Work & Life Balance Tips For Programmers

Key Takeaways

[Music] hey what's going on guys so I got a question on Twitter the other day about work-life balance and I figured that that would be a good topic for this video so I just have some tips that helped me out cuz I was really really bad at this for years and years I used to overwork myself to the point of exhaustion and I would neglect my family and it just it wasn't good I mean it did help me get further in my career but it took up a big toll in other areas of my life and my personal life my mental health my physical health all that so this is a really really important topic and just to give you an idea of where I'm at I have a wife with two kids my son is autistic and nonverbal so that kind of adds to my plate and then if any of you have a child with special needs you know that it really takes a toll on you physically and emotionally but um yeah and I've also done freelance web development I've worked for companies and now I do education and content creation which has been by far the most difficult and time-consuming job that I've ever had so I mean everyone's different everyone has a different professional life and a different personal life so kind of take this with a grain of salt and take it in a generalized sense and a lot of this is related to being more productive because the more productive you are the quicker you can get things done and you can balance that scale so the first tip that I have is to prioritize your time and this is it sounds a lot easier than it actually is and I'm not just talking about work either you can apply this to your personal life as well and you want to separate your tasks into levels of importance so don't just do the first thing that comes to mind put some thought into what needs to be done right now what can be done tomorrow what can be done next week and so on and a lot of people will create lists for this because it's hard to store everything in your head so if you write it down or Aztec people are probably gonna have some kind of software that does this for us but you really want to prioritize the tasks that you have throughout the day the week the month if you have deadlines at work what exactly needs to be done right now to meet those deadlines what can wait and again you can apply this to your personal life if your relationship is suffering maybe a date night or something like that is really important don't put it off you know that's something that should be at the top of the list and likely go too far into like relationship advice I'm not the right person for that so the next one is to have a strict routine so in addition to prioritizing your tasks have a routine that you follow daily and this is obviously different for everybody if you have a nine-to-five then you're part of your day is already structured if you freelance or you have your own business or you work remotely this is obviously much more difficult so I can't tell you exactly how to how to structure your routine but just have one I can give you some tips for example as far as when you first wake up I would suggest doing something relaxing for that first hour I like to wake up early before everyone else and play some video games and I know that might not be productive but it's something that relaxes me and it doesn't take any brainpower and it gives me that time to myself so that I can then go on and be productive for the rest of the day but you could meditate you could read a book you could go jogging anything like that is would is great also no one you're at your best this is another conversation I had on Twitter I asked people when they were most productive during the day and everyone seems to know that chunk of time for me it's between about 7 a.m. and 2 p.m. that's when I find I can think clearly I can solve problems and stuff like that so be sure to use that time wisely you know do the most difficult tasks that you have during that time and then you know for the rest of the day you can do light or work and you may even need to restructure a part of your day or even all of your day if you if you don't have a good routine right now so next is to take breaks try to relax as far as programming you usually want to take short breaks pretty often some people do it every like 25 minutes I tend to take a short break every hour hour and 20 minutes around that time I'll take a five minute break and stretch maybe get something to eat or something like that and then I'll take a couple longer breaks during the day and then one really long break at like 2:00 after that key time I was talking about maybe go to the gym or go get a coffee leave the house you know leave the workplace come back and finish up and also I'd suggest taking at least one vacation per year if possible most jobs give you that vacation time if you run your own business I'm sure you can find time to plan out a vacation and spend time with your family that's gonna keep that balance you know you want to spend as much time as you can with your friends family your kids your spouse whoever is important to you in your life also try relaxing techniques like meditation and breathing and I used to think that stuff was only for quacks but I've started doing it and I find it helpful I'm still very new to it so I'm not really good at it yet but I know that it's helped a lot of people and it can really relieve stress it can make you more mindful and make you just a better programmer and also a better person in general so one thing you don't want to do is tip the scale too much and I was guilty of this for years I was spending way too much time working and putting all my energy into my work and I had nothing left from my family or even for myself to do hobbies or things that I liked doing I had no weekends because I worked all weekend I had no days off balance is very important especially if you have kids you don't want your kids growing up remembering that their dad or their mom was never there and was always at work and it's hard because if at least for me my kids are my biggest motivation I busted my ass 12 14 hours a day so that I can make something myself and they can be well provided for they can go to college and so on but ultimately a kid needs to have their their dad or their mom there for you know for support and to connect with to play with that's really important for a child so it's not all about money money is obviously very important you want to you want to provide for them but you want to be there for them as well and if you don't have kids I'm sure you have someone that is important to you a spouse friends fan whoever it might be and even if you are completely alone then you need to take time for yourself for hobbies and other things you like to do as passionate as I am about coding and my work I mean I don't want to do that all day every day that's that's not really a life I don't care how much money you make I mean what good is it if you don't do anything else and then you also don't want to tip this tip to scale too much in the other direction where you're not giving enough time to your work if you're spending too much time watching Netflix or playing video games or something like that that's that you're not gonna get anywhere like that so you want to keep the scale even though as even as possible I should say so my next tip is to cut out the nonsense stop doing things that aren't productive and don't serve a purpose now you might say well what about playing video games in the morning that's not productive but it does serve a purpose it serves the purpose of me being able to relax before my day get started it allows me to decompress and allows me to be more productive later on so hobbies and and stuff like that they're not productive in a sense where they're making you money or they're helping your career but they might help you unwind and be less stressful so that you can work better so ultimately they do serve a purpose the key is just to not take it too far and spend too much time on it another thing that that I've had issues with and I know a lot of people have is mindless web browsing and it could be anything it could be social media it could be sports politics whatever it is you're into a lot of times we'll take breaks and go surf the web and and we go down this rabbit hole and then it's 2 hours later and that 2 hours you could have spent with your family you could have spent working and being productive but you just kind of lost track of time doing absolutely nothing and you know I've been guilty of this a lot and that's something that we should all work on and you also just want to go through your schedule and just cut things out that aren't needed that aren't important and you'll free up time and you'll be able to balance that scale better so programmer burnout is it's huge in the industry programming isn't back-breaking work but it's takes a huge toll on you mentally if you think about it when you're coding most of the time it's using up all your brainpower and if I'm writing code for 8 10 hours straight at the end of the day my mind is shot and I don't have the mental energy to have a serious conversation with my wife or go to the mall with my kids all I really want to do is check out so it's important to really be aware of the things that cause burnout so coding 10 hours straight not taking breaks not doing things to decompress not spending enough time with the family not doing any of your hobbies this stuff all contributes to burnout and I know that for a lot of you guys that are younger that's just getting into this maybe you don't have kids maybe you don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend and you just want to code all day eventually you're gonna get burnt out so you mean it's okay to work hard and and that's that's actually I would I would encourage you to work hard but don't overdo it because you're eventually you're eventually you're gonna regret it so just be aware of it is all I'm saying so the next one is don't be a perfectionist and I don't want you guys to take this the wrong way and think that I'm saying like don't do good work or anything like that it's very important to do good great work but there is there is a point where it's just backfires and I experience this a lot with my videos I'll mess up one thing and I'll rerecord the whole video rather than just editing that part out because for some reason I feel like the whole video is messed up if I mess up one line of code I've even done it in this video probably 25 times already I've rerecorded it and I don't have to do that in reality I'm probably the only one that's gonna even notice those mistakes so that's what I'm talking about is don't be a perfectionist where it's counterproductive and I know we want to write good code we want to write clean code that's optimized but don't overdo it to where you're actually being counterproductive and no one else would notice it but you so the last tip I have is don't take on things you can't handle and sometimes we get opportunities that are really hard to pass up maybe you get an email from a client wants you to do a large project and there may be a significant amount of money involved so that's hard to pass up but if you already feel like there's not enough time in the day then taking on that project may not be a good idea and I'm not saying don't take on new projects even if you're busy but really weigh the pros and cons take a look at your schedule and make sure that taking that project on isn't going to drive you crazy and it's not going to cause you to neglect your personal life and really tip that scale because there are more important things than just getting getting a new project all right but that's it guys they just wanted to share some tips that helped me out like I said before everyone is different so just look at them in a general sense and hopefully there's something you can take from it alright so that's it thanks for watching