need what we wrote, right? Yeah, doesn't give any benefits. Now you complete the whole circle because everybody sits and go like harder and harder and worse and worse and worse, and then you just go back to it and go like but it was just an if statement, neither would it work, didn't need anything else, right? And it's it's hard to think that people think ranks or seniority and everything else comes from this concept of how much you can code, right? Like with pipelines, you sit and learn Python, right? You will sit there and go, Um I know I have this function, it's gonna print stuff. What on earth is print? When will I ever use print, right? When I ever use print, and then you come down like three months later, you go, like you all you sit and write this print because you're testing things, right? Right? So it's it's quite fun to look at them, but yeah, that's kind of like what it started with. It's it's different ideas. I spawn it in, I have my different personas, and then I go through every single one with them and how I like to write them in my own tone. I like to have different sets of tones depending on the personas of what I write. So if I write it about with echo, it's more of a calm, emotional. You feel a bit more connection about it. If I write it with um ping, it's very structured. If I write it with buffer or zap, it's very all over the place. And buffer, which is kind of me, is also a little bit more self-roasting. I like I like to be a little bit like you take you need to take your own self a little bit with a grain of salt and have a bit of fun with it. Because if you put a little bit of humor in it where people recognize, I tried to let people see themselves and what they were writing. I had one person tell me on LinkedIn that he had read my newsletter, he didn't think that he was neurodivergent, but he was gonna go to a doctor apparently and go check it out because he felt so resonated with the that I was writing that he's like so mean. That's cool. Like that, yeah. So yeah, I never heard about that.

Julian: 18:35

That's that's what I like about it though. I I love that you have those personas because it allows you to almost structure your own thoughts in that way. Go, you know what? This article, this is gonna this this week, it's gonna be nice and calm. I have a calm topic. This whole it's gonna resonate with this, you know, character, right? Um, but then next week you might be having a more of a chaotic mood with I've got all this to talk about. Oh, this is all happening, things are moving quickly, uh, lots of information pouring in. And then so you just craft it that way. So I that's one of the things I really love about it. And you get a different kind of feel every week, you know. Um that's amazing.

Simen: 19:13

I think, yeah, I think I think that when you say that one of those that really struck with people was I wrote this, it was back in June. My my aunt passed away, so I was back in London at her. You might have read it, yeah. I read that. I read it and I called it deadline, and I thought you said lifeline, right? So I like to have a little bit more points than how it is and human with it, but uh but I literally wrote it for her in the way I like to write it. Uh, but it got so much feedback. But you can also think about once you now know that you're different personas, you could have thought to read that is very like in a sense, it's very echo, it's very emotional, it's very quiet, it's very thoughtful, very human. Think if I'd taken the exact same say script, call it a script, right? Like the exact same content, but written it as a chaotic slap. You wouldn't have gotten the same, the same touch on it, right? You would have just it would have been messy and filthy and everything else. But it's really the way how my thought is and how I wanted. I wrote it for her because I thought the reason I thought about it is I have 500 people that and this sounds really cliche, but I did it for this. So she's very close to me when she when she passed away. And I thought, okay, what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna write that newsletter because uh she I I was at her, she she was passing away. There was no, so I was sitting at her bed, making everything as best we could. And at last night, I pulled up my laptop and I thought, because it was a Monday, and I thought I have to write this. And I thought, okay, this time I'm not gonna sit and just write about how developer worl is because my thoughts are way off being a developer. Now it's human. And I thought, you know what? If I write this in her honor, in her things, a lot of people think, Oh, yeah, people have a gravestone, people have some photos. I have her name and her memory in about 500 people's inboxes. That is spreading it out for everything, right? And it's on the online and it will never go away, and it's a very good memory. So for me, it it matters quite that was quite you know, helpful and stuff. And it and it helps let you sit and talk about your feelings when you're sitting there as well.

Advert: 21:25

Just a quick break from the episode. Stuck at the beginner or intermediate level and wondering what it actually takes to become a senior developer. It's not just more years of experience, it's owning projects end-to-end, making solid design decisions, writing clean tested code, and communicating like a pro. That's exactly what we help people with inside the Pybytes developer mindset program. You build real-world apps, get weekly code reviews, and sharpen your developer mindset that will lead to promotions. If you're serious about stepping up to a senior dev, check out the link in the description and apply right there. Now back to the episode.

Julian: 22:05

That's the beauty of having a newsletter and being able to write one. Um, and uh not from a I don't want to say this from a place of privilege because we both have newsletters that we write, but it there's a there's a certain, you know, not power to it, but you get to share your inner thoughts and deepest emotions and um random thoughts with so many people, and you never know what kind of impact that's gonna have, right? Um because uh I you know people who read that email that you're talking about about your aunt might have picked up the phone and called someone quickly just to say hello.

Simen: 22:38

I know all three because they I get I get it actually, yeah, I get a lot of emails and messages, at least on either LinkedIn or Instagram, because I made up an Instagram I could not that I post a lot on it, but you know, I was there. I have some feedback from it. I try to listen to people because some people tell me, oh, they're not neurodivergent, and they or they're not technical, they don't understand it. There is people that are non-neurodivergent that reads it. Uh, even even even my wife reads it. She's not neurodivergent, but for her, it's nice to read when it's not technical because she kind of understands how my thoughts are, how my day is, how my week is, how how how I feel, and how I with I can struggle to tell her how it is. So for her, it's even she she reads it, she thinks it's fun to read, even though it's some of them are like developer technical, she'll go like way overhead and doesn't get it. But she has told me that she she sees how I think and why I think the way I do, and she kind of gets the context of why this happens, even though it's technical, I strive try to keep it for non-technical people as well. So you should be able to understand a little bit more about how maybe how it is to be neurodivergent.

Julian: 23:54

Uh so yeah, that's that's cool. No, and uh man, I this this conversation is not linear, well welcome to my head and world. And I I think that's perfect for for what we're talking about. So, because if you were to try and summarize for someone listening to this, because I've got mates who listen to to this podcast and and uh some of which I might be chatting with in 20 minutes, right after we're done. Um and if they were to to ask the question, okay, what do you write about? Now we've we've touched on all sorts of different things here: stories, your life, what's happening, but what is someone who reads this going to get out of it at its core? They're gonna get tips on development, on productivity. What would you say is the elevator pitch core?

Simen: 24:44

Yeah, that's that's the fun chaotic part with it. It's a mix of all yeah, exactly, right? That's the mix of it. Some of them are very like if you if you if you are neurodivergent, or if you think you might have it, or if you just want to see how it is to have a different, a little bit more spicy brain, thinking differently, like you were just saying with linear, right? A non-neurodivergent person will think very linear in the way they're reading and thinking and doing. Mine doesn't work like that at all, right? And I can't do anything with it, but I can make the best out of it. So, for instance, ADHD, uh, I will have hyperfocus. So if I have that, I can get tasks done just super thing, but time flies now. Um, I think that maybe the way that you can summarize it is a way to understand a different brain and a different how a different human might think of things and approach things. If you are a developer, you will get maybe slightly more out of it because I talk about maybe a little bit more JavaScript and TypeScript. I try to keep programming again, a little bit more neutral into it, uh, but that's because that's what I know the most, right? Yeah, um, I do send out a small little JavaScript TypeScript uh PDF to people when they first time sign ups if you want to have them. Um I I think it's more understanding how to be a developer that don't think just straight. You don't just think how how do I solve this problem? You have a thousand thoughts on how to solve the problems. Uh it's productivity, of course. Uh, there's different tools. Every single newsletter has like four things. So I have a little fun fact, I have a little affirmation because there's a lot of neurodivergent that have a bigger, big, big thing of rejection. You feel like everything is your fault, like everything is but like worst case scenario will happen regardless of what you think. Uh, and it can be and it can be triggered from anything of I don't know, somebody gives you a compliment, and you will your brain will take three seconds to kind of process that thought. Uh and when you do beyond those three seconds, you will think the worst thing of everything that can happen, and then you kind of process and go like, oh oh, it was actually a compliment, and then so it takes a bit of time. So your affirmations, the font text. I normally add in like a tool, so anything like uh last time because of how it was with the titles we did Excala, free tools, things to use, VS Code extensions, tips. Uh, so yeah, I think like I say to people, it's worth the read because uh you get an insight into other people's minds and how people think, maybe a mind at last. And if you don't like it, you can always unsubscribe, so you don't lose anything out of it.

Julian: 27:29

I mean, I I have to say, and I'm not just trying to do this to stroke your ego or anything. This is aside from my own, and I actually I don't even read my own newsletter because I write it, you know. But but this is the only newsletter I actively sit down and read. Uh, out of anything that I subscribe to, you know, you often scroll past things, uh, whatever. That's whatever. But this one I actively read because I love the snacks at the bottom that you write about, right? And though those are the four things for everyone listening. Um, and I always see at the very at the very bottom your unsubscribe link says you subscribe to almost done. It's weekly, it's weird, it's optional. Tap out anytime. We won't take it personally unless we're having a rough day. You know, and and I think there's a beautiful to me summary of what the experience is like here. It's light, but there is a serious tone to it at times. Um, it's chock full of you know information, tips, and things. So um, yeah, I just anyone who's watching and listening to this, give it a go. Use the link that we'll have below, wherever it's going to be. Um, and just subscribe, uh the go to the website, you know, look through the archive. Um, it's just a really uh cool newsletter. That's that's my summary of it. It's just a really cool newsletter. You've done a bang up job with it. Um if I was to to add to that, Simon, if if I was this is this is your kind of pitch, right? Um why should people join your newsletter? So, what would you say to someone if they were to say, why would I why would I join this?

Simen: 29:04

I I think like like I was saying earlier, I think I think the benefit of what it gives is a little bit of light humor, a little bit of self-rusting of myself, a little bit of tips, it's a mix of everything, right? But it's it's uh heartfelt and it's it's true. I I don't sit and go like, I don't know, some people if if it became bigger and people go, oh, we would like to give you a thousand to write about this thing. Yeah, we've all been there in biggest things. I will be like, it doesn't really interest me or it has anything to do with why why should I? Like, why it gives no benefit for other people to read it, right? And I don't sugarcoat things in it. I'm like, I write it with humor, I write it in a style that I feel is me. I I don't like to feel like a newsletter is either AI written in the sense that you don't make sense of it, or B, it's a newsletter that you, I don't know, you got from Bloomberg that just like, yeah, I don't know. Bunch of stuff that you read and go, oh yeah, that looks really great. Oh yeah, oh wow. I subscribe to this amazing newsletter. I scrolled past, I didn't actually read it. Right, I want you to be engaged, I want you to kind of feel how it is to maybe I would say how it feels to be slightly different, right? And and I think the biggest core of what that is is some people the feedback I have gotten is people that are neurodivergent feel so I'm saying hit in the way that they feel they resonate with it with the different characters, different personas. And it might resonate with you. You don't know. You will find you can subscribe, you can find out. You gotta subscribe to find out, yeah. Yeah, but yeah, it's uh it's on the issues. Um the personal thing I did it is since I talked about the website. There is uh we'll we'll drop the link below, but it's yeah, you have the issues website, you will get you will be able to lead read everything up until the last week. So what I have done on purpose because I'm a developer and like it is you will get the you will get the email with the latest one, right? But you can't read it unless you click on the link. So you can only read it through your email and all that link in that, and you can't find it unless you know the link is. Does that make sense? So you can't read the latest one until the next one. Unless you subscribe, yeah. Yeah, so if you subscribe, you'll get the latest one. So next one will drop on Tuesday. So what you read this Tuesday, everybody can read this Tuesday.

Julian: 31:27

Next, yeah, got it. Got it. Yes, makes sense. I like that drip feeding, drip feeding. Very, very smart. Okay, so for me, now one of the questions I always insert in when we have guests on the show is like I always like to talk about mindset and because there's a lot of hurdles that we run through and that we have to overcome when we do things, right? So I'm I'm gonna say just here in quotes, all right? You're not just anything, but you were just a senior software developer, right? So to take the plunge into the incredible, insurmountable amount of work that it takes to build something like this. Like we've kind of sugarcoated this is all great, it's fun, you love writing it and stuff. But there are there is so much time and effort um, you know, to get this done. There would have been days where you were just not in a state to do anything, and days when you're like, I could do a million things, but I only have four hours to do it, you know. So putting aside for a moment the neuro neurodiverse challenges that you might have had from a mindset perspective of imposter syndrome, from things like that, where you know you might tell yourself you sent your first email or you didn't have your first subscriber for two weeks or something like that. What were some of those challenges that you had from that perspective and what did you do to overcome them or how did you overcome them?

Simen: 32:51

Yeah, so it was it was quite fun when I started out. So I gotta I kind of put my mind to it, okay. I my challenge lies in the nate, right? So with my ADHD, I we we had two weeks uh where real life hit past two weeks where I didn't write anything. Simple as it was real life, hit me onto it and whatnot. But other than that, I had written like 20 weeks, and you come to Monday, and it could be 8 p.m. or it can be 8 p.m., you know, any type of day, you know, everything happens, whatnot. And you go there and you go like, oh, I have to write this newsletter. Oh shit, I could have done that like like Friday. See what I mean? Like you get you get that thought, right? And then you're like, what do I write about? And then the the challenge I actually had with that was just tell myself, it's it's it's okay to just write and be yourself, right? Tell tell people how he was. Now, in the start, when I just started, people started to subscribe, and you get this massive cool feeling. I just like you know, the first like 50, the first it was like, I've rated to just be like, you know what? I'll I'll I'll get like five and some friends, and like one of them will be myself, you know what I mean? Like, I'll get five people subscribing, and that's about it. But at least I should just write about how I feel and what else. I'm not gonna care about it. And then I suddenly had like 10, 50, 100, and then about 120, and I think it was like issue after like 10 issues, something I had my first unsubsberg. My first, my first unsubscriber, and I was thinking in my head, I'm like, what did I write wrong? What did I do? Did they not like it like anything, right? I don't know who unsubscribed in that sense. I I only see from the service that I used to send them from loops, I just see an email, and I can't make out who that is because in that sense, it just says they unsubscribe, doesn't tell me a reason, doesn't tell me anything else, it just okay. And I thought, you know what? It's okay because they did read it because I found out afterwards that they must have signed up at least the week before, so they must have read one or two issues already, right? It could be that they didn't like it, it could be the time it was sent. There's a hundred thousand one in like, but I thought to myself, it's okay, because I have 99 modeled people that still like it, right? Which is which is fine, and you can't please everybody in the world, right? I mean, you can look at it, any world power leader in the party, like nobody's gonna like you at all times, right? That's why we have how the world works, right? It's always gonna be yin and yang, blue and red, whatever you want to put it. And and I thought, and I put that self into me because I get pretty hard like rejection syndrome when it happens, but I just said to myself, you know what? 99 others like it. Okay, cool. But they were part of the ride, that's really cool. I I got to say my piece and whatnot. And and if it's not for them, it's not for them. I would I could also flip it and say, like, how many, how many emails do I get every time where I go, like, oh please, just just unsubscribe. It's like marketing stuff. The first thing I do, I don't even read, I just scroll down unsubscribe, didn't even ask for it. You know what I mean? They're not gonna sit there and go, like, why does this person unsubscribe to us? Right? I'm not gonna it's cool, and that's why I kind of self-roast in the link at a bottom as well, because it's okay. Yeah, some people it's optional. If you like it, you like it. If you don't, that's fine too. I thank people for you know subscribing. I really appreciate it for everybody that's giving me feedback and whatnot. And for anybody new that might come in and join. Uh, my my email into it is if you ever want to give feedback for it, you just hit reply. You can literally just hit reply in the email and just give me your thoughts, your feelings, how you feel, anything else about it. I I love reading them, it's it's nice.

Julian: 36:34

No, I love that. That's uh those are some some solid mindset challenges. I'm hard. I'm with you. Yeah, yeah.

Simen: 36:41

I've no, I feel that maybe when you're neurodivergent, where people, like you were saying yourself, feel like imposter syndrome, like especially with me with ADHD. I can feel like the same thought that you have just amplified by five to ten, right? So it's not like I it's not like you might think, Oh, am I good enough? Doesn't make sense. Am I a good enough developer? Right? I will sit there and go like, am I good enough developer? And then you will spiral together and go, am I good enough? Dad, am I good enough in the world? I'm gonna like the whole thing, and then you kind of bring yourself back and you're like, you know what? I've been doing this for a couple of years. I I I pretty much think that I am good enough. I think so, right? Oh, it's not I can be better at things, but yeah. Yeah.

Julian: 37:26

No, no, I'm I'm with you, and and that's uh I have to say one of those hurdles, you know, with the subscribers and unsubscribes and all that kind of stuff. Um, you know, Bob and I with Pie Bites across everything, that used to hit us hard. Um, and it still does, because you'll be like, what was it? You you've been a subscriber for for four years. What was it that suddenly made you unsubscribe? You know. Um, but at the end of the day, you know, you we have to remember that our audiences uh you might have served your purpose for when they needed you, right? And that's it. And not everyone, so with our newsletter, as we we talk a lot of mindset in that we have a mix of dev, we have talk about our community, we share, we love to highlight the people in our community and the cool things that they're doing, just the ways of amplifying people, right? Similar to this podcast. Um, but then we also talk about mindset. The email I wrote today, the newsletter I wrote today, this afternoon, may not land with many people because I talked about just, oh, actually, I won't even go into it. I don't want to waste any time on that. But um it's it's abstract, it's not a typical tech email that you'd think from a Python kind of shop, you know. Um, but I'm I look at it, I'm like, there, those Python newsletters, there's a dime a dozen. If you want just pure Python with no heart, no soul, go somewhere else, right? But if you want to hear us talk about things that happen in our lives, conversations we've had with the community, all that kind of stuff, sign up. So I I I love that. And I think you will find that audience, right? And there are so many people, and I'm I'm really hoping that this can help amplify your message and get people coming to a place where they're, you know, find a home in your newsletter, right? Where they look forward to Tuesday because they subscribe to get the latest epit uh latest episode, latest newsletter. Not last week.

Simen: 39:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why we've done it. Because then if you subscribe, you get the latest, or you cannot subscribe and you can just peek at it and read what I have written about before. Because I feel it's it's open for other people to be able to read them as well. But you should have the exclusivity that when you subscribe should be a nice thing. I'm saying a perk, it's not actually a perk because you know it wouldn't feel very nice if if you subscribe and the other person doesn't subscribe, but how can you read at the same time as you? Like, why should you subscribe? Because then you just get it somewhere else. I bet there is a hundred ways to get around that, but but that's kind of like the thought of it. To me, it's like it's the thoughts that matters.

Julian: 39:53

It's yeah, I think it's cool, it's a cool approach. Well, look, Simon, it just is such a pleasure chatting with you. And again, everyone listening, please do make sure you subscribe. But before we go, um, one of the things I always ask a guest, Bob and I love to read. Um, you haven't been on the podcast before, so you don't know this. But um, I'm gonna ask you a question, uh, you know, about books. So, what book are you reading right now, if anything at all?

Simen: 40:19

So, being near in the original myself, see how there's never a straight answer from me, is it? Uh, I don't. Well, very simple. I I don't really I struggle read books. Like literally, I will struggle read books because I can't, my attention span for reading doesn't work with it. But but I have I have some things for it. I am actually audiobooks, audiobooks cracking with it. So right now, uh, it really depends on what I'm doing. If it's more development stuff, it's more YouTube, but it's more different, you know, styles. Um, I think the last audiobook, and I'll shout this out because I started listening to it uh when I was down at my answer start a couple of months ago. Uh, there is, I think it's um I think it's called Kyle West that has a whole book series called uh the Star Sea Mages. Now yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And I started with the first one. I thought, you know, I'll just listen to the first one. Started within one chapter. I'm now on book four. It just it is for it's 10 books, but it's so that's one of those that I can go to bed and just close my eyes and just just just listen to it. I just it's a really cool book. It might not be the answer people look for, like, what dev books are you reading right now and whatnot, because I'm not I I I tend to learn my stuff from reading every day, like websites and YouTube and catching up on that part. So when I listen to an audiobook, for me, it's more just calmness, it's let me dream about a different world of how things are. So the whole book is very simply about uh I had to try to explain to a friend of mine because he wanted to hear about it as well. It's like Star Wars and Harry Potter mixed together. Yes, sounds awkwardly weird. There's no Chewbacca's or anything else, uh, but you will get like the first book gives you this feeling if you ever seen or watched Harry Potter. You kind of get like the Harry Potter meets his friends, goes to somewhere type of the trade type of style, right? The dynamic is with mages and magic and stuff like that. But but it's in space, there's not like just like a planet is multiple planets with multiple galaxies, and and and every single book kind of builds and builds and builds, and you start to see things. So in book four, now they suddenly start a slight to talk about what happened in book one and two. That makes sense.

Julian: 42:43

Oh, geez, okay.

Simen: 42:44

It's it's it's really nice, especially for me being neurodivergent because I can follow along what happens without being too many characters with too many things with too much going on. It's very linear, I guess. But it but it's really, really nice. That's cool.

Julian: 42:59

Uh I'm gonna have to give it a look because I love that kind of stuff. I love sci-fi or space operas, those kinds of things. Um, you just all of that just reminded me of Stargate all of a sudden. But um yeah, I'm a big Stargate nerd. But uh, no, um and so thank you for sharing that. And I'm glad I asked that question because you know, not everyone reads and is capable of you know being able to focus to that point of sitting down and reading oodles of text.

Simen: 43:28

So think how much power you actually use to consume thoughts when you read stuff. I can't do the same thing, I can do many things at once, but I can't focus and do that one thing. Unless I think maybe the only question with that is if I hyper focus and I have an interesting book, like like I really genuinely it's super interesting and it catches me. Hence, like with my newsletter, I purposely build it short. You'll see, like, if every chapter, I if I was gonna build a book, every single chapter that I uh build in from each newsletter was a chapter in the book, then I might be able to read it because I do it like five, seven hundred words. But think what book have you read that out? It's like you know, 500 pages, like 500 words for a thing. It's no, it's not so exactly.

Julian: 44:14

Yeah, no, no, I'm with you. Um, although I I struggle to read technical books, I I can't get the focus down for those for very long, right? Um, and it's no way I'm not even making a comparison, just I struggle with that. Um, but give me a nice fiction novel that I'm just absorbed in and I could read for days. Uh, the one I'm currently reading, I don't know if you've heard of it, the his dark materials series. Um by I think the the bloke's British. He's uh Philip Pullman is the author, but he had an original trilogy and the second trilogy, the third book in that had just came out a few days ago, maybe a week ago. Um, and so I've started reading that. That's called The Rose Field, and it'll be the final book in all six.

Simen: 45:01

I I'm just curious because I did a quick search on it, and I'm just wondering if this is Google Lighting. Some people argue and said that some days dark materials book were banned. Yeah.

Julian: 45:12

Yeah. Yeah, they were banned. We could talk about this at other time, but yeah, that yeah, I will say of the original series. Um, some places banned them, banned them from schools, from church uh Catholic schools and things, uh, because there are some what the church would deem blasphemous things in the books.

Simen: 45:33

People have their own opinions of what people like. Exactly.

Julian: 45:36

Yeah, exactly. But I still read it and I loved it. So anyway, all right. Well, look, Simon, thank you again. This was such a pleasure chatting with you. Um funnily enough, when we planned this podcast, uh funny anecdote for everyone. I'd had a major blackout. We had no power, and I did this call on a laptop by candlelight, so I didn't miss meeting you so we could do it. And I just want to give a spare a special shout out to our community manager, Sherry, who connected the two of us and said, Simon should absolutely join you on the podcast. He's an awesome bloke. And well, she didn't use the word bloke. I used the word bloke, uh, but you're an awesome bloke and you have an incredible newsletter. So um thank you, Sherry, so much for for the suggestion. And uh, Simon, any parting words before we we drop?

Simen: 46:22

Uh subscribe. Uh is that allowed? Should we just give it away? Yeah, yeah, please. Give us the pitch. Whatever. I don't know. Yeah, no, sign up and subscribe. I I made it simple. I made it super simple. You literally type in your email, you click on the link because nobody likes robots sending your emails. So I made it you click, you put your email in, you click on the link, and you're done. That's it. There's no more to it. There's two clicks, that's it. That's that's I like it.

Julian: 46:48

Cool. And other than the newsletter, if people want to reach you, LinkedIn is the way to go.

Simen: 46:52

Yeah, LinkedIn, uh, LinkedIn is no, it's the best thing to ever reach me. Uh, I mean, Cherry has all those things like this coding all nose, but you know, LinkedIn is more or less the professional way of ever reach me instead. So we'll I'll presume we'll pop them the links down and whatnot.

Julian: 47:06

Yeah, and Simon, I am going to invite you to our Python community as well. So you'll have to hang out in there so people can find you in there too. And of course, if they just hit reply to your newsletter, once they're subscribed, then they get you as well. So just gonna throw that little little plug in there. All right, Simon, thank you so much for joining me. It was a pleasure. Everyone listening and watching, thank you so much as always. Um, we'll be back next week with the next episode. So until then, subscribe to Simon's newsletter and subscribe to mine, and we will see you in the next episode. All right, thanks. Thanks, Dolly. Bye. Yeah, bye. Hey everyone, thanks for tuning into the Pie Bites Podcast. I really hope you enjoyed it. A quick message from me and Bob before you go to get the most out of your experience with Pie Bites, including learning more Python, engaging with other developers, learning about our guests, discussing these podcast episodes, and much, much more. Please join our community at pyvytes.circle.so. The link is on the screen if you're watching this on YouTube, and it's in the show notes for everyone else. When you join, make sure you introduce yourself, engage with myself and Bob, and the many other developers in the community. It's one of the greatest things you can do to expand your knowledge and reach and network as a Python developer. We'll see you in the next episode, and we will see you in the community.