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Patrick Hill: Hobby Life vs. Work Life

Published 7/17/2015

in today's episode, I get to talk with fellow developer and podcaster Patrick Hill about how to balance hobbies and work life. We talk about goals, motivation, time management and learning to focus on how to progress from one week to the next.

You can follow Patrick not on Twitter but you can find him on Instagram or Letterboxd. Make sure you check out Patrick's podcast: Master of 1 and if you're a fan of Walking Dead, check out Episode 43, in which Patrick and I debate the show.

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Transcript (Generated by OpenAI Whisper)
Hey everyone and welcome to Developer Tea name is Jonathan Cutrell and today I am interviewing a good friend of mine Patrick Hill Patrick is a developer at Whiteboard with me. He also runs a podcast called M of one that stands for Master of One. You can check it out at mof1podcast.com. He also has a lot of really cool interests outside of development so it's really fun to talk to him. I actually was on mof1podcast of course you can find mof1 in the show notes. I hope you enjoy this interview with Patrick Hill. So I was born and raised west Philadelphia. I like to I'd really spend all my time on the court and one day there were kind of like a few near-do-wills and they were just obviously not up to anything good and they'd start to make in trouble you know with me and my friends like in my neighborhood and because that fight my mom got really freaked out and she told me I had to move to Belair with my rich uncle and so what about your aunt? Oh my with my rich aunt and uncle so so when you pulled up to the house? Yeah it was probably around I don't know 7 or 8 and yeah and I like I don't know it calls on a yell that they can't be something that's being like a dick this was back in the days it was like what is a cab like the cab driver so because where is where is from we called cabbies and I was like yo it was a smelly later and did you think that was weird? Yeah I didn't really say much he just drove off and then yeah and then just like turned around dude I'm a freaking giant house and there I was like the king of Belair you know. Welcome Patrick to the show. Hey what's up? Not a lot since I saw you like two hours ago. Yeah no kidding this is pretty familiar. Yeah I'm sure I mentioned this in the intro you guys know I record those after I record the episodes but Patrick and I we work in the same room for oh well 8-ish hours a day depending on you know who leaves earliest. Sure which is typically you but to be fair to be fair it's because you also typically get there well before I do as well so. That's true we have like a slightly offset 8 hour-ish work day. Yes and then we both go home and continue coding typically. Absolutely we do but I so that actually is a perfect segue into the discussion about hobbies. You guys might notice that I'm a little bit more jovial with Patrick because I have a chance to hang out with Patrick just as friends sometimes which believe it or not I actually do hang out with people just as a friends sometimes but Patrick has a lot of well I wouldn't say a lot of hobbies but Patrick has hobbies outside of development that he enjoys participating in including podcasting so Patrick actually had me on his podcast one time it's called M of 1 or Master of 1 Patrick tell the listeners about that a little bit. Sure so specifically the Master of 1 podcast it's me and two friends of mine and we talk about kind of the latest in pop culture but it's pop culture as it pertains to the design world so illustration design the vinyl toy and then game world and then also television film so we're not talking about like the latest royal baby not that type of pop culture but it's but if if you're into like illustration vinyl toys great movies then that's what that's about and so it's a weekly podcast and it's a long winded compared to yours but no thankfully lately we've had some really awesome guests on so it's exciting to do. Now what if I am also interested in royal babies is that not a you're gonna want to you're gonna probably want to find a second podcast also listen to in addition to the third one which is DevT maybe there's actually like a royal T podcast that would be right on point I think if that is one of the better puns I've ever heard you know I only have a few opportunities for so impressed right now yeah and it's totally organic as we do not have a script I promise you we did not take the time to prepare a script I can't guarantee you that he didn't take the time but I didn't so well I can't I can't predict anything that Patrick is gonna do at least on this on this episode so yeah I reason I ask that is because you know a lot of people I think they worry a lot about balancing you know hobbies and their work life and I'd be interested to know you know do you find yourself like mixing those two things and feeling like you need to separate them or do you think there's a pretty good because we had this conversation earlier this week about how you you know you feel comfortable you know kind of working at almost any time during the day a lot of people feel like that goes directly against their you know ingrained rights as a human to work at night I feel comfortable working any time of the day sometimes I work until 2 a.m. and sometimes I can't work past 3 p.m. and it really just depends on the day but you know how do you find hobbies mixing into that work life balance if you want to call it that yeah absolutely and I have to kind of preface this by saying that I do feel somewhat lucky that I enjoy my job as much as I do I mean certainly there are people that are in work situations that aren't enjoyable but I have found in my position that work has become almost sort of a kind of perpetual thing I'm always like in a stage of work almost so and what I mean by that is sometimes I you know it hit 7 or 8 o'clock at night and I really want to jump on a project and start working on it you know I want to get back to solving a puzzle and other times you know 8 in the morning and morning or normal work hours that's what I want to do that so I find myself kind of working when I feel the most either motivation or when I also kind of feel like I'm really prepared for the process because in anything especially with some of these like development challenges you know I don't feel like I can just jump in for 10 minutes or 15 minutes I feel like I have to like carve out some time and I have to have some space and and I have to kind of mentally feel up for it because it is a very mentally draining thing and so I feel like to kind of segment that as I only get an 8 hour shot at it and then I got to turn it off and go focus on something else I feel like that that's I'm limiting myself too much because maybe I'm only productive for those hours or five of those hours maybe that's that's all kind of the mental capacity I have at that moment and then maybe I get another when the couple hours later okay well I would rather you know I would rather wait and leverage that later and be productive later I would rather split my time in half right then just say well I did what I could cut off and go do something else so you know I do have the luxury of I say luxury is not going to be offensive I don't have kids so you know I understand in my life so a bit different I do have a wife sure and thankfully she's very understanding but when it comes to even outside work just balancing anything so I I podcast I play drums I I'm into some outdoor sports so obviously exercising and then and then of course work life and coding and then I do some freelance on top of that I think with all of those things I will say that I don't always enjoy enjoy them right it's not I don't always code because I want to code and I don't I don't always go running because I want to go running and I don't always this is going to sound bad stay with me I don't always spend time with my wife because I want to spend time with my wife okay like there are times that I don't want to do these things right but I have set them as priorities and I have to be very deliberate about sticking with them and and because I know that ultimately like the end result of either growing my relationship with my wife or growing as a developer or finishing a project I know I'm never going to that end result I do want but I'm never going to get there unless I'm willing even I don't feel I get to put in that time right so so there's a little bit of balance so I say that you know I code when I feel like it but I'd be fair I don't always feel like you know I still have to kind of meet my minimum but I would say for anybody that feels like they don't have the time or they're too busy or they're too tired I think you do yeah okay and I think you have to be intentional about the things that you care about so a couple of really interesting things you pointed out there one I guess the most direct thing that I think is important for us to understand just in life in general this is another one of those tips that you can go and tell you know you're non-coding friends we are not our identity is not what we feel I can't remember exactly what the code is but a famous philosopher said we are not what we feel or something very similar to that sure and he made the comparison to you are to your feelings what what the ocean is to its waves right the idea being that you know the waves do not define whether or not the ocean exists right or or the nature of the ocean or even the temperature of the ocean in large but rather the waves are just something that the ocean experiences now this is not the metaphysical talk that I want to have on this show but but basically you know we have to define these things that we want as ourselves rather than the things that we are feeling in that moment that we want right and that's the whole idea of defining those priorities another thing that I think is interesting about what you're saying is you know to be a craftsman or to be somebody who really truly does what they do with excellence you have to be willing to understand that you can't put that into you know a time like you're saying a constricted time box now I don't think that means that you can't have a routine sure and I also don't think that you know that means that you should abandon all priorities right in order to you know the opposite of what I mean is stay at the office for 16 hours right and luckily with software development we have the opportunity to take this stuff home with us relatively easily right we considered our kitchen kitchen table instead of trying to you know stay in the office for 16 hours a day so it's it's interesting because this idea of the eight hour work week you know most people that you find who are really good at anything they don't practice eight hours like they don't do an eight hour day it's it is who they are right right so you know I think it's a worthwhile and it may not be who you want to be to work all the time you you may not want your identity to be I am a great web developer or a great software engineer that's something for each and every person to decide on their own but if you do truly want to be great consider what it takes to be great and I think this is something that you also have a lot to say about this you did a talk today at whiteboard about climbing Katadin yes no that was good I actually had been pronouncing that wrong for several years so you're you're already better than I am at it it's actually really close to the word kata so I'm mixing up the two in my brain I did an episode on kata and I think I re-recorded it about five times but anyway Katadin you want to share a little bit about that story right so I know we're we are audio right now and so people can't see me so this it's not going to the full impact I used to be a much larger guy that I am now so I was I was a 350 pound guy I was a semester into my computer science major and and I you know I didn't have any money in the bank much like today and and and I had decided so I decided I wanted to through hike the AT so Katadin refers to the mountain it's in Baxter State Park in Millenocke at Maine it is the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail which is the 2200 mile trail that runs from Georgia to Maine and that is for the typical northbound through hike that is that is the culmination that's the end of the hike okay and I decided that I want to do a through hike and I actually with with that as my goal I was able to within the course of three years I graduated school I was able to save up seven thousand dollars and I lost a hundred pounds which which was awesome and and I was able to actually go out and climb Katadin I didn't to hike the AT but I did go to Katadin then I ended up going out west and having other adventures but but since then it's I found myself kind of realizing that I'm not sure that I have that same level of motivation right I don't know that if I started right now that I could lose a hundred pounds now to be fair I don't have a hundred pounds to lose but still just imagining what it took like the level of commitment and the level of dedication took to do that and at the time it seemed so easy like at the time it was it didn't seem challenging at all and now I can't even imagine that much less doing all three of those things within this short amount of time and so what I realized is that I need to always have a Katadin in my life I need to have this this big singular well-defined goal sitting out there that I can work towards and given that that goal is more important than everything else going on right that goal was more important in the meeting right that goal was more important than spending money okay um given that I have this big well-defined goal and given that is the most important thing um I think in that case I've seen the most like individual personal progression hmm interesting I I like this because you know it kind of flies a little bit in the face of you know the idea of having small attainable goals that we reach for each and every day right or the idea that you know if you eat healthy today and then you do that over and over and over then you can lose a hundred pounds right the reality is that falls apart when you don't eat healthy today right you don't eat healthy today because well it's just today right because the stakes are low because you don't really have much to lose but when you have Katadin to lose when you don't eat healthy today that puts you one step away or one day away from Katadin every single time you do it right whereas you know if I don't eat healthy today well I just failed once and I have another day tomorrow uh and I think that idea seems um a little bit more motivating right to have something more to lose if you if you fail at the small parts uh absolutely and um yeah I I completely agree with that and I see people do this on the smaller level they'll do something like well rather than borrowing this item I'll buy it so that way I have money tied up into it and now I'm more likely to use it because I have an investment right so like I've seen I've heard of people doing that on like the money side of it but um yeah I just love this idea of just having something that's so large that that you can't afford to fail right that it's it in that way it pulls it out you know the um and the other side of this too if you're establishing one of these goals um you know you mentioned eating and that that really stood out to me I I tell people because I have experienced a weight loss uh I tell people that um you know if nine times out of ten you you fail at it like if you take ten days and nine of them you fail uh then you don't actually want to lose weight um you want you want the results you want to be thin okay but you don't actually want to put in the work you don't want to lose weight if you wanted to lose weight you would eat better and um and so I I think it's very important that when you're approaching something like this you have to realize that you can't only care about the results you have to be you have to be up for the challenge and so earlier we mentioned as a developer that if you want to be great in your craft then you're going to be potentially willing to put in hours outside of your work segment um and and and I think that's true I think that we can kind of do a do away with all these restrictions and and just realize that being better kind of trumps all of this right and if and and that's part of being up for the challenge and being willing to do what it takes and so if you want to be better and if you want to be better more than you care about does this fall out of my eight hour workday then you're going to have no problem working outside the workday it's not going to be a fight right and if you don't if you want to lose weight um and and or if you want to go climb a mountain and if that is more important than eating food right and then eating that bad meal then you're not going to struggle with it it's not going to be difficult and you know I think you're going to progress a lot and it's going to be a lot easier than you anticipate yeah and what I love about this though is that we're talking both about balance right and about mastery so we have this idea that uh you have this kind of overarching primary goal in your life but you also have just naturally the time to balance things so you have the time to have your hobbies uh and so I think those can coexist I don't think that what we're asking for or what the universe or what mastery requires is necessarily breaking yourself or breaking your back all the time I don't think it's about that I think it's about being willing to break your back when you need to right and it's it's not about you know did I put in a 60 hour work week this week it's about how did I progress this week how well did I do this week yeah so I completely agree and I think you said that better than I did which is ultimately you know I have a busy schedule you have a busy schedule I look at what you do and I just think like how does Jonathan like how does he have time to even like you know get a drink out of the fridge right because he's always like scheduled something you know he's doing something but I have a feeling that if you're to step back and do evaluate your life or you're singing at the end of the week you're not thinking oh my life is so difficult and so hard and it's so busy that you're just sitting there feeling fulfilled and glad that you get the opportunity to do what you do and it just boils down to not I have to put in so much work but get to honestly you get to because you're motivated to reach these higher goals sure and so it really isn't necessarily difficult and yet it doesn't have to be back breaking I don't think it is if you've established a proper good big goal for yourself I don't think it is back breaking you know it's interesting you mentioned that because I've come into contact just by being in the podcasting world now I've come into contact with a lot of people who their goal is to get out of their job and this is really common and you know there's there's nothing particularly wrong with that let me first say that that I respect a lot of these people a lot I think that you know the work that they do is incredible and a lot of them have a really good reason as to why they want to get out of their job whether it's you know they want to spend time at home with their kids so they want to run a business at home on their own but the reality is I don't want to leave my job like a lot of people who listen to this podcast might think that eventually you know Jonathan of any now eventually going to go full-time you know and that's that's just not I if anything the opposite direction like if this podcast were to ever come in the way of my full-time job but quite honestly I love my full-time job you know and it's the thing that I'm invested in and this I'm not saying this because my employer has asked me to either like I truly enjoy the work that I do every single day and so I think that that is a really important thing to find right is the thing that you actually wouldn't want to get out of the job that you don't want to leave every single time you go there like at Monday rolls around and you actually enjoy it and I don't think that that's unattainable I also understand that you know not every job is going to be that way and you know if you're in a job right now where you don't feel like that's your situation then it's it's not that you need to get up and leave your job right a lot of times those kinds of feelings can be fixed inwardly rather than you know the situation of your job it could be something inside of you that is discontent with your you know your personal situation for example or maybe you have you know money management issues that make you feel like your salary is too low or something who knows who knows what it is or maybe truly there is a problem so there's there's many different situations that that could arise there but the point is you know find a a peaceful place and that will allow you to work in a way that you don't feel like you need to have a clock running every single time you sit down and that I think is is really key to becoming a master at anything right which I feel like goes back to the master one podcast you tied it together so nicely it was just it was just architected perfectly isn't like I said I didn't have a script but you know there's always a plan that's good well cool I'm going to take a quick sponsor break and then we're going to come back and talk some more I'm so excited to tell you about today's sponsor because there's opportunity for almost anyone with today's sponsor and that is hired.com on hired software engineers and designers can get five or more job offers in a given week now each of these offers has salary 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So we've been talking about having a hobby but also being able to become a master we've talked about so many different things already what else did we talk about Patrick? We talked about setting giant goals for yourself and time management and doing what you love it's really a very dense episode so far yeah it's pretty what I think we can kind of shift gears to education because this is something I'm you know the people who listen to this podcast are really passionate about I'm passionate about it one of the very earliest episodes that I did was with two other guys who work at whiteboard as well Cody and Nick and their designers we talked about the value of a design degree now that they are in kind of the working mode actually working at whiteboard full-time so I'm interested to hear because you actually have a degree in computer science and this is there's a lot of you know questions about formal education versus self-education I'm really interested to hear how you feel your computer science degree both helps you in hurts you and then maybe some of the experiences that you had in your computer science degree that you would like you feel like were really important to maybe your personal development but also to your job today absolutely this is a very complex issue initially out of school and probably for my first year out of school I would have told you that the degree was worthless did um you know I I did freelance while I was getting my degree and and frankly whenever I showed people projects to get jobs I was showing them freelance work I wasn't like showing them classwork right and and my classwork was very broad I mean everything from I would say web web development which I do now was the almost the exception to the work I did it was a very small amount I did lots of mainframe like a similar encobal and all this great greatness and um you know and of course there's um you know just like you know software engineering classes and things like that and and and so it very little actually I think I only actually have like six credit hours or nine credit hours that are actually web centric and so initially I would have said no well it you don't do it it's just a waste of time and money and you're better off to go take out seven week course somewhere and and and I still there's part truth to that but it's not it's not totally true so now the more I kind of separate from it the more I begin to disagree with myself and and the more I kind of realize the value of the education and and I've been trying to think of the best way I could explain this and I like to think about it as though by going to school um all these dots were kind of placed on a map or or whatever and now that I'm actually working I get to start drawing lines between those dots okay so I I so I I have context for things that I don't realize that I've context for things true and it isn't until I start talking to someone or or I'm introduced to a new problem where suddenly I get to recall these things that oh wait I did talk about this in a class and and at least I have a reference for this yeah I may still need to go um spend you know hours researching and learning and in looking so it's it's not like the learning process is done mm-hmm sure but I have a dot I can connect to and so I realize now that that as that has actually set me up um to be to be much more successful and and I do have much broader context I would have had if I had just gone to school for one area sure so I would say that the benefit had seemed fairly intangible but as time progresses I see more and more the benefit and to the point that I'm almost swinging the other way where I feel like you actually should have formal education um or at least you should have more in-depth education than just web centric you know it's very easy to think that if I want to be a front-end developer then I just need some web courses you know right and in the reality is most of my work was done in Java and I there's a lot of application it might be a it might be a structure and it might be um it you know an algorithm or a pattern or whatever that I'm pooling but but I'm constantly pooling stuff from that area of my education even though again it is not web centric so yeah um so in that case I'm you know more more I see the benefit of the formal education as far as specific times that it's it's helped me or it's um it's probably a little bit more difficult to pinpoint um I so I will say that probably the um this is my caution with formal education so this is this is the other side of that coin if I had only gone to class every day if I had only turned in my homework and then I had left right and I got gone home flipped on the TV and drank some beer and whatever I would have not been successful when I tried to do a job market there's no way okay the only people that are going to be successful this is a big statement I'm making a broad generalization but I believe in this are the people that are truly going to be successful in content are the people that put in time outside of their classwork they're the people that when they go home they tinker with something and they want to tear something apart they want to they want to build something new for me it was it was freelance work that's what I did and I did frankly I did lots of it for free just because I needed a portfolio but my freelance work is really where I was able to hone skills connect enough dots to where I could then be viable in a job market sure so that that's the other side of that coin for me but again I am a very big proponent of formal education so I would say you know on that point a lot of you especially students who are you know possibly a place like Stanford or we're one of the more like challenging degree programs you're like how in the world could I possibly spend on outside of class and labs and you know homework doing anything else and the reality of what Patrick is saying I think is that you have to be able to apply the knowledge that you're learning to something that has not yet been solved in other words some kind of project now I've heard of programs that actually have these types of projects where you integrate the knowledge and that's the point of the entire semester for example a lot of I know specifically Stanford does this a couple of other programs are really intentional about having you know semester long relatively open-ended projects that accomplish the same goal but with structured instruction right so you have maybe a TA is looking over your project and they offer the opportunity for you know code review or things that you otherwise wouldn't have access to if you're just doing your own your own side project I do think especially for schools that don't have those that what you're saying is like a hundred percent right on that you have to do something to integrate that knowledge to actually use it and and because the reality of computer science or programming or you know software development whatever you want to call this field is that it's practical at the end of the day right now there are some people who would say you know that programming or you know a computer scientist versus a software engineer that there are two different things and you know it's kind of like a mathematician versus an engineer where the mathematician is thinking more in abstract terms and the engineer is thinking in very very concrete terms so all of that to say I think the most important part the most important takeaway there is you know have find a way to apply that knowledge and and start connecting the dots because if you don't start connecting it while you're at school it's very unlikely that you're going to be able to connect it when you leave school it for people in I mean for people currently in a computer science program you know I would say one of the greatest ways you can learn is to teach absolutely I I imagine most computer science programs out there recruit people to tutor other students I was a tutor for three years and it sounds scary like you would think walking into it like oh I've got to be a smart guy so I can handle this jump out and just do it okay because when you're forced to repeat what you've heard when you're when you're forced actually look for problems with people and when you're like when you're in that environment that cemented a lot of my knowledge for me and so that's something that potentially you know you can do your homework in your free time you're around other classmates you're probably getting paid to do it as well so for the people that yeah they don't feel like they have a lot of time outside of class that may be a way that you can actually get involved around your classes um see a benefit and still reinforce knowledge so I would say any opportunity you have to teach other people what you've learned even if you feel like it's not much take that opportunity yeah all right so one question that I have you and I both have formal education do you think that we are biased so initially like I said I for the first year after I graduated I thought I wasted my time mm-hmm and I think I'm more and more against the benefit now um you know I would like to believe I'm an unbiased person but could a biased person say that they're unbiased like I think we may have just like entered some sort of loop and we can't get out of it right um you know I would like to believe I'm fairly unbiased yeah so I you know I think there's I think there's there's I have friends right now that they're in a job they can't afford to go to school um you know where I went to school we got hope and that was the name of like the Georgia whatever and and so like my my tuition was paid for I was very but I understand the funding program yeah it was great and so but I understand you know that there are people out there that that's not the case at all right just to look at the college they know that there goes 80 thousand dollars because a hundred thousand dollars and I've got a pay for it on my pocket so I understand that there's people that that school seems like a very impossible hurdle mm-hmm or there's people that um you know that they can commit this many months but they can't commit four years or I understand those trade-offs and in those cases especially I would have no hesitation in saying you know do a program like treehouse but I would almost say after the fact still investigate other mediums and investigate other sites I mean this is a very broad subject range and it's I don't I don't want to use the term wrong but I think it's it's not selfish but I don't think you can just learn your one little piece of knowledge and just exclude everything else it's out there yeah because the fact is what we do even though it feels very focused it has to play with a lot of other systems and a lot of different types of people use it and and I think you just have to have knowledge beyond your own to be effective and again even if it's just a small level of context or reference I don't think you're gonna do the best work unless you kind of you're you're extending your reach beyond your immediate vision sure yeah you mentioned something earlier about connecting the dots and about you know not seeing how something is relevant until you know significantly later uh and I think that the same is true with you know cross-training if you want to call it that but looking at other uh fields so you know I took physics in high school and I happened to actually have a really good I did really well in physics I had a really good grasp on physics pretty immediately um but I didn't really have an immediate use for it like I could do kind of math tricks to determine you know if I threw this ball or rolled it down this little hill that it would land in a cup uh that was whatever 3.2 meters away that was as far as the physics actually was useful to me but now that um you know in my career I have the opportunity to use physics to do things like animations with more fluidity right uh and in that training some of that stuff is coming back to me for example you know kinematic functions I know that that is a thing sure because I learned a word right for sure I have at least some context because I learned something that was you know relatively obscured away and it's not just you know math and sciences it's also things like uh philosophy right philosophy certainly comes into play on this podcast as I said earlier with the uh with the waves and the ocean that quote but even beyond that just looking at the way that you do your job and informing the way uh that you choose to look at a particular problem and there's so many different things that inform how we solve problems even in computer science that aren't related to computer science at all yeah and and let's not discount the fact that you have to send lots of emails you have to talk to lots of people there are communication skills there are certainly um group skills there are English courses that there are all these other things that factor into your day to day that you don't even consider right it's very easy to only look at my cpsc classes and make that judgment call based off those solely but there are so many other things that I experience in college did affect my day to day work interactions yeah yeah definitely yeah I've experienced the same and and I think that it's really important for you know the computer science community or the especially the web development community but even software development in large uh to to be considerate of the wide range of ways that people learn right because it's very easy for us to discount well really anything right we can easily discount a seven week learning program as easily as we can discount a cs degree and say both are irrelevant to something but that's not true right in either case there's probably something relevant as long as it's not like you know some unqualified person who doesn't know what they're talking about telling wise a lot of the time you're going to get something even if it's just you know going on YouTube and seeing how somebody solves a problem that kind of context is so important in this industry um so you know and it's also we also have this kind of wrong way of looking at it that it's either or right and you started to alluded to this earlier but it's not just college and then I'm done right if you choose to go to college and you get a four year degree and you invest that time and you invest that money and then you turn around and you feel like you've lost that time and money well guess what you still have the option of going through those seven week courses that's totally you know it's within the realm of possibility for you right um and no matter what somebody tells you four years it I wouldn't say four years is that long what do you think about that oh definitely um after it's over it doesn't seem like that long maybe two semesters in it was feeling pretty like yeah that's usually why people say avoid going to school because you know it's better to get into the industry early but the the big jump between 18 or 19 years old and 22 and 23 years old it's it's not that big right no yeah and frankly through experiences both good and incredibly frustrating just being going to a four year institution absolutely that stuff affects um and I think positively again the interactions I have now I mean I I you wouldn't have wanted to talk to me when I was an 18 year old or 19 year old you would have wanted to hire 19 year old me and uh and and so I yeah people aren't a hurry to get places and sometimes it's nice to just you know to take your time and not not be so scared of the time it takes right I mean that's the if that's the best thing for you should do it but I want to real quick there's like a caveat to all of this which is that you're not going to walk out of a single one of these programs and be any good unless you're unless you're motivated to learn that's the reality like four years just because I endured four years of school to not make me a good developer and just because I endure some intensive program for however many weeks or months doesn't make me a good developer okay me wanting to learn me being up for the challenge um you know frankly I believe I would have succeeded in either program because that's the mentality I was going in there with and so I think that it it me personally it's more of the attitude of the person taking the program than it is the actual program sure I've mentioned this on the show before uh I have a master's degree in in digital media and I viewed that master's degree as kind of a cattanan I'm looking back now I realize that that I I set out to get the master's degree now I realized you know some people would disagree with that strategy but it was something that I wanted it was an achievement that I was going after was to hold that master's degree because I knew it it signifies something right um and it signified something to me and so I was something I'm proud of certainly and I think that this is another you know aspect of college is if you want to go to college that is something to consider right right there's there's nothing wrong with you wanting to go and have a college experience if you want to call it that there's nothing wrong with you wanting to say hey I went to this college and and that is a perfectly valid reason to go to college this is something that we mentioned uh on the show with Nick and Cody as well and that is you know we have multiple reasons for going to college it's not just is it going to make me a better developer or not it's is it something that I want to do in life or not it's completely totally valid the reason to go to college I actually nearly stopped going to college and really one of the only things that kept me in was just pride I didn't want to I didn't want to quit and and it wasn't because I had to have this degree I mean I changed my major three times um but there was there was kind of this yeah I wanted to accomplish that I wanted to walk across the stage I wanted to have the picture and I wanted to have the diploma and that was a really large component of it it wasn't just you know I want to be smarter that's something that like to use a completely different uh feehold of life I guess that's that's how I work out actually so like I walk into the gym and I have really specific goals for the things that I want to accomplish that day for example if I walk in and I tell myself that I want to write I want to run a mile and a half or two miles that day or whatever number it is I'm sure some of you run five miles a day I don't do that but yeah exactly I don't anyway uh if I if I go in thinking I want to run a mile and a half or two miles I'm going to be disappointed in myself in some ways that I didn't own up to my own standard for the day and if I walk in with no goals then there's no level of disappointment right like there's no negative reinforcement at whatsoever when I don't work out as hard as I wanted to right so I think that that kind of perspective is important of course it can also be placed in the wrong direction right like for example if I set a goal uh that was either way too low like if I say I only want to run a mile today but in reality I have the ability to run three today uh or if I say it's something way too high right like if if I say I want to try squatting 400 pounds today you got I'm giving you guys kind of an idea of my level of physical fitness but if I say that I want to squat you know 400 pounds today and really I can only squat like 300 I might get hurt right there's potential negative consequences to overreaching uh if I say that I want to work a 60 hour work week but I really only have you know 40 hours in me this week then that 20 hours could be burned right it could be really bad for me so all of that to say there's not a really good um you know there's not a really good framework for this right we all have to kind of understand these different pieces and parts of the puzzle for each of us individually and be aware of when we are burning out and when we are you know overreaching and then what is realistic for us I come per so I like to ask all of my guests two questions at the end of uh of an interview the first question is what question would you like to be asked more often you know I've been asking you questions and in reality I never really asked you what you would like to be asked uh and I think this is a really important question for interviewers to ask okay so I'll tell you but I don't actually have time to answer it because I assume that you're gonna then maybe ask me the question um but I actually enjoy talking about my weight loss story it's uh I think that uh there's a I learned a lot about um setting goals uh establishing vision reinforcing vision um you know challenges and carrying through with something and and and all that kind of feeds into into the ultimate like Kataden um uh story that that's where it's kind of derived from but but I I think that any option I get to sit down and kind of have that conversation with someone I enjoy having that conversation you know it's a big point of pride for me in my life that that I was able to accomplish that and so that's what I enjoy talking about it's just such a big subject yeah yeah I don't think we can cover that on this but I would be definitely interested in talking talking to you about it uh and if if you guys actually the listeners of the show if you want to hear that story uh I could ask Patrick back on uh to the show to talk about that we would probably you know frame that around the idea of self-discipline and all of those things that go along with that uh incredible story I've heard parts and pieces of it just being around Patrick and uh I think it's a valuable story for anyone to hear but especially Patrick being a developer uh being able to relate the that story to his you know first of all his day to day work right so it's it's kind of hard to to keep you know health at the forefront of a priority list when you're sitting most of the day like if that's that is our job yeah who we sit in a chair for eight hours right and then we go to lunch with a client yeah yeah and then you know we code all night and so yeah it's it's it's kind of a big subject and so yeah that's a huge a huge accomplishment and if you guys would like to hear that story from Patrick uh reach out let me know um and I'm I might invite Patrick back on to to talk about I might just do it anyway thank you maybe you know I I really might just do it anyway um because I think it's such a cool story so uh and then the second question that I like to ask and this one should be a little bit easier and uh you should be answering this one fully but uh if you had just 30 seconds to sit down with a developer regardless of their experience level what advice would you give them well use google you know I would say um again I think it's what I said earlier that I would take every opportunity to teach someone else I think that for me that's been my my always the times where I've learned the most is when I've had to uh explain a concept and that that that's reinforced things for myself and on top of that you're also giving back to the community you're a part of right and so I think it's kind of this win-win all the way around so I would you know it's very so in other words I'm encouraging constant learning but through teaching yeah so that that that's what I would say to you yeah for sure I I can definitely I go that I think that's a really important part of progressing and and the concept of mentoring and uh you know investing in helping another person there's so much that you can learn about that both you know objectively about programming and about um actually doing that work but also as a human you learn a lot about about communication skills you know and about you know dealing with another person and learning about their motivations and their desires and uh those all are really important skills to have just as a human being so I totally totally agree with you on that this has been awesome thank you so much Patrick for taking some time and uh and talking to me and all the people who are listening to the show hey everybody thank you you know I've enjoyed it and what's your twitter handle so they can go and barrage you with tweets I feel like you did this on purpose I don't actually have twitter so I'll tell you where you can find me you can find me on instagram at the great pats b with two a's because of my love of film you can find me on letterboxed at p-hp-d I like to keep my uh my watched movie list for this year up and then of course any of the at m of one podcast so there's twitter and there's facebook and of course the website m of one podcast dot com you can find me all over that stuff and m of one is also on iTunes is it on any other it's on iTunes and Stitcher cool so great all right thank you so much Patrick thank you Jonathan thanks so much for listening to today's episode of Developer TeaI appreciate each and every moment that you spend with me here on the show I don't take you for granted the audience is what makes this show what it is so thank you so much for listening to this episode if you or someone when you know is looking for a job as a designer or a developer go and check out today's sponsor hired dot com incredible opportunities from over 2500 companies offering salary and equity both contract and full time just so many opportunities there make sure you use the special link hired dot com slash Developer Teawhich will actually double your signing bonus if you do end up getting a job through hired and don't forget that hired also gives out a referral bonus if you refer to somebody else so refer them to hire dot com slash Developer Teathank you so much for listening to today's episode and until next time enjoy your tea