Have you ever thought to yourself that the actions that you're taking today are not representative of who you are? Not necessarily in a negative way, rather the actions, the tasks that you're putting your mind to are beneath you in some way. And that at some point in your career or in your life, you're going to arrive at some lofty goal. And finally, you'll have a chance to be who you really are. This kind of idea is something that is an illusion for all of us. The idea that we are preparing to live and kind of perpetuate preparing to live. This isn't something that everyone necessarily goes through, but a lot of us do. In today's episode, I'm going to provide you a very simple argument for why the most mundane tasks that you put your mind to can provide you real meaning. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. You're listening to Developer Tea. And my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. And we're going to talk about how to be a better developer. And I'm going to talk about how to think about the mundane tasks that you are going through today. And these can be development tasks that you've been given. Maybe they've been assigned to you. Or they can be things as simple as taking out the trash. The sweet spot for this particular thought experiment or exercise is something that is sufficiently difficult that not everyone can do it, but sufficiently easy that most people in your field can do it without thinking. That's at the professional end of the spectrum. If you want to go to the kind of personal or social end of the spectrum, you should think about this as things that require a little bit of intention, but not enough to matter very much at all. And these activities make up so much of our lives. And a lot of our kind of productivity and our productivity is based on the fact that we're not doing it in media and in books and on podcasts, including this one from time to time, probably, is the idea that we should stop doing the things that are in this category. And we should start doing things that are more representative of who we theoretically think we are. But in today's episode, I want to provide you a different frame of reference for this. And this comes from a concept in psychology. The concept is called functional autonomy. We're going to talk about functional autonomy right after we talk about today's sponsor, Linode. Whether you're working on a personal project or managing your enterprise's infrastructure, Linode has the pricing, support, and scale you need to take your project to the next level. They have 11 data centers worldwide, so latency is going to be much less of an issue if you're on Linode. At the same time, they have a platform for you to use when you're working on your enterprise. At the same time, they have a platform for you to use when you're working on your enterprise. If you're on Linode, you have S3 compatible storage options, the next generation network. Linode delivers the performance you expect at a price that you don't. And you can get started with $20 worth of credit today. This is going to give you access to native SSD storage. It's going to give you root access on your servers. Your plan can start as low as $5 a month, which means that you get four months for free as a Developer T listener. Use the code DEVELOPERT2020 when you create a new Linode account. That's DEVELOPERT2020. Head over to linode.com slash DEVELOPERT to get started. By the way, Linode is hiring. Go and check it out. Linode.com slash careers to find out more. Thanks again to Linode for sponsoring today's episode of Developer T. We're talking about functional autonomy on this episode of Developer T. This is a concept from psychology. And the idea... Is that the goals that you have, the simple goals that you have, will naturally spin off new goals. And those new goals may grow to the point that they are abstract entirely from the original goal. And this can happen further and further. An abstraction that goes further and further away from the original goal. Such that it encompasses much more... Much broader meaning than the original goal. So let's walk through an example. Let's say that you are tasked with tracing down a bug. Now the bug is not necessarily difficult. But this process relies on other goals. Let's start with the kind of logical goals that you might compose in order to find a bug. One logical goal might be to... To... To... Understand the patterns that are in the software sufficiently to find the bug. Now this is one layer deeper. This is one abstract layer from finding a bug. Right? You start working on pattern matching. And this actually is a skill in and of itself. And it's one that extends beyond this immediate skill in front of you. In order to understand the patterns in the code. In order to pattern match. Against this code base. You might need to understand more about the people who wrote it. Who all is contributing to this code base. And so moving from pattern matching. Now you're moving into more of a social or collaborative skill set. In order to understand the people who are writing the code base. It might be helpful to understand a broader topic like... Cognitive psychology or behavioral psychology. Now let's be clear here. In order to solve the bug that's in front of you today. You shouldn't pull out a book on behavioral psychology necessarily. But instead we should understand that the small things... Are not disconnected from the big things. That's the real lesson that I want you to take away from this. That in fact the small things are not just connected to. But they are encapsulated by those bigger things. Interestingly enough. Many of the skill sets that you would develop. By following this abstraction chain. From those small tasks. They often end up in very similar places. Understanding behavioral psychology. Is an abstract skill that applies to. An enormous number of these more concrete. Atomic kind of tasks. Or skills. And so we should think about. The work that we're doing. The small things. The seemingly small things. As directly connected. To the larger context. Another misunderstanding here is the idea. That these small things that we take part in. Are kind of necessary evils. Or bricks that lay the foundation for something greater. And in fact. These steps that we are taking. The small things. Are one in the same. With those larger goals. With those larger skills. With those abstract ways of thinking. You can imagine then that. The idea. That we're going to arrive. At some place in the future. Some undetermined point in the future. Where we feel that. We are acting entirely out of our true identity. We can be in that place. Today. Even with the simplest thing. That you put your mind to. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer T. Thank you again to today's sponsor Linode. Head over to linode.com slash developer T. To get started with Linode today. You get a $20 credit. If you use the code developer T 2020 at checkout. If you enjoyed today's episode. I encourage you to subscribe. In whatever podcasting app. You're currently using to listen to this episode. Today's episode was produced by. Sarah Jackson. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. And until next time. Enjoy your tea.