Hey everyone, and welcome to today's episode of Developer Tea. My name is Jonathan Cottrell. My goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. This is the anniversary of Developer Tea. We've been doing this show for 11 years as of the publishing of this specific episode. I'm not going to take the time to go through all the numbers, all the metrics with you, but I do want to take a moment to say thank you. Thank you for listening. Those of you who have listened for years, thank you for coming back year after year. Those of you who have just joined for maybe the first time, thank you for spending a moment, for making the decision. Thank you for listening. A lot of that is simply because of the audience that comes back and listens. Frankly, this podcast is not the way that I make my living. I have a job. I spend my days actually doing this work, mostly as a manager these days, but it hasn't always been that way. Many of the years that I've been doing this podcast, I was also an engineer. I've been really very grateful to be in the industry, to be able to speak to people, to speak to you from a position of experience, but also to have jobs that help me stay connected to this work. I've been very fortunate to be in this industry and to do this podcast week in and week out. There have only been a handful of weeks that we've missed. The past couple of weeks actually count in that list. I was able to spend some time with family. I hope that some of you were able to do the same in some kind of, or that you get a chance to do it whenever you want to. Or whenever is appropriate for your traditions. Mine happened to be at the end of the year. I just had a birthday and did all these things with family, but we're ready to start the new year. That starts with this episode. It is a continuation of our brand new series, the Career Growth Accelerator Series. What is this series about? This series is about helping you. At the end of the year, you may find yourself bringing your career evolution to theijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij over and over, not seeing any progress, any growth in your career, we're going to talk to you specifically in this series and try to help find ways to unblock the log jams. Today's episode sets a foundation. In the last episode, we did a part zero, getting out of your own way. If you didn't listen to that episode, please go back and listen to it. In this episode, I want to focus on a really critical driving singular point because I think a lot of you who are listening have probably found yourself in the seats that I found myself in the past many times. This particular seat that I'm talking about is one of autopilot. The indicator for me, if you are in the seat, in the autopilot position, is what your answer would be to the question, what are you currently trying to do? What is the problem that you are currently trying to solve? A roundabout way, another question that would be illuminating, might be, what is your main goal right now? What is your main goal? Not list me all of your goals or what are the projects you're working on, but what is your, personally, your goal? If you are on autopilot, your answer might sound something like, get a promotion. That may actually be your goal, but I want to pressure test that with you for a moment to kind of see whether this kind of, position is where you are. If you answered, get a promotion, get a raise, pay off a bill, pay off a card. If you answered with something that almost anyone else in your seat could have answered with, then I want you to ask yourself why. Why is that your goal? Why specifically do you want a promotion? Because for most people, they, kind of backwards justify, they post-rationalize why they want a promotion, why that's their goal. And the real reason, if we were to, if we could kind of directly observe what's going on with this post-rationalizing, the real reason is because this is what people do. This is the status quo. This is what people do. This is what people do. This is what people do. This is what people do. This is what they expect. This is the typical path. It's what happens from one step to the next. We got one promotion from junior to mid-level. We got another promotion from mid-level to senior. And so we've kind of learned this pattern that in order to continue succeeding, in order to continue, you know, operating in a, in a socially positive way with my coworkers, then promotions are a signal that I'm doing okay. Right. promotions are a signal that I'm not under some kind of threat, that I'm still conforming to what people need or want, what they expect of me. And therefore, because I'm staying within the norms, I'm in a safe place. And this is autopilot because it's our survival mechanisms that are transported from however long ago, prehistoric times, same kind of survival mechanisms are being copied and pasted into the modern era, right? Into modern life, where the threat of pushing outside of our social in-group is no longer that somebody might leave us alone. It's no longer that somebody might leave us alone. It's no longer that somebody might leave us behind on a hunting expedition and therefore we starve to death. That's no longer the case, right? The threat is that we might make somebody upset. We could risk our jobs, right? We could risk our income. We could risk our social connections. We could risk, you know, some kind of opportunity to do something that gives us a dopamine hit, but it's no longer a life threat. And so, our kind of automatic responses to life, and we've talked about this plenty of times on the show before, our automatic responses to life tend to be kind of these insulated versions of our survival mechanisms, of our, you know, lower level automatic responses, our instincts. And so, if, we were to inspect that and say, okay, what if you never got a promotion again? What is your visceral gut feeling imagining that you never got a promotion again? For most people, this causes some anxiety. Why is that? What is happening? What is causing, what is actually underneath that anxiety? Most likely, for most people, the thing that's underneath that anxiety is that we feel unsafe. Not that we desperately, wanted a promotion. Not that somehow we're not actualizing what we care about the most, what we value the most in our lives. We feel scared, threatened. Somehow, like this is going to negatively impact our ability to survive. So, this is why I want to inspect this, because most of our growth is going to be the result of moving past pure instinct. Moving past status quo for ourselves. Moving past the only surviving mindset. And instead, thinking about, okay, how do I move to the next level of the needs that I have? Of the values, the priorities, the things that I really deeply care about, that I want to experience. The things that I value personally, that might be different from the next person. And along this path, I'm not necessarily saying that you're going to, you know, that the result is going to be that you're never going to care about promotions again. That would be an absurd position, right? But instead, you're going to have a much clearer position on why you want that promotion. What does it actually mean to you? For some people, the affirmation of their intelligence, if they're really honest with themselves, the affirmation of their intelligence, is important to them. They want to feel intelligent. They want to feel smart and capable. There's not necessarily anything wrong with that. We have some cultural stigma that might be attached to, you know, announcing that, right? That I'm going to go after something in order to make myself feel smart, right? That feels shallow. But in fact, it's deeper to be able to recognize that about your own desires and values. That's a deeper connection with yourself than if you were to continue on that automatic path. If you kept on, you know, just going with the survival instinct. Being able to be honest about what you care about, what you truly want, right? Maybe the answer is very simply that you want to have enough money to do really fun stuff. That might be the simplest answer that you can give, and it may be true for you. I'd encourage you, even with those kinds of answers, you know, that doesn't necessarily, I don't want to put the answer in your mouth, right? I don't want you to say, oh, yep, that's the one, you know, Jonathan figured it out, and therefore I'm just going to go with that one. I want you to interrogate this. Interrogate and try to check it against your own behavior. So there's a couple of ways to kind of dig this out and figure it out for yourself, right? One is to, look back over the course of your life, and remember this is about finding what you actually care about, your purpose. We've talked about purpose a lot on this show, right? It's a huge part of what we talk about on the show. We don't mean it in a hyper-spiritual sense. We mean in the sense of being able to answer why. Why are you showing up to work today? Why are you doing this rather than something else? Why are you choosing, you know, to work in this particular pathway? That is ultimately your purpose, right? And so the more you can kind of dig on that, rather than making purpose happen to you, which is that instinctive, protective, post-rationalizing version of purpose, we intentionally explore what we care about, right? And this is actually a very fun thing to do, by the way. You enjoy traveling, maybe, enjoy seeing novel things. You enjoy being generous, being able to give to other people, right? You enjoy being able to go out without having to pull your phone out and check to see if you've got the extra money to spend on dessert tonight, right? Or on a round of drinks for your friends. Those are things that you can recognize that you value. And so, and all of those things, by the way, would be at least furthered by having more money. At least bringing yourijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijijij my internal kind of satisfaction with life is higher when I work on that thing. Again, this is a very reasonable thing and it has nothing to do, counter to the other stuff, has nothing to do with your specific monetary income, right? So when you have an answer, it makes sense to dig into why. I want to make more money. Okay, why? Why specifically do you want to make more money? This is a very common answer, of course, right? Money means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and we're not going to cover money in depth here. I just want to touch on it because it is such a critical kind of universal factor for all of us. Nobody listening to the show would go to your job, probably, would go to your job for zero dollars, right? So your salary matters to you to some degree, what does money mean to you? What do you use it for? What does more money mean to you? How does it change your life, right? Because most likely what you care about is not necessarily the specific dollar amount because the specific dollar amount would change your usage of that changes with environmental factors like where you live or something as simple as inflation, right? So, you want to make a certain amount of money. I actually don't buy that story. I buy that you want to live a certain lifestyle maybe, right? I would accept that you want to be able to do certain things, not necessarily just lifestyle like day-to-day, but maybe you want to pay off a particular loan because it's been hanging over your head and you feel like there's a psychological release from that. There's a lot of things that you can do to make a certain amount of money. And of course, fill in the blank with any other resource, right? Maybe your goal is to reduce your total amount of time worked, right? You want to reduce your working hours so that you have more discretionary time. So you can do whatever you want to with your time, right? Maybe your goal is to be able to, you know, to enable yourself to make cool things. You like the creative side of things, right? You like the creative side of things, right? You like the creative aspect of being an engineer. Whatever your goal is, dig into the specifics of it. Try to get as personal with it. Imagine how many other people would have this goal. If it's, yeah, most, most other engineers probably share this. For example, making more money is not a specific enough goal to be instructive. And that's what we're trying to get to, right? We want to get to an instructive point because while you, you may be able to get instructive with, I want to get a promotion because hopefully, you know, you're, if you have a good manager, your manager is kind of giving you a plan for how to continue growing in your career in terms of promotions, right? If that's your goal, then maybe you can have, you know, a specific pathway on that. But we don't want to just follow this default path. We want to follow the path that's going to be followed by the path that's going to be followed by the path that you're going to follow. So, if you're going to follow the path that you're For the things that you, specifically you, uniquely you, care about. My default path never had a podcast on the path. Podcasts, as crazy as it sounds, don't make you millions of dollars. If my only goal was to make more money, then starting a podcast, there's potential for money, in a podcast, but it's certainly not guaranteed. There are other ways probably to make money faster. So I had to investigate when I started this podcast, I had to investigate what are all of the various things that I'm trying to do with this? What purpose does this fulfill in my life? How do I feel more connected to this than I might feel to something else that, again, would make me more money or would take less time or would forward other interests that I have? Why would I choose to do this? And for me, a lot of it came down to the fact that this is the kind of thing that I would do, I think, in my retirement. The kind of thing that I want to do is coach people, is help people who are in their careers, help them move through the very... Various roadblocks that they're hitting, help coach them through growing past their personal struggles, through finding their strengths. All of these things are really interesting to me. It's part of why I like being a manager as much or more as I enjoy being an engineer. And so this podcast allows me to do more of that. The kind of thing that if I were to you know, make enough money to become totally free with my... Time and I didn't necessarily have to work in order to live, I would probably go and do more of this. So what was holding me back from doing that today? Mostly just a platform to do it on. And so I chose podcasting. I chose podcasting for that reason. And it's been incredibly rewarding. And I'm very glad that I chose that path. It actually helps me live closer to my personal purpose. I have other goals in life. It's not the only thing. I'm not done. I certainly am continuing. I'm not done. I certainly am continuing in my career. But this was a very major step forward for me that would not have been explored if my only goal was defined by capitalism or defined by the default career path, right? And that's what I'm telling you to spend some time doing. Spend some time understanding your unique things. What is worth doing is not purely... What is going to advance your career. Career growth is not just defined by more money, higher titles, more power. That's not the only thing that career growth is defined by. Now, a lot of times career growth is kind of like a rising tide. So, you know, my career has likely been at least positively impacted. By this podcast. Was it the fastest way to grow my career? Probably not. But it didn't have a negative impact. It probably had a positive impact. I didn't really measure super well. But if you are working on the things that we talked about in this series, if you look specifically for your goal, and your goal has to be yours uniquely, or as uniquely as you can be, right? Okay. You know, if somebody is saying, well, Jonathan, you're not the only person with a podcast. Okay. That's fair. That's true, right? That our goals are not going to be 100% unique to us. But the more unique you can get, the more instructive it will be, right? The more instructive it will be. Because, and this is the most important part as we talk about our goals here, when you look at your goal, what I want you to do, the most critical thing you can do is find the challenge in the goal. Find the obstacle. Find the problem that you have to solve. Find the thing that you're going to have to do some work on. The thing that's not already decided for you. That's going to take some kind of ingenuity. Find the things. That block you from the thing that you care about, right? So for me, on a podcast, one of the first things that I found, and you may have multiples on your path, right? One of the first problems that I faced was, well, I've got all the gear. I've got some ideas, but I kept on thinking that it was going to take me a long time to edit. That I was going to have to go back and be extremely meticulous. With every single word that I said and treat it like a production. The problem was that part of the value that I wanted to produce in this podcast was very regular episodes. Early on, I was doing something like two episodes a week. Sometimes I even got up to three episodes a week. The only way I was able to accomplish that was to conquer an entire podcast. And that's what I did. I did a lot of work on that. I did a lot of work on that. I did a lot of work on that. I did a lot of work on that. I did a lot of work on that. The internal challenge that I had. The internal challenge was that I needed to let go of some of those editing concerns, the perfectionism concerns, and instead focus on putting out content that was good enough. Now, I know you're listening to this. You're thinking, well, who wants to listen to good enough? The truth was that my good enough became better with practice. I was able to do this. So that the quality that I output a few months down the road was as good or better than anything that I was trying to polish early on. The repetitions and everything made it better. That's not going to be your challenge necessarily. You don't necessarily have an internal challenge. What you need to do is find the problem. Find the problem that you're going to solve. Now, a very important secondary aspect of this, kind of an asterisk, right? Find the problem. The asterisk is the problem. Asterisk down here at the bottom says that you can solve. Find the challenge, asterisk, that you can overcome. Find the thing that's standing in your way that is not so overwhelming or impossible that you can't take care of it. That you're unable to defeat that particular problem, right? I could have looked at the podcasting problem and said, my problem is... that I don't have production quality. Therefore, I need to raise a million dollars in order to get the production quality that I want. That is a different route, right? Maybe it is the same challenge and maybe it is solvable by that route, but that's not the solution that I could put together, especially not with my means at the time. So that challenge didn't make sense for me, right? The challenge of producing a high-quality, you know, similar to the podcasts that were coming out at the time, which at that time, Serial was fairly new, you know, 11 years ago. So in my head, I was kind of trying to compare my quality to those kinds of podcasts, the production level of those podcasts. It just wasn't there. It wasn't nearly that, right? So instead, I focused on shortening the episodes. I focused on producing a lot of content, making sure that that content was succinct and getting really good at editing while I was going so that I could produce content quickly. And that paid off. It paid off. So you're going to find your own challenges and the goal here, the critical thing to figure out is the challenge that you pick has to be something that you can reasonably... Solve, right? That you can reasonably reach. It's within your grasp. You can actually face up to that challenge. If you pick a challenge that you, there's no way that you can face up to it, then you're going to move back to that default mode. You're going to move back into kind of paralysis and automatic, right? Autopilot. We have to have a challenge that is, you know, we're going to have to be able to do that. So I think that's the key. Provides clarity. It is instructive. It gives us a clear path for what to do next. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. It's a little bit longer. You know, this is, we're getting into some really kind of meaty topics with the Career Growth Accelerator series. So hopefully this is going to be helpful to you, you know, regardless of where you are in your career. Again, this is really important. So I hope you enjoyed this discussion. I hope you enjoyed this discussion. The people that we want to target with this are folks that have been in the industry and you've kind of stalled out with the typical advice, right? You haven't necessarily stopped being good at your job because you don't know something. You've got the, you know, the tool sets are kind of under your belt at this point, but you're trying to figure out, okay, how do I jumpstart and get a new kind of growth that I haven't been able to get before? Thank you so much for listening. Again, 11 years is such an awesome opportunity to have been a part of this. I'm so grateful for, for the people who've been, you know, with me in this journey, a huge load of gratitude to my wife, which by the way, little trivia for you. She designed the Developer Tea logo forever ago, and she did it in like a day or like two days or something. She did it very quickly. And it has stuck ever since I've tried to have little redesigns, but her design still takes the cake. So I'm of course, eternally grateful to her, not just for that, but for everything else that she does in my life. So thank you so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.