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Leitura de 13 min

Bringing Your Whole Self to Work

Summary

In this episode of Developer Tea, host Jonathan Cottrell challenges the conventional wisdom of strictly separating work life from personal life. He argues that this separation is a societal construct for resource allocation, but our brains don’t naturally operate with such rigid boundaries. The attempt to compartmentalize different aspects of our experience can actually limit our effectiveness and enjoyment in both domains.

Cottrell explains that we inevitably bring our whole selves to work every day, but the problem arises when we consciously suppress perspectives or ideas that originate from our personal experiences. He emphasizes that our holistic human experiences are inseparable, and epiphanies can occur across contexts—insights about work might emerge while playing with children, and solutions to personal problems might surface during the workday.

Rather than trying to limit these crossovers, Cottrell suggests we should allow different areas of life to teach each other. He connects this to the show’s pillars of principles, practice, and purpose, explaining that principles are underlying systems that hold true across contexts. By sharing principles between life domains—like applying the woodworking principle “measure twice, cut once” to code reviews—we can develop more robust mental models.

The episode concludes with encouragement to consciously apply principles learned in one area of life to others, which helps developers see systems more clearly and recognize metaphorical similarities between different activities. This approach leads to greater effectiveness and enjoyment in both professional and personal spheres.

Recommendations

Tools

  • Linode — A cloud Linux service provider offering 20 credit with code DEVELOPERTEA2018.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to the concept of work-life separation — Jonathan Cottrell introduces the episode’s topic by questioning the common advice to separate work and personal life. He clarifies that this discussion isn’t about work-life balance but about bringing one’s entire perspective to work. The goal is to help developers connect to their career purpose and have a positive influence.
  • 00:02:07 — Why we naturally bring our whole selves to work — Cottrell explains that it’s impossible not to bring your whole self to work, though we can suppress perspectives. Our brains don’t create categories like ‘parenting time’ versus ‘work time’—these are societal constructs for resource management. Epiphanies can cross contexts naturally, and limiting this crossover isn’t healthy for our brains.
  • 00:04:25 — Sponsor message from Linode — The episode is sponsored by Linode, a cloud Linux service provider. Cottrell explains that Linode offers 20 credit using code DEVELOPERTEA2018 at spec.fm/linode, which provides about four months of free service on the basic plan.
  • 00:06:44 — How principles transfer across life domains — Cottrell returns to the main topic, explaining how allowing life areas to teach each other connects to principles. Principles are underlying systems that hold true across contexts, like conflict resolution through listening. He gives the example of ‘measure twice, cut once’ from woodworking applying to code reviews in development.
  • 00:09:46 — Conclusion and practical application — Cottrell concludes by encouraging listeners to consciously share principles between life domains. Rewording principles to apply in different contexts helps see systems more clearly and recognize metaphorical similarities. This leads to better development work and holistic life improvement, with a final reminder about the Linode sponsorship offer.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2018-01-22T10:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:10:28

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Have you ever been told to separate your work life from your personal life?

[00:00:09] In today’s episode, I’m going to explain why that’s probably not such a great idea.

[00:00:14] My name is Jonathan Cottrell and you’re listening to Developer Tea.

[00:00:17] My goal on this show is to help driven developers just like you connect to your career purpose

[00:00:23] so that you can do better work and have a positive influence on the people around you.

[00:00:28] So that’s the goal of the show.

[00:00:30] And in today’s episode, we’re talking about this idea of bringing all of yourself to work.

[00:00:35] But really what we’re talking about is what it means to have a principle or to develop

[00:00:41] a principle and what makes for a good principle.

[00:00:44] So the idea of separating your personal life from your work life, this is not a discussion

[00:00:50] on balance.

[00:00:50] Balance is a complex discussion that has unfortunately been kind of minimized to the

[00:00:58] idea of, you know, setting your hours and being really rigid about that or having a

[00:01:06] specific set time that you’re going to turn off your email and no matter what, it’s going

[00:01:12] off at that point.

[00:01:13] And every person practices balance differently, but that’s not really what we’re talking

[00:01:17] about in today’s episode.

[00:01:19] What we’re talking about more is bringing your entire perspective, as we talked about

[00:01:25] last week with the three episodes.

[00:01:27] Bringing all of your perspective to work with you.

[00:01:32] So no matter what your balance looks like, if you’re not bringing all of your brain,

[00:01:37] if you’re not bringing all of your experiences to the table, then really you’re going to

[00:01:44] have a hard time becoming effective, becoming a truly good developer.

[00:01:48] And more importantly, perhaps you’re going to have a hard time enjoying your job because

[00:01:53] who you are and what you think and your perception, those things are going to affect you.

[00:01:57] They’re going to be greatly affecting on your ability to appreciate what you’re doing at

[00:02:04] work or at home, no matter where you are.

[00:02:07] Now, before we go much further, I do want to say that it’s impossible to scope your

[00:02:12] perspective.

[00:02:13] You do bring your whole self to work every day.

[00:02:16] It is, however, possible for you to squelch that perspective, to squelch the ideas that

[00:02:22] come to mind as you have them, right?

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[00:02:29] That is coming to your mind that is coming from that personal life experience.

[00:02:34] If you see that coming and you turn it off, you cut it short before you let it grow, that

[00:02:41] can be a problem.

[00:02:43] And here’s the reason.

[00:02:44] All of our experiences, all of the things that we go through as humans, not as developers

[00:02:51] and not as parents or friends, not as citizens.

[00:02:57] as humans, our holistic experiences, these are inseparable from each other. Our brain doesn’t

[00:03:04] really create categories for parenting versus work time. Our brain doesn’t really care. It doesn’t

[00:03:13] really know to create those categories. These are things that we have created in society to be able

[00:03:18] to manage things. It’s a way of allocating resources or allocating time or whatever it is

[00:03:26] that we need to collaborate on. We’ve created this meta system of separating those concerns.

[00:03:33] But your brain doesn’t work that way. Your brain doesn’t separate concerns. This is why you can

[00:03:38] have an epiphany about work while you’re playing with your child. Or you can have an epiphany about

[00:03:44] a problem that you have at home in the middle of the workday. And for us to try to limit those

[00:03:51] is really not a healthy thing for our brains. Now,

[00:03:55] that doesn’t mean that we’re not able to do that. We’re not able to do that. We’re not able to do

[00:03:55] that. We’re not able to do that. We’re not able to do that. We’re not able to do that. We’re not able to do

[00:03:56] that. That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be mindful of the intentional separations that we

[00:04:00] want to create. But instead, we should allow these different areas of life to be teachers

[00:04:07] to each other, to put a microscope on one area and learn from it for another.

[00:04:14] We’re going to talk about exactly what this means and what we can gain from this process

[00:04:20] right after we talk about today’s sponsor. Today’s sponsor is Linode. Linode is sponsored

[00:04:25] throughout this first quarter of 2018. And they’ve been a sponsor for a long time on this

[00:04:32] show. And I’m so thankful that Linode is a sponsor because I care a lot about this audience. I care

[00:04:38] about your success. And when I get emails from people that have listened to this show saying

[00:04:44] that they have overcome a battle, maybe they got their first position as a developer, or maybe a

[00:04:51] new perspective has changed the way they work or the way they think in a positive way. There are

[00:04:55] so many things that I hear from developers who listen to the show about. So I care very much

[00:05:02] about the audience of the show. And I can say that Linode cares for the audience of the show

[00:05:08] as well. Linode is providing you resources as a developer, specifically Linux in the cloud,

[00:05:15] Linux service in the cloud. They’re providing that to you at an excellent price point. Just

[00:05:21] $5 a month can get you a gigabyte of RAM and a Linux service. And they’re providing that to you

[00:05:25] and it’s super easy to spin up. So they’re providing this at a good price point, but they’re

[00:05:30] also providing you with extra resources and customer support, 24-7 customer support. They

[00:05:37] have high availability on their servers as well. They have 10 data centers and their servers are

[00:05:43] top of the line equipment. So all of this to say that Linode is really providing a service to

[00:05:49] developers because they are made up of developers. There’s people like you, people like me who use

[00:05:55] their service. Those are the same kinds of people that are building Linode. So another developer is

[00:06:01] out there trying to make Linode better for you. So I encourage you to check it out. If you haven’t

[00:06:06] yet, head over to spec.fm slash Linode. Linode is going to give you $20 worth of credit just for

[00:06:12] using the code developer T 2018. It’s another way that they’re showing that they care about

[00:06:17] the audience of developer T and developers in general. So spec.fm slash Linode, make sure you

[00:06:24] use the code developer T 2018.

[00:06:25] You’ll get $20 worth of credit on your account that you can use on anything. If you use it on

[00:06:31] that $5 server, for example, you get four months of service basically for free. Check it out,

[00:06:37] spec.fm slash Linode. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today’s episode of developer T.

[00:06:44] So we’re talking about how bringing your whole self, bringing your whole perspective to work and

[00:06:49] not limiting those crossovers between the areas of your life, not allowing those things to

[00:06:55] squelch each other, right? Not trying to put them in boxes and neatly fit them on the shelf, but

[00:07:02] instead, you know, allowing them to teach other areas of your life. And the reason this is important

[00:07:08] and what you can get out of this, you know, we’ve talked about the pillars of developer T for this

[00:07:13] year, principles, practice, and purpose, right? The idea of a principle is very simple. A principle

[00:07:23] is something that holds true. It’s a principle that holds true. It’s a principle that holds true.

[00:07:25] It’s kind of a underlying system, something that you can rely on in a given scenario and

[00:07:32] most likely in another given scenario. Very seldomly does a principle change based on your

[00:07:39] context. A very simple example of this is interpersonal skills. If you want to resolve

[00:07:45] conflict with another person, an obvious and relatively culturally shared way of resolving

[00:07:53] conflict is to start by listening. Now,

[00:07:55] this applies whether you’re at work or at home, if you’re visiting family or friends,

[00:08:01] this conflict resolution principle of listening first is applicable in all of those scenarios.

[00:08:08] So when you allow yourself to take principles from other areas of your life, when you allow

[00:08:14] yourself to apply principles from, for example, your hobby, if you learn a principle while you

[00:08:22] are, I don’t know, maybe woodworking is your hobby.

[00:08:25] Maybe you learn the principle of measure twice and cut once, right? This is a common

[00:08:31] crafting principle or kind of an admonition to crafters, but the same concept can apply

[00:08:39] in some way to developers. Measure twice, cut once. Of course, you’re not cutting anything.

[00:08:45] You don’t have materials, but perhaps having someone review your code, that is the same

[00:08:51] underlying principle of measuring twice. Making sure something is right,

[00:08:55] before you take an action that you can’t go back on, right? This is a, this is an underlying

[00:09:01] principle, a system that is true no matter what. So I highly recommend that you allow yourself

[00:09:07] to share those principles, those underlying systems, find ways of rewording principles

[00:09:14] that you already have to be applicable in those different scenarios, in those different contexts.

[00:09:19] And I think what you’re going to find is that once you allow this to happen, you’re going to start

[00:09:24] seeing systems more closely. And I think that’s a really good way to start seeing systems more

[00:09:25] clearly. You’re going to start seeing metaphorical similarities between your different

[00:09:30] activities and how things work and how they respond to your inputs, how they respond to

[00:09:36] the environment, how you can interact with them. This is incredibly important. And I hope that you

[00:09:41] can take this, this concept and apply it in your development work each and every day.

[00:09:46] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:09:50] I hope you will take the time to think about your principles. Think about the ones that you

[00:09:55] haven’t been able to think about in the past. And I hope that you’ll take the time to think about

[00:09:55] what you’ve been bringing into your work. And also think about the things that you learn at work

[00:10:00] that you haven’t taken home with you that could improve your life holistically. Thank you so much

[00:10:05] for listening. Thank you again to Linode for sponsoring today’s episode. If you want to get

[00:10:09] $20 worth of credit on Linode, use the code DEVELOPERTEA2018 at checkout, head over to

[00:10:14] spec.fm slash Linode today. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea.

[00:10:25] Bye.

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