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Leitura de 22 min

3 Lessons of Productivity

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cattrell reflects on the productivity lessons he’s learned from creating over 400 podcast episodes. He shares three fundamental principles that go beyond typical productivity hacks, focusing instead on the psychological and philosophical approaches to sustainable work.

The first lesson is to not base your productivity on your emotions. Cattrell explains that while it’s challenging, separating your emotional state from your actual output is crucial. He uses his own podcasting experience as an example—sometimes he feels an idea isn’t good, but after going through the process of developing and recording it, he produces valuable content. Productivity should be measured by tangible output, not by how you feel about the work in the moment.

The second lesson is to always pair your idealistic, value-driven goals with simple, measurable progress goals. For instance, while his big goal is to help developers improve their careers, his progress goal is to produce three podcast episodes per week. This connection between values and tangible action ensures that abstract aspirations translate into real-world results.

The third lesson is to understand your fundamentals—the core skills and activities that form your foundation. By mastering these fundamentals, you create margin (extra time, resources, or capability) that allows you to explore new opportunities and skills. Cattrell emphasizes that excellence in fundamentals enables sustainable growth and adaptation in your career.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Linode — Cloud hosting service with plans starting at $5/month, featuring SSD storage, 40-gigabit internal network, and multiple data centers. Recommended for developers wanting to host personal projects or servers.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction and purpose of sharing productivity lessons — Jonathan Cattrell introduces the episode by explaining he’s created over 400 episodes and wants to share productivity lessons he’s learned. He notes that many listeners are developers seeking to understand productivity from a psychological perspective rather than just ‘hacky’ tips. He promises to discuss three high-level lessons from his podcasting experience.
  • 00:02:06 — First lesson: Don’t base productivity on emotions — Cattrell presents the first and possibly most important lesson: do not base your perception of productivity on your emotional state. He acknowledges this is difficult but essential. Using his podcast as an example, he explains that sometimes he doesn’t like an idea initially, but after working through it, he produces a valuable episode. He emphasizes that productivity is about producing output, not about how you feel while working.
  • 00:06:15 — Clarifying emotions versus productivity — Cattrell clarifies that he’s not saying emotions don’t matter or that you should never take breaks. Instead, he argues that emotional states like guilt, insecurity, frustration, or tiredness don’t directly determine whether you’re being productive. While these feelings might correlate with lower productivity, they can be separated—you can still produce output even when you don’t feel like it.
  • 00:08:28 — Sponsor segment: Linode hosting service — The episode is sponsored by Linode, a cloud hosting provider. Cattrell details their plans starting at 20 credit using code ‘developertea2017’ at spec.fm/linode.
  • 00:11:13 — Second lesson: Pair value-driven goals with progress goals — The second lesson is to always pair your idealistic, value-driven goals with simple, measurable progress goals. Cattrell uses his own example: his value goal is to help developers improve their careers, while his progress goal is to produce three podcast episodes weekly. He explains that without tangible progress, value goals remain abstract ideas rather than drivers of action.
  • 00:13:53 — Example of lifelong learning as a progress goal — Cattrell provides an example of how to apply the second lesson: if you value being a lifelong learner, set a progress goal like reading one book per week. The key is to attach a concrete, sustainable action to your abstract value, making it possible to measure whether you’re actually advancing toward that value.
  • 00:14:30 — Third lesson: Understand your fundamentals — The third lesson is to understand your fundamentals—the core skills and activities that form your foundation. Cattrell explains that by mastering these fundamentals, you create margin (extra capacity) that allows you to explore new opportunities. For developers, this might mean excelling in core programming languages before branching into new technologies.
  • 00:16:48 — How fundamentals create margin for growth — Cattrell elaborates that when you become excellent in your fundamentals, you work faster and produce higher quality results, which creates margin in your schedule, finances, or energy. This margin then allows you to safely explore new skills and opportunities without jeopardizing your core work, enabling sustainable career growth.
  • 00:17:39 — Conclusion and call to action — Cattrell concludes by encouraging listeners to discuss these productivity concepts with colleagues, managers, or team members. He emphasizes that these lessons focus on the psychology of productivity rather than specific hacks, and he hopes listeners will apply them to their own careers. He thanks Linode again for sponsoring and reminds listeners to subscribe.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2017-08-02T09:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:19:12

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] i’ve done a lot of these episodes i’ve actually done over 400 episodes now and even though i’m

[00:00:11] not an expert at podcasting i certainly wasn’t an expert when i started and i wouldn’t consider

[00:00:16] myself an expert at podcasting now i have learned a few lessons and specifically i’ve learned lessons

[00:00:23] about productivity and part of the reason that i feel like this is important for me to share

[00:00:29] is because so many people who listen to this show you came here to learn about how to be

[00:00:35] productive as a developer and not just you know hacky ways of being productive but truly

[00:00:41] understanding psychology and understanding you know as a developer how to how to integrate the

[00:00:49] tools around you for example into your daily work and we’re going to talk a little bit from a higher

[00:00:55] level about three things that i’ve learned

[00:00:59] lessons of productivity that i’ve learned from recording over 400 episodes of developer t

[00:01:05] and that is what you’re listening to today my name is jonathan cattrell this show is called

[00:01:10] developer t if this is your first episode i would highly recommend that you go back and listen to

[00:01:15] some of the back catalog we’ve covered so many topics now we’ve covered topics that really apply

[00:01:21] to developers at all stages in their career but also people who are not developers at all maybe

[00:01:27] you are working in the digital industry you’re working in the digital industry you’re working in

[00:01:29] the digital landscape maybe you’re a designer or perhaps you’re a ux strategist or maybe you own a

[00:01:35] company or maybe you don’t work in any kind of digital environment maybe you we’ve had people

[00:01:41] like bank tellers right into the show for example so i highly recommend you check out the back

[00:01:47] catalog if this is your first episode but i do want to talk about some of these lessons that

[00:01:52] i’ve learned i’m going to start with kind of the big lesson that i’ve learned and then we’re going

[00:01:56] to do the other two after we talk about some of the big lessons that i’ve learned and then we’re

[00:01:59] going to talk about some of the big lessons that i’ve learned and then we’re going to talk about

[00:01:59] today’s sponsor so the first the first lesson of productivity and one that i want to pass on to you

[00:02:06] is possibly one of the most important lessons about product productivity that you could ever

[00:02:11] learn and it is very simple do not base your productivity on your emotions in other words

[00:02:20] do not base how you perceive about your productivity do not base that on your

[00:02:28] emotional success

[00:02:29] state now this is incredibly hard to do this is very very hard to do one of the things that

[00:02:36] defines productivity for developer t is delivering on schedule in other words delivering three

[00:02:42] episodes per week now there’s a few exceptions to this rule for example when liam my son arrived

[00:02:50] we had a couple of episodes that we took off sometimes we take off a few episodes around

[00:02:54] holidays but all in all we plan to deliver

[00:02:59] episodes per week we found that that’s relatively sustainable even when i have a lot of stuff going

[00:03:05] on i can sustain i can see out in advance i can do things to prepare for that scheduling and so

[00:03:12] this is part of what it means to be productive for developer t and sometimes sometimes i don’t

[00:03:19] like the ideas that i talk about on this show when i initially have them let me say that one more time

[00:03:29] i have an idea to record an episode for the show and initially i don’t really think it’s very good

[00:03:35] and it’s only after i force myself to sit in front of a notepad or uh you guys know about this ritual

[00:03:43] that i have i go and i work out i have a kind of a 30 minute physical routine and then i hop in the

[00:03:49] shower and then i don’t leave until i have an idea sometimes i walk out uh away from that idea

[00:03:57] feeling like it’s really not very good and i don’t want to do that i don’t want to do that i don’t

[00:03:59] and it’s not until after i’ve recorded that episode it’s not until after i’ve gone through

[00:04:05] the process of figuring out what it is that i want to say about this topic it’s not until after that

[00:04:10] that i actually feel productive but the reality is that entire process is productive right and my

[00:04:17] feelings really don’t have anything to do with whether or not i was being productive that word

[00:04:23] productive comes from the word produce am i producing something am i actually producing

[00:04:29] some kind of output and a lot of times on the other end something that i totally thought was

[00:04:35] going to be a horrible idea or that i wouldn’t be able to flesh out into multiple uh angles of

[00:04:41] looking at that idea a lot of times i walk away from that episode and it’s one of my favorite

[00:04:46] episodes this concept also applies to uh for example if you are working at an agency maybe

[00:04:55] you work for clients or you work for a product

[00:04:59] team as a developer uh there’s a bunch of options here to fill in the blank but you work as a

[00:05:05] developer in a company and you feel less productive because of some outside pressure maybe you feel

[00:05:13] less productive because you see someone else being more productive than you

[00:05:17] perhaps you feel this pressure this emotional weight to do more than really you can sustainably

[00:05:25] do right and this is kind of a kind of a difficult

[00:05:29] subject to approach because we don’t want to encourage laziness on the show i don’t want to

[00:05:34] encourage that you work only when you feel like it for example right sometimes you’re not going to

[00:05:40] feel like it but still the best thing that you can do that day is get up and go to work do whatever

[00:05:46] work it is that you have in front of you to do highly encourage you to continue developing a

[00:05:54] strong work ethic sometimes working through uh feeling not very much like you’re doing

[00:05:59] like working that day because of this very reason it is much better for you to maintain

[00:06:06] consistency maintain a regular rhythm than fall prey to your emotional state as the determining

[00:06:15] factor in deciding whether or not you’re productive right now i want you to hear me very clearly here

[00:06:22] i’m not saying that your emotions don’t matter i’m not saying that you should never take a day

[00:06:27] off

[00:06:29] saying that you should never take a vacation. What I am saying is that your productivity should not

[00:06:35] be determined by your emotional state. And those emotions can come in many different forms. You may

[00:06:42] feel unproductive because you feel guilty, right? You may feel unproductive because you feel

[00:06:48] insecure. You may feel unproductive because you feel frustrated or unhappy, or perhaps you feel

[00:06:54] tired. There’s tons of emotional and physiological things that can be happening to you that make you

[00:07:01] feel unproductive, but those have no direct bearing on whether or not you are being productive,

[00:07:08] right? And this is kind of a difficult thing to grasp because very often, you know, those things

[00:07:13] are correlated, right? If you don’t feel very good, then you may not be very productive that day.

[00:07:19] But the reason you aren’t productive that day is not necessarily because of your emotional

[00:07:24] state.

[00:07:24] You can separate these two things out, and you can actually be productive. For example,

[00:07:30] in my scenario, I can be productive even though I don’t think my idea is very good. I can still

[00:07:37] be productive and walk away having accomplished something even though, you know, my emotional

[00:07:43] state said that I should stop or that it wasn’t really worth doing. So that’s the first lesson,

[00:07:49] the first lesson of productivity. And really, it comes down to kind of this

[00:07:54] working

[00:07:54] stoicism, right? Some people may call it grit. I don’t really love that word, and I can’t really

[00:08:01] put my finger on why I don’t love that word for this specific concept. But the idea of consistency,

[00:08:08] the idea of maintaining consistency, maintaining sustained and predictable effort, right? This is

[00:08:16] what is important. So that is the first lesson. Do not base your productivity on your emotions.

[00:08:22] We’re going to talk about today’s

[00:08:24] sponsor, and then I’m going to give you two more lessons of productivity that I’ve learned

[00:08:28] in over 400 episodes of this podcast. Today’s episode is sponsored by one of our favorite

[00:08:34] sponsors. They sponsored quite a few of those 400 episodes. It’s Linode. Linode has eight data

[00:08:40] centers, and their plans start at just 5 a month for one gigabyte of RAM. That is so,

[00:08:47] so little money in the grand scheme of things, right? So they have high memory plans. They start

[00:08:53] at $16.

[00:08:54] You can get an upgrade in storage from 24 to 30 gigabytes on the two gigabyte memory plan for $10

[00:09:03] a month. You can get a server running in under a minute on Linode, and they have hourly billing

[00:09:09] with a monthly cap on all their plans and add-on services. They have backups, node balancers,

[00:09:14] long view. These are all things that Linode has provided for quite a long time now,

[00:09:19] very successfully, and many of you developer team listeners, you’ve already checked,

[00:09:24] out Linode. I encourage you, if you’ve been holding out because you don’t want a $10 a month

[00:09:28] plan, and that was the old product plan or the old pricing tiers that they had, they’ve added this

[00:09:35] new $5 a month plan. It’s a fantastic deal for developers who want to kind of put their foot in

[00:09:42] the door. Maybe you want to put up a personal server for your own personal projects, and you’re

[00:09:48] not really going to get a lot of traffic to that server. Well, you can get started with that $5 a

[00:09:53] month.

[00:09:54] On top of that, Linode is providing you $20 worth of credit for just being a developer team

[00:10:01] listener. It’s $20 worth of credit. That’s four months, essentially, for free. Go and check it

[00:10:06] out. It’s native SSD storage, by the way, so it’s really fast. They have a 40 gigabit internal

[00:10:12] network, so if you end up having multiple servers, they can talk to each other very quickly inside of

[00:10:18] that internal network. So get started today by going to spec.fm slash Linode.

[00:10:24] That’s spec.fm slash Linode, and you can get that $20 worth of credit. Make sure you use the code

[00:10:30] developer T 2017 at checkout to get that credit added to your account. Thank you again to Linode

[00:10:36] for sponsoring today’s episode of developer T. So we’re talking about these lessons of productivity

[00:10:42] that I’ve learned after creating over 400 podcast episodes. This first one is kind of a soft lesson.

[00:10:50] It’s not really going to be, you know, the productivity hack by any means. It’s going to be a

[00:10:54] and that was not to base your productivity on your emotions. And this takes a lot of work,

[00:11:00] a lot of effort. It’s not going to be easy, but to try to separate your emotions, try to separate

[00:11:05] your consistency of work away from your emotions. So the second lesson that I’ve learned is to always

[00:11:13] pair your idealistic or your value-driven goals with a simple goal of progress. Always pair

[00:11:21] your idealistic, your value-driven goals with a simple goal of progress.

[00:11:24] So what does this mean? Well, it means that when you have a goal, when you have something that you

[00:11:32] want to do, let’s say, for example, for me, recording a podcast, really the true goal that I

[00:11:37] have is to help developers just like you who are listening to the show become better in their

[00:11:45] careers. That’s the kind of the big ethereal goal. Now, how do I actually get there? How can I

[00:11:52] actually take that idea and apply it to my business? Well, the first thing I do is I’m going to

[00:11:54] apply it. Well, I chose to create a podcast as one way of helping developers become better in

[00:12:00] their careers. There’s many ways that I could go about doing that, but I chose to create a podcast.

[00:12:05] So now I have an avenue that I can take action on. I have a space that I can work in in order

[00:12:13] to accomplish this bigger kind of ethereal goal of helping developers become better in their

[00:12:18] careers. So this big goal, I can pair with a very simple,

[00:12:24] and straightforward goal, which is produce three episodes per week. This goal is entirely about

[00:12:32] progress. Progress means going from having something not done to having something done.

[00:12:39] That’s the simple definition of progress I’m going to use in today’s episode. Going from

[00:12:45] not having something done to having something done. And you create this very simple attachment

[00:12:52] to your value-driven goals,

[00:12:54] and you can measure whether or not you are productive by testing against that progress

[00:13:01] goal. If you’re making no progress at all, then your value-driven goals are not really goals.

[00:13:06] They’re just values, right? I want to help developers become better in their careers,

[00:13:12] but if I’m not doing anything about it, if I’m not making progress, if I’m not actually

[00:13:16] taking action at all, then that’s only something that really exists in my head, or you might say

[00:13:23] it exists in my heart. This is an idea that I really attach myself to, but it’s not driving me to do

[00:13:29] anything. And that’s why you have to always pair your value-driven statements, these values that

[00:13:36] you have, and connect them to some kind of tangible progress, some kind of tangible output,

[00:13:41] something that you can measure and say, yes, I did that thing, or no, I failed to do that thing.

[00:13:47] So that is the second lesson of productivity that I’ve learned. And it can be a very simple

[00:13:51] progress-driven goal.

[00:13:53] So let’s say you want to be a lifetime learner, a lifelong learner. And this is something that a

[00:13:59] lot of developers, they have in common. You want to be a lifelong learner. What you can do is set

[00:14:05] yourself up for a progress goal, like I would like to read at least one book per week, or whatever

[00:14:13] actually fits your sustainable pathway to accomplishing that value-driven goal. If you

[00:14:19] want to be a lifelong learner, then set a progress goal for yourself that you can set up for yourself.

[00:14:23] You can reasonably accomplish on a regular basis. That’s lesson number two. Lesson number three,

[00:14:30] understand your fundamentals. Understand your fundamentals. One of the things that I want to

[00:14:37] do with this show is create many different types of media for developer T listeners to consume.

[00:14:44] So instead of just being developer T listeners, you can also be developer T watchers. This is

[00:14:50] something that I’ve actively been working on. I’ve been trying to make some videos that are

[00:14:53] and quite honestly, I’ve run into some hurdles that I don’t have with podcasting, right? I’ve run

[00:15:01] into hurdles in creating other media types that make them a little bit more difficult to produce

[00:15:06] today than the podcast. But the reality is, if I were to stray away from the podcast, at least today,

[00:15:14] then I’m not serving the developer T listeners that I already do have. So in that way, the podcast

[00:15:21] is kind of in that core set.

[00:15:23] Of fundamentals for developer T. Now, as a developer, I have multiple languages that I

[00:15:29] may consider my fundamentals. I have different actions, different areas of the company that I

[00:15:34] work in that I would consider my fundamentals. I am a writer, so I consider writing part of the

[00:15:40] fundamental skill set that I have personally. You know, there’s a set of fundamental things

[00:15:46] that you already have kind of carrying you along, right? And you need to know what those things are

[00:15:53] when you understand your fundamentals and you really become an expert, or at least you pursue

[00:16:00] excellence in those fundamentals. Eventually, what you’re going to find is that you’re able

[00:16:05] to create margin for yourself because you’re extremely good at a few things, right? You have

[00:16:10] those fundamentals down. You’re able to create margin for yourself because you’re able to do

[00:16:15] things a little bit faster or a little bit higher quality. So you can sell those things for a little

[00:16:20] bit higher price. There’s a litany of reasons.

[00:16:23] You’re able to create margin if you become excellent in those fundamentals. And what you

[00:16:29] can do with that margin is start to explore those other opportunities to adopt things like new skills

[00:16:36] into your skill set. You know, once you’ve mastered your fundamentals, you can start to explore new

[00:16:42] opportunities that can give you a leg up into the future. So that’s lesson number three. Lesson

[00:16:48] number three, again, is understand your fundamentals.

[00:16:53] Avoid these three lessons in productivity. You know, they’re not your average lessons in

[00:16:58] productivity. Some people will give you a lesson like, you know, you need to wake up earlier or you

[00:17:03] need to set yourself on some, you know, kind of diet regimen or maybe a exercise regimen, or you

[00:17:08] need to read a certain set of books over the course of the next few months. And the people who are

[00:17:13] saying those things, they may absolutely work for you. And in fact, some of that stuff works for me.

[00:17:19] But what I want to focus on on this show and what I want you to focus on when you’re

[00:17:23] listening to this show is kind of that bigger picture and the psychology side of things,

[00:17:28] how you should be thinking about productivity, how you should be thinking about where productivity

[00:17:33] fits in your career. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you found

[00:17:39] it challenging and exciting. I’d love for you to take this concept and talk about it with the

[00:17:44] people around you. If you work in a company, for example, you know, have a lunch with another,

[00:17:49] one of your co-workers or maybe your boss, or if you are a manager, someone that,

[00:17:53] you are a manager over and talk to them about these ideas. Talk to them about how they are

[00:17:59] making their work tangible, how they’re making their goals, their goals attached to a progress,

[00:18:06] a specific measurable way of determining progress on that goal, on that value.

[00:18:12] That’s what I want you to do with this podcast. I want you to take it and talk to someone else

[00:18:17] about these ideas. Talk to someone else about how they see productivity fitting versus,

[00:18:23] their emotions and how emotions has an interplay with their productivity. These are important

[00:18:29] topics. And I hope that you can take it and kind of expand on it in your own life. I certainly am

[00:18:35] not the master of productivity and all of this is just lessons that I’ve learned for myself.

[00:18:40] And I hope that they are useful to you as well. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today’s

[00:18:45] episode. Remember you can get $20 worth of credit by going to spec.fm slash Linode.

[00:18:50] Make sure you use the code developer T 2017.

[00:18:53] At checkout. Thanks again for listening. If you’re enjoying this episode and you don’t want

[00:18:58] to miss out on future episodes, go and subscribe and whatever podcasting app you use until next

[00:19:04] time. Enjoy your tea.

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