This episode explores the fundamental mindset of building your vocabulary, extending beyond literal words to conceptual understanding and mental models, and how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be a powerful tool for expanding and refining this crucial skill for career growth, clarity, and navigating disruptions.

• Uncover why building your vocabulary is a fundamental skill that can help you navigate career transitions, disruptions (such as those caused by AI), and changes in roles.
• Understand that "vocabulary" goes beyond literal words to include mental models, understanding your own self, specific diagrams (like causal loop diagrams or C4 diagrams), and programming paradigms or design patterns. This conceptual vocabulary provides access to nuanced and powerful ways of thinking.
• Learn how LLMs can be incredibly useful for refining and expanding your conceptual vocabulary, allowing you to explore new subjects, understand systems, and identify leverage points. They can help you understand the connotations, origins, and applications of concepts, as well as how they piece together with adjacent ideas.
• Discover why starting with fundamental primitives like inputs, outputs, flows, and system types can help you develop vocabulary, and how LLMs can suggest widely used tools or visualisations based on these primitives (e.g., a scatter plot for XY data).
• Explore why focusing on understanding the "why" and "when" of using a concept or tool is a much higher leverage skill than merely knowing "how" to use it, enabling you to piece together different vocabulary pieces for deeper insights.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

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This episode delves into the use of substitute questions—simpler queries we use to answer more complex ones—and the crucial concept of cohesion between these substitutes and our true objectives. You'll learn how to leverage counterfactual thinking to scrutinize your assumptions and enhance the effectiveness of your decisions. Discover two powerful counterfactual techniques: asking "what else could be true?" to reveal alternative explanations, and employing thought experiments to, for example, precisely define your desires and career aspirations. The discussion offers practical applications, from refining hiring processes by identifying high-cohesion interview criteria to avoiding confirmation bias in debugging. By adopting counterfactual thinking, you can significantly improve your analytical skills, make more informed choices, and build robust strategies.

• Uncover how cognitively taxing questions lead us to use substitute questions as heuristics, and why understanding the cohesion between these is vital for accurate decision-making.
• Learn to implement "counterfactual thinking" to rigorously check your heuristics and substitute questions, ensuring they effectively align with your actual goals and underlying evaluations.
• Discover two key counterfactual techniques: exploring "what else could be true?" to identify alternative explanations for observations, and conducting thought experiments to clarify nuanced personal and professional desires.
• Explore practical applications of counterfactuals to drastically improve processes like hiring, by challenging low-signal interview criteria (e.g., LeetCode problems) and making more predictive assessments of candidates.
• Understand how counterfactuals can combat biases like confirmation bias in problem-solving, such as debugging, by prompting you to consider alternative causes and avoid poor pathways of biased logic.
• Realise the transformative power of counterfactual thinking in refining your thinking process, improving your career trajectory, and enhancing departmental operations by identifying and improving low-cohesion substitutions.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com..

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!.

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode explores why maintenance tasks, despite their fundamental importance, are often neglected or deprioritised in our daily lives and professional work. It delves into the psychological biases that make consistent maintenance challenging, such as hyperbolic discounting, where immediate gratification is valued over future gains, and the construal level theory, which highlights how psychological distance makes preventative work less impactful. The concept of the "maintenance paradox" is introduced, explaining that when maintenance is done well, its benefits go unnoticed, diminishing the sense of reward. The episode encourages listeners to adopt a maintenance mindset, making these tasks a standard habit rather than relying on typical prioritisation structures, as they are crucial for enhancing the quality of overall experiences and preventing future, more urgent problems.

• People tend to discount future gains or devalue them relative to immediate gratification, a concept known as hyperbolic discounting. This means a dollar now is generally more appealing than a dollar tomorrow, or even two dollars tomorrow.
• Many important tasks, whether changing guitar strings, making your bed, clearing email backlogs, or improving a development environment (often termed "tech debt" in a professional context), are easily put off because they seem like low priority in the moment.
• The "maintenance paradox" illustrates that when maintenance is performed correctly, its positive effects are often invisible because it prevents negative outcomes that are never experienced. This lack of visible benefit means there's no immediate "dopamine rush" or gratification from consistent maintenance.
• Construal level theory explains why maintenance is difficult by highlighting different forms of psychological distance.
  • Temporal distance relates to the future value of maintenance being less immediate.
  • Spatial distance suggests tasks further away (e.g., in an attic) are more likely to be in disrepair.
  • Social distance refers to maintenance affecting others more than oneself, reducing direct personal impact.
  • Hypothetical distance is particularly relevant for maintenance, as preventing a problem means never experiencing the potential downside, making the value of the preventative work hard to assess or feel. This contrasts with reactive work, where real losses are visible, making it seem more urgent and higher priority.
• A "bad cycle" can be created by the dopamine rush experienced when allowing things to pile up and then finally cleaning or fixing them, which inadvertently trains individuals that it's acceptable to delay maintenance. The marginal benefit of immediate action doesn't provide enough immediate gratification compared to the larger reward of eventual relief.
• To counteract these biases, maintenance must become a standard practice or habit. Adopting a "maintenance mindset" means understanding that these tasks enhance the quality of other experiences, such as making a bed to create a calm environment or applying sunscreen to prevent future pain.
• Maintenance tasks often fall into the "important but not urgent" quadrant of the Eisenhower matrix, but they only become urgent when the disrepair is overwhelming, like guitar strings breaking on stage. It is vital to integrate these behaviours into daily routines rather than relying solely on typical prioritisation structures.
• The podcast itself can be seen as a form of "maintenance behaviour" for one's career and professional life.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!.

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode introduces a profound yet simple principle: knowing your baselines. This concept is crucial for effectively detecting and measuring change in your life and career.

• Uncover the fundamental idea that to recognise when something has changed, you must first understand what things were like before the change occurred. Often, people haven't been measuring their lives, making it challenging to spot shifts because their baselines are unknown.
• Learn to identify your personal baselines across various aspects of your life. This includes understanding typical daily habits, such as whether you tend to skip lunch, or how many hours you usually work (e.g., 6, 8, or 10 hours). While general data might suggest optimal working hours (e.g., 35-45 hours for most benefit, rarely more than 55 hours), your personal baseline is unique, and the goal is to empower you to make conscious decisions about your habits.
• Explore other crucial areas for baseline measurement, including simple health metrics like your typical body weight, baseline levels of activity with friends, expected energy levels, and even your baseline for positivity.
• Discover how establishing these 'operating norms' for your life can be a critical factor in recognising positive changes, identifying when you are unconsciously changing a behaviour, or even detecting signs of burnout. For instance, if your body weight trends upwards, it might signal decreased activity. Similarly, knowing your baseline learning rate can help you assess if you are learning at an acceptable pace.
• Understand the significant benefit of sharing your baseline measurements or expectations with others. What others observe about your life can provide a valuable starting point or confirm changes you might not perceive yourself. It's encouraged to get curious about what others are seeing, rather than dismissing their observations.
• Grasp why this principle is so important: it helps align your actions with your values and purpose. If you care about spending quality time with family or friends, understanding your baseline investment in these relationships allows you to recognise if you're moving away from your expected commitment. Knowing your baselines demonstrates that you're putting action behind your values, rather than just stating them.
• Consider starting by engaging a trusted person to help you be aware of your baselines, especially concerning the things that matter most to you. This provides external observation and support.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode explores the complex landscape of receiving advice in your career, particularly during uncertain times. It offers insights on how to critically evaluate feedback and external information, prepare for potential negative outcomes outside of your control, and adapt your focus to thrive in a changing industry.

• Explore why the vast amount of advice you receive throughout your career, including feedback from bosses and peers, platitudes, anecdotes, data, opinions, and facts, will shape your thinking.
• Discover that even people you trust and consider authoritative may give advice you shouldn't listen to. Sometimes, all the positive signals and feedback you receive may not predict negative career events like layoffs or not getting a promotion.
• Learn not to stop listening to feedback, but instead listen for themes and common threads that resonate with your gut intuition.
• Understand the importance of contextualising people's assertions, testing them, and putting them through the wringer. However, even when following great advice and testing it, you might still experience negative events like a layoff, as luck and chaos agents are often at the helm and are not under your control.
• Discover why it is important to not only prepare for luck but also to prepare for failure modes – situations that go poorly regardless of your upfront actions.
• Learn that resilience, preparation, and the ability to absorb impacts (becoming antifragile) are likely to happen because you recognise what happens in the margins and prepare for eventualities you may not think are likely, rather than solely from receiving good advice.
• Consider that there are no real silver bullets or secret answers in career advice; moments of wisdom shared by others are often just a snapshot of one experience.
• Learn to make decisions within your limited context and apply advice dynamically, considering how it changes with environmental shifts and plays out in unlucky scenarios.
• Discover the advice to be a little bit more skeptical of the advice you believe the most and a little more accepting of advice that might seem counterintuitive or on the fringes.
• Explore the crucial shift in focus from developing skills to emphasising ownership and responsibility to combat fear about the industry changing and your skills potentially losing value due to factors like AI or layoffs.
• Understand that taking responsibility means being willing to be the accountable person and figuring out how to achieve goals, which doesn't necessarily require having the skill yourself but rather being willing to supervise, verify, or import skills.
• Recognise that ownership and responsibility are difficult to export or outsource, and a human in the loop is critical for taking ownership and finishing the job, unlike trying to hold an AI accountable.
• Learn the practical advice to drive conversations with your manager towards growing your scope of responsibility, accountability, and ownership, which builds trust and reliability beyond just your skill set.
• Understand that your perception of the criticality of your tasks and meetings is usually inflated, and the ramifications of not attending are often much smaller than you imagine.
• Discover a tactical method to evaluate your obligations (meetings, tasks) based on their pliability (ease of being moved or changed) and volatility (risk/negative effect of changing it) to help you manage your time.
• Learn to be ruthless in identifying how you spend your time.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!.

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to ratethispodcast.com/devtea and leave a review!. Leaving a review on platforms like iTunes is very impactful and helps other developers discover the show.

This episode addresses the fear surrounding industry changes, such as AI and potential outsourcing, and offers actionable advice for engineers, managers, and leaders to navigate these challenges. You'll learn why shifting your focus from just developing skills to embracing ownership and responsibility is crucial for long-term career resilience and agency.

• Understand the fear and concern that traditional skills may lose value due to industry changes, including AI and potential layoffs.
• Discover the critical shift needed in your career focus from solely developing skills towards embracing ownership and responsibility.
• Learn why responsibility and ownership are becoming increasingly valuable and are difficult to outsource or export, contrasting with skills which may become more fluid.
• Explore how human agency, including judging success, setting goals and direction, and translating inputs into action, complements or supervises work potentially done by machines or outsourced teams, with the human taking ultimate responsibility.
• Gain practical advice on how to apply this shift by discussing where your responsibility, accountability, and ownership can grow in conversations with your manager.
• Recognise how focusing on increasing the things you are personally accountable for builds trust and reliability, qualities that extend beyond your technical skill set.
• Understand that accountability, ownership, responsibility, and reliability are becoming core behaviours for a good engineer as skills become more fluid.
• Find support and discussion with other engineers by joining the Developer Tea Discord community.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today! You can also directly message the host on Discord.

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you. You can also find this episode and all past episodes on developertea.com.

This episode provides tactical ways to own your time, reduce meeting load and obligations, and regain agency, especially when feeling burnt out. You'll learn how to use a simple two-part model focusing on Pliability and Volatility to evaluate your tasks and meetings and make intentional choices about how you spend your time.

• Learn how owning your time is a critical first step in combating burnout, tiredness, and feeling worn out, helping you evaluate whether you feel agency over your time.
• Understand the principle that not all time is equal, whether it's sacred personal time or different times of day at work, and why you shouldn't treat it equally.
• Discover a simple two-part model using the characteristics of Pliability and Volatility to evaluate your obligations, such as meetings and tasks.
• Learn the definition of Pliability – how easily an obligation can be moved, changed, or cancelled, representing its flexibility.
• Understand the definition of Volatility – the risk, downsides, and potential compound negative effects associated with changing or not attending an obligation.
• Evaluate your tasks and meetings using their Pliability and Volatility scores to identify obligations that can likely be moved, made smaller, or cancelled with minimal downside, particularly those with low volatility and high pliability.
• Explore why our perception of the criticality of our obligations is often inflated, and how the actual ramifications of changing them are usually much smaller than what we expect.
• Learn how applying this model can help you consolidate obligations, create longer blocks of focus time (especially useful for engineers), and ultimately regain ownership and agency over your schedule.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you. You can also find this episode and all past episodes on developertea.com.

This episode explores the dichotomy between iterative planning and target state planning in software development, discussing the benefits and drawbacks of each approach and providing decision factors to help you choose the most appropriate method for your situation.

• Understand the core difference between iterative planning, which emphasises agility and responding to change with short planning horizons, and target state planning, which involves laying out a more defined long-term direction.
• Discover that while iterative planning is often considered the "right way" for software development, target state planning can be valuable for setting a general direction, which can be updated as you learn.
• Learn why addressing problems atomically in an iterative fashion can be valid, but that evaluating multiple potential improvements together with a target state in mind can lead to better coordination, efficiency, and consistency.
• Explore the decision factors that might lead you to favour iterative planning, such as high uncertainty, learning-focused work (discovery, prototypes), and fast feedback loops.
• Understand the decision factors that might lead you to favour target state planning, such as clarity on the problem, working in production with high coupling, regulatory/safety risks, slow feedback loops, high cost of mistakes, broad scope of impact, and high coordination costs.
• Learn why choosing a planning method by default is a warning sign, and that considering the usefulness of upfront planning without being limited by dogma is important.
• Understand that upfront planning (target state) can enable adaptation as you learn, and that negative perceptions of it often stem from costly, incorrect plans that were difficult to change.
• Discover that the choice between iterative and target state planning is a spectrum rather than a pure dichotomy, and that a target state doesn't necessarily need to be a long-term plan.

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If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode delves into practical principles for navigating the unexpected in your life and career. Rather than attempting to predict specific events, the focus is on cultivating resilience and optionality by identifying vulnerabilities in your systems and adopting a proactive mindset to transform potential challenges into strategic advantages.

• Discover the three core principles of preparedness: first, build for change by investing in low-cost, high-upside options to prepare for many potential futures. Second, understand the weak points in your current systems (career, personal life, finances, etc.) to create mitigation strategies. Third, think like an engineer by identifying bottlenecks and single points of failure and pressure testing your life's resources.

• Learn how to invest in optionality by pursuing low-cost, high-upside opportunities such as maintaining your professional network and reading books. These investments provide flexibility, improve negotiation power, and enhance your psychological position when making decisions.

• Understand the significance of identifying and analysing the weak aspects of your personal and professional systems to either mitigate risks directly, for example, by developing multiple income streams, or to create plans to absorb risks if they materialise, such as building a financial runway.

• Explore the concept of thinking like an engineer by actively seeking out bottlenecks and single points of failure in your life. Employ pressure testing across various resources, including relational, monetary, and physical well-being, to bolster your resilience against potential interruptions.

• Recognise that mitigating risks is crucial for safely seizing opportunities and fostering growth in both your career and personal life. A strong foundation built on resilience allows for bolder and more strategic decision-making when beneficial options arise.

If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com..

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!.

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.

This episode introduces a simple yet highly effective communication habit that can be adopted by anyone to significantly reduce the risk of misunderstandings and enhance connection. It explores how this practice, which requires thoughtful communication but no special skills, can benefit individuals at all career levels.

• Discover why misunderstandings pose a significant risk to your career and how our natural inclination towards low-effort communication contributes to this risk.
• Learn the core of this high-leverage habit: restating what someone is telling you in your own words to ensure clarity and mutual understanding. This involves summarising or rephrasing the other person's message using your own terminology.
• Understand the multiple benefits of this technique, including demonstrating that you are actively listening, encoding the information more effectively for yourself, and most crucially, giving the other person the opportunity to correct your understanding.
• Explore how this habit provides a critical opportunity to refine your understanding and check it against the speaker's intended message, ultimately leading to better comprehension.
• Learn how receiving confirmation ("That's right") builds credibility and fosters a sense of being understood, creating a genuine connection with others.
• Grasp the idea that this "mirroring back" of meaning, rather than just the words, is a cheap, deep, and high-leverage behaviour that can significantly improve your communication effectiveness in professional settings.

• If you enjoyed this episode and would like me to discuss a question that you have on the show, drop it over at: developertea.com.

If you want to be a part of a supportive community of engineers (non-engineers welcome!) working to improve their lives and careers, join us on the Developer Tea Discord community by visiting https://developertea.com/discord today!

If you're enjoying the show and want to support the content head over to iTunes and leave a review! It helps other developers discover the show and keep us focused on what matters to you.