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There's one of those mentalities I've heard recently where if you want to book a meeting, you better have an agenda, you better have the homework done, you better have the materials for the meeting sent to the meeting attendees beforehand so they can be ready to go, and there's no time wasted, because if you're going to be using the time of x many people in this meeting, that's a lot of cash. That's a lot of productivity loss. 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. All right. Welcome to another episode. I am Julian, and I'm here with Bob. What's happening, man? Sup, Julian? Good to be back. Another episode. Let's do this. Feels like it's been too long. Yeah, well, it was last week, right? How's your week going so far? Yeah, it's been a great start to the week, as you obviously know, and I'll share this with everyone, we launched the six key ingredients to be a successful pythonista. It was weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks of love and effort. Blood, sweat, and tears, literally blood and tears in that. In that little training course. But it's. Yeah, it's a six day training that you can go to, and it's going to teach you the six tips that we have to be a successful python is to the top six things that we know you have to master, that you have to really get down. And it was exciting. Exciting, man. How do you feel? That's super exciting. Yeah. And the cool thing, it's covering both Python and software, as well as mindset. But, yeah, you can go check it out on build Python apps.com dot. And I know everyone's probably thinking, look at these guys scratching their own itch here, talking about their stuff. But we're super proud of it. This took a lot of effort. After hours, kids went to bed just sitting here, recording, writing, coding. It's just. It felt good. It felt really good, man, to be in this sprint. I really enjoyed it because just felt like we were really giving something back. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Like the old days. Yeah, we totally should sprup this on the show. I mean, we don't have promo segments. We could have an ad. We could make this to you. So, no, I'm not going to do that anyway, so if you didn't think it would have a lot of value. So go check it out. Yeah, you will definitely go check it out. Cool. All right. Well, with that said, there's a. There's a couple of other things that happened this week that got me thinking, and I know we had a schedule for what we wanted to talk about on the podcast, but this one really irked me, and it made. I guess it brought up a lot of memories from previous jobs, you know, the companies you and I have worked at over the years, over the many years we've been in the corporate world. And it really made me think, there is this culture that I want to talk about, this culture of not really being in control of your day. And the reason this spoke to me is because you and I, we just did, like, a whole productivity course. We spoke on a previous episode about. What was your favorite quote? Let's see, if you don't plan out your day yourself, somebody inevitably will do it for you. That one. Yeah, I hate that one. One of my favorite quotes. Right? And I don't even know who said it. This is called the Bob quote. Whatever. But. Benjamin Franklin. Yeah. Of all people. But, yeah, the thing is about that is that seeing it in action is. Is one thing. Seeing it in action, almost as a culture, is another thing. So it's. It's one thing. Everyone listening. I really want to dive into this just a little bit in this episode, but I really want to. To dive into it for everyone's benefits, that they can catch it, because so many of the companies that exist right now tend to have this mentality, this mindset around the calendar. And it's apparently normal to have your calendar open and allow people to just fill up a slot on your calendar. Have you ever experienced anything like that? I kind of remember with the shared calendar and people just taking up slots, but I know that's a reality, and that's. That's pretty, uh. Yeah, that's kind of a recipe for disaster if somebody can just come in and plan out any segment of your day. Right. And as we talk about and teach, one of the best ways to be productive is to plan your day in advance. And that means put your meetings in at the start of the day. That means blocking out the time for your own work. And if you have people coming into your calendar and. And throwing meetings in overnight, like, that's. That's insanity. That's. How is anyone supposed to be productive? It's almost borderline ridiculous. Right? And the thing that gets me is that there are places out there that consider this normal to the point where I've worked with people in the past that have said to me, put it in my calendar. You know, if you ever need anything from me, put it in my calendar. And it sounds really, I probably sound like I'm on my soapbox or high horse here, by the way, but I don't care. The thing is, it sounds normal, it sounds fair, it sounds logical. But here's the thing. That person who's saying it, that means they are living their day to day at work through a calendar. That means they have no control over their calendar. They're literally telling random people, put something in my calendar if you want my time. And, but then the thing is, now, here's the limitation on that. They have an open calendar. Right. That's the thing that gets me. The calendar is completely open. So I'm going to throw to you, Bob, what is an alternative solution to finding a balance here with having an open calendar, but also getting stuff done? Time blocking. So, I mean, I kind of believe that example you gave me. Those people had the whole day open to be able to be able to book something with them. Yep. Yep. Wow. That's amazing. So if an open calendar policy is there, then at least you can always block things on your own calendar, like from nine to one before lunch. I'm going to not accept any meetings because I need to do my deep work. I think we are pretty deliberate about that. Right? I mean, at least for me, I try to not have too many meetings in the morning because that's the best time to focus. Yeah. Which is kind of nice because with most of our clients in the US, most meetings naturally fall in the afternoon. And that's perfect because then the morning, I know I get stuff done. And so, yeah, I do that split routine of mornings get as much deep work done and afternoons for the meeting. But of course, I'm kind of a lark. If you're a night owl, that might be the other way around. Right. You might want to do your meetings no more, but you have to kind of have segments in the day where you not accept meetings. Basically. I think that's the best. Yeah. Yeah. I know of people who have, and I'm sure there are people listening to this that are caught in the same loop, people who've been stuck on meetings from nine till five to, to the point where they then have to log in after dinner and continue working through the night just to catch up on the day job because they spent the whole day in meetings. Achieving nothing. One thing, though, what about the manager versus the engineer? Like that essay from Paul Graham, makers versus manager schedule. We will link it below. But if you're a manager and it's just part of your routine, I mean, managers tend to have a lot of meetings, right? Normal. Yeah, completely normal in today's society. But, you know, as a manager, I think the best thing you can do is really set, you know, draw that line in the sand. And if you don't, then you're not doing your stuff any, you know, any benefits, you're not doing them any favors. And that's the thing. As a manager, your job is to support your team. It doesn't, doesn't matter who you are. This is a, I'm sure a debatable topic, but as a manager, you will succeed if your team is successful. It's as simple as that. Right. And if you don't make the time for your team, so you should have meetings with your team. There's no point having seven back to back one on ones because how are you going to act on the stuff that you discovered in the first meeting, right. And then obviously, yeah, you have operational meetings too, but you have to find that balance. What's really worth your time. Yeah. And I think meetings also sometimes are used as a crutch. Right? Like, I go to schedule a meeting to get stuff done, but that's not how it works. That's. I think there are some harsh quotes about that. If you need a meeting to get stuff done and basically your organization is failing or something, I will look up the exact quote. But that's true. Like, you don't need hours and hours of meetings. Like. Yeah, like these typical standups, those are perfect. 15 minutes and go back to work. Right. That's way overvalued, I think. Yeah, I think it is one of those mentalities I've heard recently where if you want to book a meeting, you better have an agenda, you better have the homework done, you better have the materials for the meeting sent to the meeting attendees beforehand so they can be ready to go and there's no time wasted. Because if you're going to be using the time of x many people in this meeting, that's a lot of cash, that's a lot of productivity lost. So it is super important to be in control of that calendar and make sure you're being very picky about the meetings you accept. And geez, setting that expectation that you can't just dump meetings in my calendar, that is a huge deal. So I love your tip there, Bob, of throwing in time blockers to block out time for productivity. But one thing I like to do is what we do with our calendar. For people who want to talk to us regarding Python and pivots and everything, that calendar is only for a few hours per day. And it seems like a lot because it covers both of our time zones, but for each of us, it only covers a few hours of the day because we know if we open that up all day, anyone could come and book us in for a call at a random part of the day, completely ruin our flow, you know, so we can't do that. And I think it's very important for people to start shedding this mentality of just accept every meeting, have an open calendar, put stuff in my calendar whenever you damn or feel like it, and let's just, you know, and that's normal because it's not. It frustrates me. What's the other thing we do? Talking about getting people on our calendar. Oh, yeah, that's right. We put in an application form. So if you want to book a call with us, not only do you choose the time that suits us, right, that's in our acceptable meeting time frame, but you also have to fill out a little application form to get you in the zone for the call. And it's very similar tactic to what I was just saying, if you want to book a meeting with someone at work, if you want their time, you make sure you prepare for that. You make sure their time isn't wasted. You don't want to drag. If a meeting has more than, say, three people, you're going to have problems. So, yeah, I love that. That's a good point that we have that application form. Yeah, definitely. Now, meetings is one thing, but another thing that's really dominant these days is slack or these collaboration tools. And, yeah, I think it just comes down to expectations. So, yeah, if you're getting messages, there exists this culture of now, like, to instantly respond. But I often find that's really some story you have in your head, like the other people are not or should not expect you to do that, and you should really treat it like email. Unless it's something urgent or it's your manager and there's a system down and you have to intervene. Okay, sure. Then go attend that straight away. But 99%, it's just stuff you can look at later and should probably batch that up to answer later, but it's kind of. And that goes back to the calendar. We set those expectations that it's cool to be able to putting out fires all over the place while there really are not fires. Right. So yeah, I think that really is a mentality thing and we can be a bit egocentrical in that with the greater goal in mind. Because in my last software developer job, I was never, if I would do that and I would go back answering a few hours later. I got never any problems with that yet. I was able to report more progress on the more important work software features, for example. And that was really what counted towards my performance. Right. So I was still very helpful, but it wouldn't matter if I would help somebody later on in the same day or maybe even the next day. Yes. It's that whole culture of now versus when, right. Everyone just expects now, now, now, and should be asking is okay, when, give me a priority and let's mutually decide on when this really should be available based on you respect my workload, respect your workload and respect the time zone as well. And that's why Slack is super dangerous, right? Pops up on your phone in the middle of the night. Super tempting if you have it. I mean, I don't have it with notifications or anything anymore, but yeah, super tempting to respond to people. And then you set that expectation. So I love that you set that expectation in that previous role that, yeah, okay. Bob's not going to respond for 4 hours because he's working or he's not even on shift. You know, I think that's super important if you want to go full four hour work week. Tim Ferriss, you have an autoresponder, but I don't think we took it that far. Just, just program your job away. Have a script response for you, for everything. Now. Very funny. Is that slack themselves, the people working there don't have any problem with that. Do you want to share that story that we came across the other day? Yeah. Yeah. And this was shared by nira, right? I hope I said his name right. The slack at Slack, they, and it's funny because they have the tool. It's the most disruptive tool. But there's a slogan in the office that something along the lines of work hard, go home. You know, and it's

taboo to message people after 06: 15:26

00 p.m. Something like that. But essentially at the end of the day, the office is empty, everyone goes home. And you're supposed to respect your private time. You're not supposed to send messages after hours and expect a response. So I think it's just, that's the culture of respecting our lives in an always on, you know, society. And I think that is something a lot of companies are missing because, yeah, we're all remote at the moment and life is different and the Internet's there. It's very easy to get in touch. Look at us recording this from Spain to Australia, you know, very easy. But that doesn't mean we should lose those values. If I'm going to get a bit deep here, those values that we hold dear, you know, like spending time with our families. So I definitely love that story that Nir shared. And I think it's a really important point that we work hard and then go home and leave it all there. Yep. And we. Yeah, we gave a bunch of practical tips, um, about this in last episode. So if you come into this one, the previous one has some very practical advice. Yeah, this is just us voicing our concerns over what we're seeing in this trend. Right. I think that's something that everyone needs to keep in mind. So as we wrap this up, my call for everyone who's listening to this is just please be wary. You know, we obviously care about you all and we'd love to hear your stories. So please, if you are in a workplace where this sort of thing is going on, take some of the tips from our last episode. Take some of the stuff we talked about with time boxing and setting the expectations of your team and people around you, and really get some control back into your calendar. Because if you don't, it leads to stress, anxiety, overwork, burnout, all sorts of issues that come with that. So, yeah, we need to nip this in the butt. Yep. If this helped you, just send us a message on Twitter or slack and let us know. And lastly, what you're reading. I love it. I actually just started a new book that I picked up from the library because we're back at libraries now. It's called Pine Gap. And I'm not going to go into it because it's a long story, but it's about a. I think it's a military, whatever, government institution or station that's in Australia, the center of Australia, and it's run by the australian government and the NSA. So the two spy agencies working together and the stories that have come out from there. So it's written by a bloke who worked there for 20 odd years. And it's just amazing. Like, it's in my backyard, technically, and I had no idea. It's really cool. Awesome. I should go back to the library. You always find these niche titles. Yeah, exactly. I had. I'm like, why do I know that name? Pine gap? I remember that from my childhood. And then I picked it up, like, oh, sounds like a movie. I'm going to read this. Great. What do you, what are you reading? Cool. Yeah. So I watched the last dance for the second time. Really invigorated my. I said, reading basketball. What? I said reading. Come on. I can tell you what I watched. I'm getting, I'm getting there. So, as I was invigorated by the series, I, uh, I finished Phil Jackson's eleven rings book about his coaching career. Super inspiring and Python wise. I'm digging through serious Python. Pretty solid book. And, yeah, it's fun to always learn new things. No, that's cool, man. Did you take any action from all the basketball stuff? Well, yes, I went buying a Spalding ball and went to the court with my daughter and she loved it. That's great, man. I loved it. Yeah, I clearly led you into that. I just, I love the photo you sent. It was great. All right, well, look, we hope everyone enjoyed this one. Thank you for listening, and as always, thank you for tuning in. We have many other episodes. If you haven't checked them out, please go back through the library. There's a lot of great content there, if I do say so myself. Bob, thank you so much for joining me and sharing some wisdom. Yeah, thanks, Julian. This was really fun. And thank you all listeners for keep listening. And, yeah, if you like the show, please leave us in a review and we will be back with more. We have some exciting guests coming soon, so stay tuned. Cheers. We hope you enjoyed this episode. To hear more from us, go to Pibyte friends, that is Pibit es friends and receive a free gift just for being a friend of the show and to join our thriving slack community of python programmers, go to Pibytes community. That's Pibit Es forward slash community. We hope to see you there and catch you in the next episode.