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View Your Productivity Through the Lens of Values and Priorities

Summary

This episode presents two complementary thought experiments designed to help developers gain clarity about their true priorities and values. The host explains that these exercises exist on opposite ends of a spectrum related to one’s to-do list or backlog of responsibilities.

The first exercise involves imagining you can only complete 5% of your list. This scarcity mindset forces you to identify what is genuinely most important, cutting through aspirational priorities to discover your “lived and expressed” priorities. The goal is to recognize that resources are limited and to make more informed decisions about what truly matters when forced to choose.

The second exercise involves imagining you’ve completed everything on your list and now have complete autonomy. What you choose to do next reveals your authentic values. The host advises going beyond culturally normative values to discover unique values that might surprise others or even yourself, as these provide genuine guidance for decisions.

The key insight is that aligning your discovered priorities and values creates a path to career and life satisfaction. When these are unified, the size of your to-do list becomes less relevant because you avoid activities that don’t fit with either your priorities or values. This alignment helps eliminate the “useless middle ground” of tasks that waste time without contributing to what truly matters.

Topic Timeline

  • 00:00:00 — Introduction to fundamental thought experiments for developers — Jonathan Cottrell introduces today’s episode focused on two thought experiment exercises that exist on opposite ends of a spectrum. He explains these are fundamental exercises designed to help driven developers find clarity, perspective, and purpose in their careers by connecting ethereal concepts directly to their current work and life situations.
  • 00:02:36 — The 5% scarcity exercise to uncover real priorities — The first thought experiment asks listeners to imagine they can only complete 5% of their to-do list, backlog, or responsibilities. This scarcity exercise triggers natural anxiety but reveals true priorities by forcing difficult choices. The exercise helps distinguish between perceived priorities and actual lived priorities when resources are severely constrained.
  • 00:06:49 — The abundance exercise to discover authentic values — The second thought experiment involves imagining you’ve completed all obligations and have complete autonomy. What you choose to do next reveals your authentic values. The host emphasizes going beyond culturally normative values to discover unique values that might surprise others, as these provide genuine guidance for decision-making.
  • 00:11:08 — Key insights from both exercises and practical application — The host summarizes two key learnings: first, we often do work that doesn’t fit our most important 5% because we imagine we’ll get everything done. Second, we know we’ll never complete everything, so we should align our discovered values with daily activities. The path to satisfaction comes from unifying priorities and values, making the size of to-do lists less relevant.

Episode Info

  • Podcast: Developer Tea
  • Author: Jonathan Cutrell
  • Category: Technology Business Careers Society & Culture
  • Published: 2025-09-14T07:00:00Z
  • Duration: 00:13:39

References

Podcast Info

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey everyone and welcome to today’s episode of Developer Team. My name is Jonathan Cottrell

[00:00:14] and my goal on the show is to help driven developers like you find clarity, perspective

[00:00:17] and purpose in their careers. And in today’s episode, we’re going to be doing two what I

[00:00:23] would call fundamental exercises, two thought experiment exercises. And they’re kind of

[00:00:29] a part of each other. They exist on kind of two ends of a spectrum. And I call them fundamental

[00:00:37] because the structure of the exercises that we’re going to do kind of directly tie to what we’re

[00:00:46] going to try to derive from them. All right. So what am I talking about? We’re talking about

[00:00:52] taking this concept, this thought experiment that we’re going to explore

[00:00:57] and deriving some kind of output from it.

[00:01:01] We’ve talked about finding clarity, perspective, and purpose for 10 years now on this show.

[00:01:08] And when I say perspective and purpose, very often the kind of discussion that that drives

[00:01:18] for most people is, you know, can I find passion in my work?

[00:01:22] And in today’s episode, I’m going to try to help you connect the dots between these

[00:01:27] kind of ethereal concepts of perspective and purpose directly into your career and what’s

[00:01:36] happening in your life right now.

[00:01:39] All right, so the thought experiments kind of live at two ends of the spectrum of your

[00:01:47] to-do list.

[00:01:48] Call it your backlog.

[00:01:51] Call it the…

[00:01:52] Call it the…

[00:01:52] Call it the…

[00:01:52] You know, the list of things that you’ve been trying to get to, your list of responsibilities,

[00:01:59] your bucket list, all of the stuff that you want to do, okay?

[00:02:04] You can kind of fill in the blank with whichever version of this you want to use that you would

[00:02:11] consider to be, you know, important and comprehensive to you.

[00:02:14] And you can zoom out or zoom in to kind of create a broader scale discussion.

[00:02:21] Or if you want a much more tactical discussion, then you can zoom in, right?

[00:02:28] Okay, so on one end of the spectrum, I want you to imagine, I want you to imagine that

[00:02:36] you know for a fact that you’re only going to get, let’s say, 5% of your list done.

[00:02:44] Okay, that’s one end of the spectrum.

[00:02:46] The other end of the spectrum, we’re going to be, you know, over the top.

[00:02:51] We’re going to be optimistic about our ability to complete the work that we have.

[00:02:56] In fact, we’re going to complete it with time left.

[00:02:59] Okay, those are the two ends of the spectrum.

[00:03:02] In the first thought experiment where we know we’re only going to have the capacity to complete

[00:03:09] 5%, if you’re like most people, this should trigger a little bit of some kind of anxiety

[00:03:16] for you, right?

[00:03:17] And this is natural and a normal part.

[00:03:21] Of the experiment, because the goal is to help you understand that, A, your resources are limited.

[00:03:33] This is a fact of life, right?

[00:03:36] This is why I call it a fundamental exercise.

[00:03:39] Your resources are limited.

[00:03:40] Therefore, selecting the things that are really important, even once you’ve already done that,

[00:03:48] right?

[00:03:50] The fact of life.

[00:03:51] Most of our lives, the fact of, you know, our capacity, our working capacity in a day,

[00:04:01] a week, a month, a year, a lifetime, is that we’re going to want to do more.

[00:04:07] We’re going to have an appetite that outruns our capacity in almost every case, right?

[00:04:14] So the exercise, the 5% exercise that I’m talking about, this thought experiment where

[00:04:19] you drastically reduce…

[00:04:21] Drastically reduce the amount that you can choose to do.

[00:04:28] Again, this is just a thought experiment.

[00:04:29] This is not real, right?

[00:04:32] What is your 5%?

[00:04:36] What is the most important 5% for you?

[00:04:42] So this is a fundamental exercise because it is the primary way that we learn about

[00:04:49] our priorities.

[00:04:51] I’m choosing my words very carefully here.

[00:04:54] It is the fundamental way that we learn about our priorities.

[00:04:58] It’s not how we choose our priorities, okay?

[00:05:02] Instead, it is how we learn what is important to us without our, you know, conscious shaping

[00:05:10] of that.

[00:05:12] So if we had a list of things that we call important and then we were to cut them down

[00:05:17] and we had to choose, right?

[00:05:20] This is an exercise in skill.

[00:05:21] This is an exercise in scarcity, okay?

[00:05:23] When things are scarce, we make more informed decisions about what is actually our priority.

[00:05:36] Not what we want to be, aspirationally want to be our priority, but what is actually our

[00:05:42] lived and expressed and learned priority.

[00:05:47] All right, so that’s the first exercise.

[00:05:49] 5%.

[00:05:49] Cut off all of your…

[00:05:51] All of your to-do lists except for, you know, one out of 20 things.

[00:05:55] That’s what that looks like.

[00:05:56] What is the one thing that you’re going to pick off of that list as your priority?

[00:06:00] And if it turns out that, you know, very often what ends up happening is people might say,

[00:06:06] well, the only thing that’s left is eating lunch.

[00:06:09] And every day I’m going to choose to eat lunch because I have to eat in order to live.

[00:06:13] Okay, fine.

[00:06:14] Increase the 5% to 10%, right?

[00:06:17] The goal is not necessarily the number 5%.

[00:06:21] It’s to find some slice where you’re starting to recognize, oh, wait a second.

[00:06:28] There’s a different prioritization kind of bucket here than I realized originally, right?

[00:06:36] So you’re kind of carving out your real priorities versus your perceived priorities.

[00:06:42] Okay, the second exercise, you’re going to finish everything.

[00:06:49] Imagine you’re going to finish all of it.

[00:06:51] And now it’s time…

[00:06:51] It’s time to figure out what to do next.

[00:06:53] What do you choose to do next now that you’ve completed all of your obligations?

[00:07:00] This is the fundamental exercise for values, right?

[00:07:05] Once everything that has been put on to us, once we have kind of come out from under that,

[00:07:14] right, once we’ve done what we must do, once we’ve kind of moved past, you know,

[00:07:21] accomplishing the things that we’ve promised others or, you know, finishing paying off some major bill

[00:07:31] or whatever the thing is that’s standing in the way of you being essentially autonomous.

[00:07:38] What would you do with your autonomy?

[00:07:42] That is why this is a fundamental exercise.

[00:07:46] Because what you choose to do with your autonomy is reflective of your values.

[00:07:51] What you choose to do with your agency, what you choose to do with your freedom is reflective of your values.

[00:08:02] Okay, so if you were to do this thought experiment and you realize, oh, wait a second,

[00:08:08] I actually have an interest in starting a company in this arena,

[00:08:14] or I have an interest in doing something totally outside of software engineering,

[00:08:20] or all I really want to do…

[00:08:21] is spend time with the people that I love or with my family, with my friends.

[00:08:26] You’re uncovering your values.

[00:08:29] Now, I want you to be very careful here because, again,

[00:08:34] a lot of people will fill in the blank with aspirational.

[00:08:38] Okay, so in order to kind of avoid that, in the same way that, you know,

[00:08:45] when we’re in the scarcity mindset in order to uncover our priorities,

[00:08:50] when we’re an abundance…

[00:08:51] when we’re an abundance mindset in order to uncover our values,

[00:08:55] be exhaustive.

[00:08:58] Okay, so some values are…

[00:09:03] it’s hard to parse whether you’re being aspirational.

[00:09:09] Maybe you’re, you know, maybe there’s some kind of performative aspect to it.

[00:09:14] It’s hard to parse between the performative aspect and what’s actually genuinely true about you.

[00:09:19] Okay, so for the things…

[00:09:21] for the things that, you know, may not necessarily ruffle any feathers,

[00:09:25] if you were to tell your friends,

[00:09:27] hey, here’s my values, none of them would really bat an eye,

[00:09:32] go one more, or go two more, go three more,

[00:09:35] until you get to a place where you’re making a decision,

[00:09:39] you’re making a call that might surprise someone.

[00:09:44] Maybe it even surprises you.

[00:09:47] So what you’re recognizing is that some values are kind of cultural,

[00:09:51] culturally normative, right?

[00:09:55] Something that you and five other people you know would probably write down, right?

[00:10:01] Family is a very good example for this,

[00:10:03] or friends or loved ones found family, et cetera.

[00:10:08] But what about an additional thing?

[00:10:11] What is something that isn’t necessarily going to be on the next five people’s sheet, right?

[00:10:18] Something that would help guide your decision,

[00:10:21] rather than having something that is, you know,

[00:10:30] almost anyone could make that decision on your behalf.

[00:10:33] This should be something that is unique

[00:10:35] and that you value in addition to things that are fairly easy to guess,

[00:10:43] like common values.

[00:10:45] And so once you’ve kind of mapped these things out,

[00:10:47] what you can recognize is that

[00:10:50] some values,

[00:10:51] sometimes A,

[00:10:53] we end up doing work that doesn’t fit in that five or 10%

[00:10:58] because we imagine we’re going to get it all done,

[00:11:00] but then we don’t do the most important things.

[00:11:03] We only do five or 10%,

[00:11:05] but it’s of the things that are not really important, right?

[00:11:08] That’s learning number one from the first exercise.

[00:11:11] Learning number two from the second exercise is that

[00:11:16] we know for a fact that we’re never going to get everything done.

[00:11:21] This is essentially the state or the condition of our mortal lives, right?

[00:11:30] We know that things will continue moving

[00:11:33] and that there will always be more that we could do.

[00:11:38] And so recognizing what our values are,

[00:11:40] can we start to align those values that we just discovered

[00:11:44] with this list of things that we’re doing daily?

[00:11:49] Can we start,

[00:11:51] to make more space rather than waiting to have space

[00:11:56] to live out our values?

[00:11:58] Can we begin to incorporate,

[00:12:00] bring those things in?

[00:12:02] Now here’s the insight I want you to take away.

[00:12:07] Both of these things,

[00:12:09] your values and your priorities,

[00:12:12] your most likely path

[00:12:16] to a satisfied career, satisfied life,

[00:12:20] is to try to unify them.

[00:12:21] Is to try to unify those things together.

[00:12:23] So we’ve looked at both ends of the spectrum,

[00:12:26] our priorities and our values.

[00:12:29] When we can align those,

[00:12:31] then the size of our to-do list is irrelevant, right?

[00:12:38] It doesn’t really matter

[00:12:39] because we’re avoiding doing things

[00:12:42] that don’t fit in with our priorities or values.

[00:12:47] Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode

[00:12:48] of Developer Tea.

[00:12:49] I hope this was helpful.

[00:12:50] I hope this was,

[00:12:51] insightful.

[00:12:52] Hopefully you see how your daily activity

[00:12:58] really needs to be seen

[00:12:59] through the lens of prioritization

[00:13:03] and through the lens of values.

[00:13:05] When you can bring those things together,

[00:13:06] you can collapse out all of the useless

[00:13:11] kind of middle ground, right?

[00:13:14] The stuff that we’re doing that is really kind of wasting,

[00:13:18] is not really aligning with us.

[00:13:20] Try to avoid that.

[00:13:20] Try to avoid doing that, right?

[00:13:22] And collapse that down.

[00:13:23] Thank you so much for listening.

[00:13:24] If you enjoyed this episode,

[00:13:25] please subscribe, like, share,

[00:13:27] do all of those things on whatever platform

[00:13:29] you’re listening on.

[00:13:31] And until next time, enjoy your tea.

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