Hey, everyone, and welcome to developer tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And in today's episode, I want to give you a mindset for minimum viable prioritization. Of course, you're familiar with the minimum viable product, the MVP, this is something that is defined in software development as the thing that will get the job done at the minimum level of input, right? The thing that will basically accomplish the primary goals without all of the bells and whistles, the frills. There's a few simple rules about prioritization that are somewhat well known and universal. We'll talk about those in just a second. Today's episode is sponsored by Linode. If you're looking for a cloud hosting solution, specifically one that supports Linux, then Linode may be the perfect option for you. We will talk about what Linode has to offer developer tea listeners specifically later on in today's episode. So of course, you want to prioritize the three main categories of task organization. Hopefully, this isn't the first time you've heard this. But there are these three main categories, the have tos, right? The have tos come before the need tos and the need tos come before the want tos. The have tos come before the need tos and the need tos come before the need tos and the want tos. I've heard this so many times from my parents when I was growing up. This is how you prioritize you. Of course, you want to do the things that are non-negotiable that you have to do first. And then you do the things that you need to do next. And then finally, you do the things that you just, you know, you're choosing to do because you can because you have that free time. Secondly, it's important to start thinking about when you want to promote a need to, to a have to. For example, maybe you need to do some homework that is due next week. But if it's the night before that homework is due, maybe it's time to promote that need to, to a have to. And the same is true in many other areas beyond just school. But there's a simple and important rule, a mindset that is often completely ignored. And I'm going to share that rule with you today. You know, prioritization of tasks is probably one of the most important skills that you can have to do. And I'm going to share that rule with you today. have in any industry. In fact, before you even have a job, when you're still in school, when you're young, learning about prioritization of tasks is a fundamental skill. There's blogs, there's podcasts, books, entire courses on the subject of prioritization. And the reason for it is simple. Smart people recognize that their time each day, and ultimately, their time in life is limited. So they want to do the best thing possible. They want to do the best things they can with the time they have, they want to be the most productive with the time that they have, they want to accomplish their goals in the time that they set out to accomplish them. And prioritization then often follows a similar format, right? Which I believe this format is relatively valid. Number one is start by defining your goals. Now this can include long term, midterm, short term, and incredibly short term goals. So think retirement, and then 10 year, plan, two year plan, and two week plan. These goals often include financial and professional goals, as well as personal goals. Some examples of these may be some type of job that you eventually want to want to be in, some position that you eventually want to hold, perhaps some physical goal, some fitness level that you want to achieve. Or maybe you want to save a certain amount of money or get out of debt. These are all the types of goals that you want to achieve. So you want to be able to do all of these types of goals that we're talking about here, long term, and then potentially shorter term goals can fit into these same categories. Now, then you break those steps down into their smaller pieces, and eventually to their smallest pieces, right? The individual steps that it takes. If you want to run a mile, then it takes one step at a time, right? So you determine what is necessary on average to achieve your goals day by day. This is incredibly important. You have to understand the smallest pieces, the smallest building blocks that would be necessary between now and the time that you want to accomplish your goal by. You have to understand those small building blocks to even approximate that goal. There's no way to actually accomplish a goal without doing it one piece, one day at a time. We all do everything one day at a time. So this is usually, primarily the mathematical step here, right? You're doing some kind of math to determine how to break this goal down, but it may also be a little bit more work to determine different stages of your goal, different stages of your goal. So maybe you want to launch a website, but there's different stages of launching a website. Like for example, creating the content and creating the site map in the beginning. Then maybe you create these sub goals, right? You can start to see that this is getting a little bit intense, but you're not going to be able to do that. When you start defining goals and then start defining the tasks that will eventually compose together to accomplish those goals. But once you've decided all of the goals that you want to achieve, and then you break those goals down into their smallest steps, once you understand what it would take to accomplish those goals, right? On a day-by-day basis, what you would have to do to accomplish those goals, then you want to determine the goals that you want to accomplish. You want to determine how those goals balance against each other and which specific task is most important for today. And even smaller, which specific task is most important for right now. And this is why this is so important. It's such a big topic. Translating from five years to 30 minutes may seem like a pretty daunting task, right? The next 30 minutes, you presumably you want to do something that eventually will accomplish one of those goals. Now, obviously there are times in our life where we're taking a break and that can accomplish a goal. Like for example, I want to be able to be a rested person. That is a goal that I can achieve by doing nothing for 30 minutes, right? That helps me rest. It helps me clear my mind. I want to have a good relationship with my wife. And so not all of my goals necessarily have to include sitting in front of a computer and learning something about code. A lot of those goals can be getting away from that computer to do something entirely unrelated to my professional life. But translating those larger goals from five years or 10 years to 30 minutes, that seems like a daunting task. And that's why this is such a large topic with so much discussion and opinion and why it's somewhat difficult to find a goal that is so important. So let's get started. The one-shot solution for everyone. Everyone is divided on this. Everybody has their different methods and a lot of them are valid for different use cases. A lot of them work very well for one specific person and then they work horribly for the next person. But today I want to share with you one major piece of guidance. This has truly changed the way that I think about every single day, the way I prioritize my day. This is a mindset that anyone can adopt in any field. And this can help you when you are prioritizing every day. This goes for development projects. It goes for personal goals, professional goals. Pretty much every decision you will ever make can be run through this kind of mindset filter. There's not a lot of rules that apply this broadly. So this is kind of an exception. There's not a lot of rules that apply this broadly, but this one does. And we will talk about this rule in a little bit. But first, let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. Let's get started. At the last minute, you may have taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the plunge, taken the is to do your job first. Do your job first. Now this may seem a little bit broad, but if there is something that is highly specific to you, then that is your job first, right? The things that you provide unique value on, that is your job first. Your job is first defined by the unique value you provide and secondarily by the general domain knowledge you provide. If you're a Rails developer, you are first a Rails developer, but secondly, you are a software developer. Focus your energy on accomplishing the things that only you can accomplish and your prioritization process will clear up faster than you can expect. It's going to hopefully blow your mind as much as it blew my mind when I was a kid. I was a kid and I was a kid and I was a kid and I was a kid and I was a kid and I started viewing my task list through this mindset. I would love to hear from you all on your prioritization techniques. I'd love to hear how this particular mindset changes the way you look at your tasks. I hope it is super helpful. I know it has been for me and I'd love to hear from you. You can reach out on the spec Slack community by going to spec.fm slash Slack. I am on there and all of the other hosts from spec shows are on there. I'm going to go ahead and there as well. By the way, you can check out other spec shows at spec.fm. Thank you so much for listening to the show today. Once again, the takeaway here is do only the things that only you can do. That is the most value you can provide. Once you've accomplished all the things that only you can do, then do the things that mostly only you can do, right? Start viewing things through the lens of that unique value you provide, because if you can provide value that most other people can't, then you can do the things that you can do. So if you can provide value that other people can't, then it's going to be the most value that you can provide in that given moment. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Thanks again so much to linode.com for sponsoring today's episode. Linode provides SSD cloud hosting. If you want that $20 credit from Linode on checkout, you can use the code developer T20. Linode.com slash developer T will automatically apply that code to your cart. And of course, those links, and that specific code can be found at spec.fm. Thank you so much for listening to developer T and until next time, enjoy your tea.