You've probably heard it said a million times before we all have 24 hours in our day. No matter how powerful or how much resources you have, no matter who you know, no matter how healthy you are, no matter what job you have, you have the same amount of time in your day as anyone else, the people you admire, and the people that you've never even met or heard of. And so with this time, we have to make decisions. In today's episode, I want to talk about the difference between the people who continue to grow throughout the rest of their lives, the way that they spend their time, the kinds of actions, the classifications of actions that they're taking, versus the kinds of people who are not, unfortunately, growing through the rest of their lives and classifying their actions and their decisions. My name is Jonathan Cutrell, you're listening to Developer Tea. My goal on this show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers. So when you think about time, it's easy to imagine that the way that we spend our time is transactional. We spend five minutes or an hour, and we get something that is in equal value return. And it's even more tempting to, if you were to kind of put a spin on this, someone who is kind of one level above that thinking, they think that they can either spend their time wisely or they can waste it. And so this binary concept kind of slips in, the idea that you are either spending your time in a way that is wasteful or you are spending it in a way that isn't, and therefore is wise. This is problematic because it's hard, first of all, to determine when you are actually wasting your time. But perhaps the more interesting problem with this false binary belief is that the upper bound on whether you are using your time wisely has so much more to be explored. The way you use your time is dynamic and the choices that you make loop back, or I guess they loop forward is a better way to think about it, so that your future time becomes more valuable. Think about it like this. If you were to start putting money into your retirement account investing, that retirement account is going to grow with some interest. Of course, there's some risk involved, but generally speaking, you can expect that retirement account to grow better than if you were to just take that same money and put it into a savings account. Hopefully this is not revolutionary information for you, but the power of compound interest is very important. When we spend our time, we need to be thinking along the same lines. We need to think about things that compound, that become more valuable over time. Thinking about our time as a resource that we invest into higher growth things. If all we're doing is putting our time into linear return, then all we're going to get back out is linear return. We're going to take a quick break, a quick sponsor break, and then we're going to come back and talk about some different classifications of ways that you can spend your time that come back to you in exponential gains. Today's episode is sponsored by Elastic. Elastic enables the world's leading organizations to put their data to work using the power of search. Whether it's connecting people and teams with content that matters, keeping applications and infrastructure online or protecting entire digital ecosystems, Elastic's search platform is able to surface relevant results with speed and at scale. Learn how you can get started with Elastic's search platform for free at elastic.co slash F-A-O. Thanks again to Elastic for sponsoring today's episode of Developer Tea. We should say a front that classifying your decisions, classifying your actions, this can be difficult to do. In fact, really, you are the only person that can do this because so many decisions that we make are heavily dependent on context and on the simple fact that no matter what we do, we are still human. It might make sense for you personally to take a little extra time off to relax and rest than the average person. No one can tell you what is or isn't a waste of your time and what doesn't provide you leaps and bounds of additional value because value is ultimately determined by you. That's the major disclaimer that I want to throw out before we go into this classification process, giving you some signals for what kinds of decisions, what kinds of actions are going to provide this exponential gain, this high leverage so that your 24-hour day is used as wisely as possible. We say the word wisely here, but remember, this isn't about being serious all the time. Hopefully, that's already come across. This is about choosing your actions, choosing your decision pathways intelligently towards the goals that you have. We're going to classify some of these. I'll give you the classified version when I say classified, I don't mean secret. The kind that might provide additional leverage that might provide exponential gain, and then I'm going to give you the non-exponential version of that kind of decision. We're going to start with a topic that I covered on the show before, and that is the learning stacking. This is particularly relevant if you're building your skill sets. A lot of people want to know, what should I learn next? Well, if there is something that you can learn that will make your existing skills more valuable, especially if it's significantly more valuable, or if your existing skills make this new skill more valuable, then that's likely a better option than learning something totally different. Now, there's a caveat here. If learning that something totally different is going to open up new doors or new ways of thinking that are vastly superior to your existing knowledge, then in a way, you're getting a better learning stacking effect from that than you would be if you were to go with the thing that just interacts with those existing skills. Think about your learning in terms of portfolio of skills rather than individual skills that you're adding on top of each other. They interact with each other. So, one skill might make another skill more valuable. The next classification I want to bring up is called multi-effect habits. Well, it's called that because that's what I'm calling it. I don't really know what this would be technically called, but developing habits that have more than one beneficial outcome. More than one beneficial outcome to these habits. An easy example of this that we've talked about many times on the show before is exercise and even better than just walking on a treadmill as if you can pair that exercise with getting outside. There are plenty of studies that show the benefits of both of these habits, but this has a very clear multi-effect benefit. There's multiple things that are going to improve if you are taking the time to exercise, particularly if you can get outside and exercise at the same time. There are a lot of good examples of multi-effect decisions, multi-effect beneficial decisions. Another easy one is reading. This is a very good habit that produces a lot of positive effects. What I want you to pay attention to is that this doesn't just apply to you personally. It also applies to teams, to organizations, to basically any kind of cultural grouping of people can benefit from multi-effect beneficial decision making. When you're considering two decisions, or let's say, for example, you're considering a regular meeting on your schedule, it's very unlikely. It's unlikely that you should keep that meeting and do it regularly. Let's say it's a weekly meeting or even a daily meeting, unless there is more than one beneficial outcome. If there's only one beneficial outcome to a meeting, if there's only one thing that you're trying to do, it's likely that that thing could be accomplished in a much lower investment way. This is where we start getting into the idea of using your time in a way that is highest leverage. This is how if you use your time wisely, and again, we use that term very loosely on this episode, if you use your time properly towards your goals, it's likely that most of the things that you do, most of your decisions, are going to naturally gravitate towards multi-effect beneficial decisions. Most of your decisions will naturally gravitate towards that. You'll start to notice, if you ask this question, what are the effects of this thing? What are the positive effects of this thing? Why is this on my calendar? Why is this habit something that I'm doing every day? What am I getting out of doing this habit, or can this be offloaded to something that is more automated? Maybe it's more a synchronous, for example, something that I'm not necessarily spending a lot of time and other people's time to accomplish, is there a way that I can invest less and get the same positive output from this? Anything that is taking your synchronous time, you should be optimizing towards multi-effect beneficial outcomes. Finally, I want to classify a kind of decision-making. There's multiple ways to talk about this. There's other existing mental models. One that you can look up that's worth reading about is Jeff Bezos' type one and type two decisions. Other versions of this are fast and slow thinking. There's a lot of other ways to approach similar conversations. I want to take a bird's eye view and talk about this decision-making process. When do you want to make a quick, heuristic-based decision, and when do you want to slow down and make a more intentional decision? The most critical thing to remember about this juxtaposition of types of decisions is number one, it doesn't necessarily have to be a small decision to go with the heuristic approach. This is something that a lot of people forget. It doesn't have to be a small decision. Some people can get hung up on over-analysing very large decisions when they have, let's say, two or three options on the table. They can get hung up over-analysing them when really any of those two or three options may actually be sufficient. When it takes a long time to parse the differences between two or three options, if you're having to do a lot of calculation, it's likely that any of them is going to suffice. The extra time that you spend deliberating between those options is actually more valuable spent doing something different. Choosing one of those options quickly, even when it's a large, very impactful decision is probably an okay route. The importance here is to think about the time that you're spending deliberating as the investment. You're not just thinking about the transaction or the time that you're spending actually following through as the investment. That's not the only investment. The time you're spending deliberating and then the next piece that most people often forget when it comes to making these efficient decisions is which of these decisions is going to allow me for better optionality in the future or is going to kind of strap me into a lot more time that I have to invest in the future. Which of these is going to give me an easy out, for example? Is there a way to get out of this decision so that if it does turn out to be going in a poor direction or if I find myself investing more time in places that I don't want to invest in, that I have good options to leave that decision behind, kind of effectively reverse that decision. Again, this is kind of referencing the type one or type one and type two decisions from Jeff Bezos. The important thing when you're talking about classifying these decisions differences between the fast, the quick decision and the slow decision is to recognize what is the difference, what is the possible difference if I am wrong about this decision? What is the downside to being wrong? If the downside is small, then choosing fast is likely a better option. If we zoom out and think about the decisions, the actions that you're taking to most wisely spend your time so that you're maximizing that 24 hours. I want you to keep in mind that none of this really matters if your goals have been determined by someone other than you. If you're following kind of blindly following the industry standard or if you're following in the footsteps of, let's say, your parents or a friend or someone you admire, take the time to determine what you are trying to do with your life, with your career. If you are on a rocket ship, but you're headed towards the wrong destination, it just doesn't matter how fast you're getting there. It doesn't matter how efficiently you are spending your time if that efficiency is pointing you somewhere that you don't care about going. So take the time and even choose to do it slowly if you need to. Take the time to set your direction properly because none of this matters unless you're headed in the direction that you want to go. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Developer Tea. Thank you again to Elastic for sponsoring today's episode. 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