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Friday Refill: Always Keep Your Tank Full

Summary

The episode opens with the host introducing the Friday Refill format, designed to offer practical advice and leave listeners energized for rest. He shares a personal lesson from his teenage years about repeatedly running out of gas by delaying refueling, using it as a metaphor for a broader life principle: always keep your tank full.

The advice is to address needs—whether tangible or intangible—while you have time and flexibility, rather than waiting until they become urgent, stressful problems. This applies not only to literal gas tanks but to areas like personal finances, where maintaining savings provides a crucial margin. The host emphasizes that this practice changes decision-making by fostering a mindset of capability and abundance instead of scarcity.

Beyond quantifiable resources, the principle extends to mental and emotional states. The host encourages listeners to regularly engage in recharging activities, noting that self-care pays exponential dividends over time. By removing scarcity in important areas, you gain a more level-headed and peaceful approach to daily decisions.

As weekend homework, listeners are tasked with identifying one or two areas in their own lives where they typically let their ‘tank’ run dry—such as postponing yard work or family time—and making a specific plan to address it proactively. The episode concludes with a reminder of the show’s schedule and a call to subscribe and leave reviews.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to Friday Refill and the core paradox — The host welcomes listeners to a Friday Refill episode, intended to provide practical advice and energy for rest. He introduces the seemingly paradoxical idea of entering a rest period with energy, which leads into the day’s core lesson about keeping your tank full.
  • 00:00:53 — Personal anecdote about running out of gas — The host shares a hard-learned lesson from his teenage years: repeatedly putting off filling his car’s gas tank and often running out of gas. This serves as the foundational metaphor for the episode’s advice—to always fill up today when you have the time, rather than later under pressure.
  • 00:02:25 — Applying the metaphor beyond literal gas tanks — The host clarifies that the discussion is not about literal gas tanks. He expands the principle to solving problems proactively and avoiding living at the bare minimum. The key is to act before something becomes an urgent problem, which provides flexibility and reduces stress in decision-making.
  • 00:03:06 — Examples in finances and mental state — The principle is applied to personal finances, where maintaining savings creates a margin that changes how you make decisions. It also applies to mental state: regularly doing recharging activities for yourself, even if done recently, pays back exponentially over time and fosters an abundance mindset over scarcity.
  • 00:04:52 — Weekend homework: identify and plan to fill your tank — Listeners are given practical homework: to identify one or two areas in their life where they typically let their ‘tank’ run dry before acting. Examples include postponing yard work or family time. The task is to make a specific plan to ‘fill the tank’ again in those areas, moving from scarcity to proactive care.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2021-08-20T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:06:51

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Happy Friday everybody, you’re listening to another Friday Refill episode of Developer Team.

[00:00:20] These Friday Refill episodes are always intended to give you some practical advice

[00:00:26] and to leave you energized to rest.

[00:00:30] This seemingly paradoxical idea of going into your rest period with energy.

[00:00:38] This is actually relevant to the bit of advice that I have for you today.

[00:00:46] The advice kind of comes from a lesson that I learned the hard way.

[00:00:53] Many times when I was a teenager, I would put off filling up my tank, my literal gas tank in the car that I drove.

[00:01:04] And on many occasions, unfortunately, it took me a while to learn this lesson, on many occasions I did end up running out of gas.

[00:01:15] Another version of the same lesson is to recognize when you’re asking yourself, should I fill up today or fill up later?

[00:01:27] And to always fill up today.

[00:01:31] The justification for this is that if you have time to fill up today, then you are doing it without stress.

[00:01:41] You’re doing it under a flexible situation.

[00:01:47] So you have time to, for example, fill the car all the way up.

[00:01:52] You have time to go a little bit further down the block to save money on gas if that’s something that you want to do.

[00:02:00] You’re not making a decision in a stressful environment.

[00:02:05] So you’re keeping your tank full rather than getting in the car and with slim margins to head to a meeting or had to pick up your kids from school and recognizing that you have no choice but to fill up before you go.

[00:02:25] Now, of course, we’re not really talking about gas tanks in the literal sense.

[00:02:32] Instead, I want you to keep your tank full.

[00:02:39] Instead of waiting until something becomes an urgent problem, instead of putting things off until you no longer can.

[00:02:51] And we’re not just talking about procrastinating here.

[00:02:55] We’re talking about solving problems.

[00:02:58] But we’re also talking about not living with the bare minimum.

[00:03:06] This principle applies to finances.

[00:03:09] You should always have some savings, some extra padding.

[00:03:15] This extra margin of keeping your tank full will change the way that you make decisions.

[00:03:22] In and of itself, it provides a license of flexibility that you otherwise are without.

[00:03:33] Keeping your tank full is also not just about quantifiable things like money or gas in your car.

[00:03:42] Keeping your tank full can also apply to your mental state.

[00:03:47] Have you done something that is recharging for you personally?

[00:03:53] And just because you did that thing recently or even yesterday doesn’t mean that you should abstain from doing it again soon.

[00:04:04] Taking time to take care of yourself is going to pay you back exponentially over time.

[00:04:12] Keeping your tank full doesn’t just allow you to have margin, it changes the way you think.

[00:04:19] The fundamental level, keeping your tank full, requires that you think about your life in terms of capability and abundance rather than in terms of scarcity.

[00:04:33] Scarcity is over pronounced in our psychology.

[00:04:37] And if you can remove scarcity, especially of things that matter the most,

[00:04:43] if you can remove that scarcity, then you’ll have a much more level headed and peaceful approach to every decision that you make.

[00:04:52] So your weekend homework, we always try to give something for you to do at a practical level.

[00:04:58] Your weekend homework is to identify in your journal or in your notes on your phone, wherever you take this kind of thing down and think through it,

[00:05:07] identify one or two areas that you typically let your tank run dry before you do anything about it.

[00:05:16] Everybody has these.

[00:05:18] Something that you always let run you over.

[00:05:22] One example for me is that I tend to let my grass grow a little bit too high before I cut it and then I dread cutting it.

[00:05:29] Well, if I cut it a little bit earlier, I would be keeping my tank full in the sense that my yard would always look a little bit better.

[00:05:37] I would feel less dread.

[00:05:39] I would feel less frustration, maybe a little less anxiety when I roll up to my house in the afternoon.

[00:05:45] So it’s something as simple as that, or it could be something as important as spending time with family.

[00:05:52] Whatever those things are for you, figure out what those things are and make a specific plan to fill your tank again.

[00:06:01] Thanks so much for listening to today’s episode of Developer Tea.

[00:06:05] This has been a Friday refill episode of this show.

[00:06:08] We do three episodes a week, two kind of regular episodes, and then on Fridays we do these Friday refills.

[00:06:13] If you have not yet subscribed, please go and do so so you don’t miss out on future episodes of the show.

[00:06:19] And of course, if you haven’t left a rating and review, that is the best way to help Developer Tea grow to new audience segments to help other engineers like you find the show.

[00:06:32] Thanks so much for listening.

[00:06:34] And until next time, enjoy your tea.

[00:06:43] you

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