you're listening to this episode right now because you or a friend someone you know feels stuck or maybe you have felt stuck maybe you expect that you might feel stuck in the future and if you don't feel stuck then i encourage you to keep this episode in your back pocket because you almost certainly will at some point in your life feel stuck and i want to extend kind of a future projection of empathy for anyone who's listening to this episode right now going through that feeling feeling stuck is hard it's emotionally draining and sometimes there's nothing you can really do about it in today's episode i want to try to provide you some strategies for what you can do when you're stuck to try to get unstuck but also if you can't get unstuck maybe it's out of your control how you can deal with it a little bit better my name is jonathan and you're listening to developer t my goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity perspective and purpose in your careers so what does it mean exactly to be stuck you may have an overwhelming sense of monotony a sense of boredom which we talked about recently on the show or maybe you have a sense that you are kind of trapped that you're headed down a path that you wouldn't choose for yourself but that you unfortunately don't feel like you can change a very common feeling for developers both kind of microcosmically in a given day and also macrocosmically in our careers at kind of a larger level is to feel like you're trying to do something you're trying to achieve some particular goal over and over and over and you can't seem to achieve it and so it feels like you're hitting your head against a wall over and over and hoping for a new result and none ever comes in some cases this kind of stuck feeling can produce anxiety or depression or the other way around having some kind of depression or anxiety can produce the feeling of stuckness now i want to be clear that the things that we talk about in today's episode are not holistic treatments for anxiety or depression those are the kinds of things that you want to talk to your doctor about so as always please take everything we say on this episode and every other episode of developer tea with a grain or a tablespoon or a whole canister of salt okay so we're going to talk about four things that can help you get unstuck and these can work in the moment they work in long-term scenarios but as usual this is not a comprehensive list of ways that you might get unstuck this is a springboard you can go and find more ways to think about your current situation a little bit differently so that's that's the goal here the goal is to get you motivated to think about your current situation slightly differently but sometimes it's not just about thinking and that brings us to our first point here sometimes it's about your literal surroundings and your current situation and that's what we're going to talk about today I want you to consider literally changing your physical location and your visual surroundings especially your visual surroundings there's a few ways you can do this of course in the moment it makes sense to get outside go take a walk if you can do it in nature if you can kind of put your phone in the pot in your pocket and take a walk in nature there's a whole slew of research about this that we won't get into but taking a walk maybe a 15 to 20 minute walk doing that on a regular basis can totally change your mental state if you can disengage from whatever the problem is that you're trying to solve especially in these walks can be incredibly helpful if it's more of a long-term scenario consider changing your visual surroundings even in your room if you rearrange where your bed is in your room this kind of change can trigger your brain to have to do new things to consider that layout right and it seems small but making these small changes is really what it's about finding ways to get unstuck while you do that one inch at a time not in a big leap or bound and that brings us to number two which is do something smaller if you're feeling stuck in your career then do something small maybe that's as simple as updating your linkedin profile or connecting with a few other developers or maybe you're just starting to get started and you're just starting to get started maybe it's as simple as writing a blog post if you're feeling stuck on a big problem that you have to solve then start by solving a smaller problem and here's another critical factor of getting unstuck remember that your brain is holistically stuck this is not about being stuck in one particular area this affects your entire well-being it affects your entire way of seeing the world so choosing to do something small like cleaning your bed or doing a couple of jumping jacks whenever you wake up in the morning or keeping a habit like drinking enough water every day these seemingly very small things can give you a sense of agency and they can also add up in other words you actually want to do these small things these small things are affecting your situation but unfortunately what often happens when we're stuck is we tend to neglect the small things because we're stuck in a situation where we're stuck in a situation where we're stuck in a situation because we're so focused on the big thing and those small things begin to pile up and it only adds to that sense that we are stuck and we're never going to get you know caught up for example okay we have two more things but first i'm going to talk to you about today's sponsor stackbit static sites in the jam stack are growing fast and front-end developers already get that it's fast it's secure and as a developer you get full control over the markup and the design there's pretty much no sense of security and there's no sense of security in the design of the design and they may have aension they may haveension they may haveension they may haveension they may haveension it ends up saving you a lot of 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But convincing clients to go static hasn't been very easy. How will they update their content? This is kind of the biggest question. Where is the CMS? Mainstream adoption of Jamstack in a commercial context relies largely on solving that particular issue. And this is where Stackbit comes in. Stackbit lets you build and deploy a full Jamstack site with pretty much any of your most favorite static site generators and a headless CMS in just a few clicks. You can already choose from about a dozen pre-built themes for Hugo, Jekyll, and Gatsby and connect to Forestry, Netlify CMS, Dato CMS, or Contentful. And on top of that, Stackbit just released custom themes. So now you can import your own themes built on any static site generator, including the ones above, plus GridSum, ViewPress, and others. Just add a single stackbit.yaml file and define your content model, and your theme is ready to connect to any headless CMS. Stackbit allows you to test the strengths and weaknesses of the popular headless CMSs. And you can do that quickly, allowing you to explore which one is right for the client or the project. Last of all, the source code for sites you provision through Stackbit is stored right back in your own Git repo. So you can continue design and develop locally without compromising your developer workflow. Head over to stackbit.com slash developer T to feel the magic. And let us know what you think at stackbit.com slash developer T. Thank you again to Stackbit for sponsoring today's episode of developer T. So we're talking about ways of getting unstuck, this feeling that you can't quite get out of whatever situation you're in or something is inevitably about to happen. We've got two more strategies. We've already talked about the first two strategies. Number one was literally changing your physical location, your visual surroundings. Particularly doing things like going for a walk or changing up whatever you're looking at on a regular basis. The second one is do something smaller, accomplish something smaller. The third thing that we're going to talk about is to give yourself effort boundaries. This is really critical for people like me. And I'm sure there are a lot of you who are listening who are the same way. Giving yourself effort boundaries means that there are some kind of limits on how much time you will spend trying to solve the same problem. Now, this is especially true if your efforts, your added efforts in particular, don't necessarily contribute to your success. If you feel stuck and you keep on trying new things and you're continuously failing, then it's probable, not even just possible, but probable that taking a break more often will yield better results. Not only will it yield better results, but it will yield better results. Let's get started. on the actual problem, but you're going to be a much saner person in the long run. Other kinds of effort boundaries. Let's say that you are waiting on an important email or an important phone call and you feel stuck because that email just isn't coming through and you can't really seem to wrap your head around why. Creating an effort boundary might mean that you only allow yourself to check email once in the morning and once in the evening. This can prevent the otherwise kind of automatic behavior of constantly refreshing your inbox. Effort boundaries are incredibly helpful and it's not just to maintain balance in your life. It's also helpful to actually being more effective in the problems that you're trying to solve. Okay, the fourth and the final strategy that I want to share with you is to put your core assumptions on trial. And this is the most detailed and difficult to grasp strategy. So we're probably going to talk about this in an additional episode in the future at some point, but putting your core assumptions on trial. So in other words, consider the beliefs that are contributing to your current situation, whatever those beliefs are, and put them on trial. In other words, ask yourself, is this belief actually true? What evidence do I have that has given me this belief? What is the rationality that I've been given? What is the rationality that I've been provided to myself that has resulted in this belief? Have I rationalized the belief itself or have I arrived at the belief through rational means? Another way to do this, another kind of approach for this is to use something from a previous guest of the show, Annie Duke. Annie recommends thinking in bets. In fact, that's the name of Annie's book, Think in Bets. So in other words, imagine yourself putting a belief in a rational belief. And what you're going to do is bet on the table that your belief is actually true. How much would you put down on the table? Consider on a scale of zero to a hundred percent, how much you actually believe, whatever that belief is. Put your core assumptions on trial. Now, here's the interesting thing about this particular exercise. You can do this even when you don't feel stuck. This exercise is incredibly valuable. At the very least, you may find yourself bringing your evolution toijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij current situation. And in that kind of tumultuous environment, you're likely to feel a sense of momentum. You're likely to feel a sense that no, in fact, you aren't stuck, that your current situation is less static than you had expected. I encourage you whenever you are doing these exercises to remind yourself, and this is really critical, that sometimes things happen that are out of our control. In fact, most things that happen are out of our control. And the few things that are within our sphere of influence, within our control, we sometimes can't perceive perfectly. Sometimes we don't know what the right thing is to do, and that's okay. Sometimes being stuck is just a part of your experience being a human. So I encourage you to observe the way that you respond to the situation. And I encourage you to observe the way that you respond to the situation. being stuck and consider if you are trying to fast forward in your life. Are you trying to jump ahead to the point where you're no longer stuck? Imagine taking those days that you wanted to fast forward off of the end of your life. Is that a trade that you're willing to make? If not, then consider taking the time and the space to appreciate whatever it is that you're trying to do. This is not easy to do. And appreciation doesn't necessarily mean liking whatever you're going through, but it may mean appreciating the fact that you have something to go through. Understanding that every step is a part of your journey. And you don't have to get philosophical. You don't have to go into the mountains and meditate for hours on end to arrive at these conclusions. You don't have to go into the mountains and meditate for hours on end to arrive at these conclusions. But instead, take a moment each day to consider if you are trying to slow the day down, if you're trying to speed the day up, or if you are allowing the day to happen as it will. The interesting thing is, if you try to speed the day up, if you try to slow it down, you're going to fail. This is not something that we can do as humans. We can't fast forward in time and we can't tell the future. So any attempt that we make to do that, we're preoccupying ourselves with a false reality. And when we preoccupy ourselves with a false reality, we're missing the true reality that's in front of us. I encourage you to live each day with that true reality in its full form, no matter what you're going through. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Thank you again to Stackbit for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. Head over to stackbit.com. slash developer tea to get started today. That's stackbit.com slash developer tea. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed today's episode, if this was useful at all, then I encourage you to subscribe in whatever podcasting app you're currently using. This will make sure that you don't miss out on future episodes of the show, which there will be a lot of. We do three episodes a week, and so it's easy to miss out. Go ahead and subscribe so you don't. Thank you to today's producer, Sarah Jackson. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and until next time, enjoy your tea.