Join Charles Wood as he takes on a solo episode this week! He tackles different strategies on how to achieve your goals and aspirations. He motivates the listeners by sharing his personal story of how he was able to climb back up on his feet after getting lost a few years ago. Moreover, Chuck dives into his plans for Top End Devs this year and how he can help developers take control of their careers. 

Hey there and welcome to another episode of JavaScript Jabber. This week I'm your host Charles Max Wood. We're literally less than a week away from Christmas. I think everybody's just kind of out and about. This is something that I've been kind of noodling over for Command Your Career. I can't remember what I called the new show. Anyway, Command Your Coding Career, that's what I called it. And yeah, I'm getting ready to launch that. I've been kind of noodling over what I want to talk about as we get going. We're heading into next year and I thought, I get a lot of people asking me, hey, how do I stay current or what do I learn? Or people come and tell me they're not happy where they're at. I don't feel like I'm growing, I don't feel like I'm paid enough. The thing that I run into often is that, A, they're not doing regular practice or regular things that make you grow, stuff like that. jump in on and as I talk to people about the top end devs trailblazer method, typically what I'm talking to people about is, hey, are you learning something new every day? Are you committing code every day? Are you meeting somebody new every week? Are you posting content every week? Are you going to a meetup every month? Are you attending a conference at least once a year? And the last one, and this is the one that kind of enables everything else, and that is, are you planning ahead so that you can be moving ahead in your career? And as I get into this and I start having the conversation with people like people understand hey oh I can spend 10 minutes and I'll listen to something on the podcast I'll learn something right or I'll go watch a video on YouTube and I'll learn something I'll read something out of a book and I'll learn something I'll I'll try something new and I'll commit code and I can commit code every day to kind of cement what I'm learning right people get it right you talk about meeting people and writing content or recording content and people get it right they understand the things, right? Some people are a little more comfortable with some of it than others. But at the end of the day, they understand those things. But what they don't get is that you have to be deliberate in doing those things in order to advance your career, in order to be moving forward. And so what I want to talk about today is just how to plan things out so that you get that done. And it's interesting because I have a system for this. I've kind of been adapting it lately, and I have a new tool that I've been using that I am loving. But at the end of the day, yeah, how do you make sure you're getting these things done so that you're getting the benefit of what you're doing? And for those of you who are watching the video, I just turned the light on and anyway. So let's talk about this for a minute, right? Let's talk about it. So you're in this position, right? It's like, okay, I get it. Learn something new every day. Well, I mean, there are two questions, right? When do I do it? learn, right? Those are the two questions. And so the first thing I tell people is figure out a time, right? I mean, you can look at your calendar, and it doesn't even have to be the same time every day, right? But look at your calendar and when are you going to do it, right? And put it on your calendar and don't miss it, right? If somebody wants to schedule something for that time, tell them no. And it's funny because people are like, well, I can just move it around. Yeah, but my experience that means that I won't do it. And so, yeah, sit down and figure out when you're gonna do it every day this week, right? And if you can do it on a recurring basis, put a recurring event in your calendar, make sure you're doing it, right? And that way, and it can be 10 minutes, right? I mean, you can pick up a book and read it for 10 minutes. You can go watch a tutorial on YouTube for 10 minutes, right? You can listen to the podcast for 10 minutes, right? And then just keep track. Okay, I learned this from the podcast, right? And I'm not, I don't feel like I'm setting the bar too high, but if you're learning something that will meaningfully change the direction of your career, you know, or make you just a little bit more efficient even, right? A little bit better programmer, that's going to translate into large change over a long period of time. So, so figure it out, figure out exactly when you're gonna do this, right? The same for all the other stuff, right? I'm gonna learn for 10 minutes, I'm gonna go and write some code and commit it, right? And that'll take me 10 minutes, right? your daily tasks, right? Just do it first thing. Then it's okay, well I'm gonna meet somebody. So just go on LinkedIn and reach out to people for five or ten minutes, right? Now we're talking a half hour of your day. No big deal, right? The content may take a little bit more time, but honestly what I found is that if I do about half and half of activity where, you know, I can just talk about it off the top of my head and the longer I do this the more stuff I can talk about off the top of my head. And you can even talk about the stuff you learned, right? And prep, you just put out a podcast. I did my 10 minutes of learning every day this week, spent it all on this particular topic, and I'm ready to cover it, right? So it doesn't have to take a ton of time, but at the end of the day, if you plan ahead, you're gonna get it done. Now, what do you learn? This is the other thing, and this is where a lot of people get stuck, right? Because it's like, there's so much going on, right? There's a new framework out there that I wanna learn. Mishko Hevery, right? He created Angular, now he's created quick.io, and so maybe you want to go pick up quick, right? It's like, well, it's cool, right? And yeah, I may not use it at work, but I may learn something new from it, right? And so I want to go learn quick. So, you know, but then there's all the build tools and the like Docker and all the Docker stuff, and you know, I could learn more about VS code, and I, you know, I mean, I could sit here and I could probably list off the of my head about 25 categories of things that you could go learn that would benefit you in some way. And not all of them are technical like I listed. I mean it may be. I'm going to go research ways to talk my boss out of having so many meetings. In fact, I need to do that because driving me crazy anyway. And then they keep rescheduling. Anyway, I'm not going to go into it. But, you know, so there may be different areas of this that you need to dive into, right? There may be, if you're going to do a podcast for your content, that's gonna come into it too, right? So how do I record the podcast? How do I post it? And where do I post it, right? So all this stuff, right, that you could be learning. So how do you learn it? Well, that's kind of this higher level thing, right? Is let's back up a little bit higher, right? So now we've got the daily learning and the daily learning is gonna play into kind of the longer term learning, right? And the same thing for everything else, right? For the, you know, for your content, for all the other things you're doing, right? It's okay. term, what am I building toward, right? Do I want to be a quick developer? Do I want to be a well-known developer, right? Do I want to be speaking at the conferences? Do I want to, right? All of these things kind of come into play, but now we're talking about things that are way further down the line, right? So you may be able to get a bid speaking at a conference today. I mean, who knows, right? But let's say for the sake of example, you've never done it before and you're thinking, gee, you know, it'd be real nice to, you know, and you know be able to talk to people out there in the community and have conversations that I just don't get here at work or that I don't get on a regular basis because I don't live in a tech hub or something like that right and so what do I do so this is this is where we kind of take the view and we move it all the way out right and so just to give you an example when I was a new developer like brand new I wanted to be a senior developer right and then I really long term, I don't even know when or how idea that I wanted to be a CTO of a startup. Right. And so from there, you know, I can kind of back it up. I can back it off and I can go, okay, if I wanna be a CTO, that means that I need to be on the management track, right? For being a developer. I probably also need to be capable enough to be a senior developer. Now that's not always the case, but, you know, let's say for the sake of argument, that's the way it is. And I had people around me that I could talk to, right? Cause I worked with senior developers. I worked with, you know, people who were CTOs at a startup I worked with, right? and met some of them there. So at the end of the day, I had people I could talk to and kind of figure out what that path looks like. So anyway, as I had these conversations, I could kind of figure out what that path is. And so maybe the first things that you're learning are just what are the steps. But the steps to becoming a senior developer were pretty obvious to me. I also thought, oh, I wanna speak at conferences I want to be involved in all these other things. And so as I kind of listed those out, and I recommend that you do, you'd sit down and list them out. I want to be a speaker. I want to be a podcaster. I want to be a team lead. I want to be a senior developer. I want to be a CTO someday. I want to start my own startup. I want to be well-known for this, that, or the other. Or maybe it's I want to make enough so that I can go buy a house on the beach. And then there's no wrong answer here. Just be honest with yourself about where you want to go and write it down. Because from there, you can actually start to backfill the rest of the steps. So if you want to buy a house on the beach, now you're talking finances. Well, I need to make this much money and I need to cut my expenses by this much so that I can down or three years or two years or one year or however, you know, right? Figure it out. And then from there it's, and I need to be making this amount of money to be able to afford the mortgage, right? And so, you know, you're going to go do, do some research. This is what beach houses cost. This is what I have to do, right? I want to be a CTO. Okay. Well, what's the common path to becoming a CTO? Well, the common path is they get, uh, hired up from being a director of engineering, right? So what do I have to do to be a, to become a director of engineering? Well, typically I have to become a lead and then I have to get promoted up one or two levels, right? Or, you know, I have to get hired on as the tech expert for a startup, right, and be willing to take that risk. So I need to be financially free enough to be able to do it, right? I want to create a JavaScript library that everybody's going to use, right? Okay, well, how do I start identifying problems that everybody has? And how do I start getting the word out about my project so that people So these are all the things that start percolating as far as like, what do I have to learn? And you are going to pick it up drip, drip, drip, by drip, drip, drip. That's why I like the phrase percolating. So if you've had something that makes tea or coffee or anything else and it just kind of percolates through, that's the idea. That's the plan is, okay, what am I going to drip, drip, drip, drip, drip in every day and how am I going to build the habits and skills that I need to ultimately achieve my goal. Right? And so, you know, nowadays my goals are much more on the front of I want to create a system that helps, and I have a pretty specific number in mind, of developers achieve their goals and their dreams as far as their career goes. Right? And have a career that supports the lifestyle that they want to have. Right? Which is the other side of things. Right? And so we're talking about, sure, we're talking about technology and we're talking about soft We're also talking about, hey, how much do I need to put into retirement so that I can live the lifestyle I want to live 50 years down the road? We're talking about how do I write a book so that I can get whatever fulfillment I want from that, whether it's royalties or notoriety or something else. Maybe a book is just a way of getting in the door so people know who I am so I can be speaking at the conferences. get to the point where it's giving you what you want. So let's just be thinking about these pieces a little bit and figuring out what that is. But as you kind of figure out how that looks, and maybe you don't have a good timeframe for CTO-ish stuff, right? It's like, I don't know exactly when that opportunity is gonna come my way, right? But there are things I can do right now to start building those opportunities and building those skills, right? If I'm going to be well on my way to becoming that CTO, if I'm going to be well on my way to becoming that influencer, if I'm going to be well on my way to building a platform that helps developers build the career and life of their dreams, and become that top 1 percent of developers, what do I have to do? What kinds of things do I need to be opening up in order to do that? I also have some revenue goals for top end devs, so that I can do that on a more full-time basis, and so that I can hire people to help me do it. people to help me do it, I get there faster, I can help more people. If I make more money, then I have more freedom to pursue the different areas that I feel like benefit people. All of these things come together for that kind of a thing. If that's the goal, then what's a reasonable year's reach to get there? I like to stretch the year goals because what In fact, maybe I'll Google it while I talk through this. But people. I think the quote goes something like, people overestimate what they can accomplish in a day. and they underestimate what they can do in a year. Yeah, it's Bill Gates. Okay. So he says, most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years. Okay. So what I found is that I tend to underestimate what I can even do in a year, right? But in a month or a week, I'm usually like way more optimistic than is realistic, right? And so, you know, over a month or two months or three months, I'll promise stuff that I cannot deliver, right? better at that and just saying, okay, look, I'm focused on this one thing and given the progress I'm making on it, it's reasonable to expect that I'll be done at this point. And so then I just give people the time range, right? This point plus 20%. Right. And so it's like, okay, so I expect that I will be done, you know, within this timeframe. And then, and then I deliver, right. And so that's something that I had to learn. But the thing about this ability to plan ahead. And the other thing I just want to point out, because I'm going to back up just a sec, because I often get the objection from people as I talk about this kind of planning. The objection is, well, I don't even know what the world's going to look like, right? In five years or 10 years when I finally get around to being a CTO or writing open source software or whatever else, right? And so I don't even know if I can plan that far ahead. is is and this is something I picked up from agile development, right? It is the idea that you never know. You're never going to know as little as you know right now, right? You're always going to know more as you go down the road. Right. And so what I tell people is start marching that way, right? Start heading toward being a CTO, right? Start heading toward being a speaker, start heading toward being a podcaster or a YouTuber, start heading toward writing open source software that everybody in the world is going to use. right? Start moving in that direction because at the end of the day, let's say that I decide I want to be the open source guru, right? And so, you know, my thinking is five years down the road, there's going to be some problem and I'm going to be smart enough to see it first and to solve it first, right? And so then I'll be the person that everybody goes to for the thing, whatever it is, right? It doesn't even have to be technology that we use right now, right? You know, it may be AI, is halfway between buzzword and useful, right? But at the end of the day, you know, it may be something else, right? We may get to the point where it's a completely different thing, but what we're looking at is we're looking at, okay, I'm gonna head down that road. And then let's figure, let's say that, you know, you get a year or two in, you're working on open source, I actually have a friend of mine that this happened to, right, and people decided they didn't like some aspects of what he built. And so they started criticizing him for it, right? And so you get a year or two down the road, you've poured your heart and soul into something, and you decide, you know what, this just isn't worth it. Right? Do you think all that stuff doesn't transfer to something else? Right? Wow, I built successful open source and I decided I didn't like the criticism. But I learned all this stuff about building software, about getting feedback on software, about open source, about how it's used, about how it goes together. You know, I bet if I did a paid product. I might have better luck. And then I can hire somebody to deal with all the garbage that I didn't like about open source. So you pivot. Or maybe you learn some things about managing a project that you can apply to running a team and being a CTO. So it all transfers. And it makes you more marketable anyway for that position you ultimately want. running an open source project and dealing with people, the developer evangelism is really attractive to you, right? Because now you don't have to deal with any blowback or BS, right? You, but you know how to talk to people about software and how to get them to want to use it because that's what you had to do to grow your open source movement. And so anyway, what I'm saying is, is if you have a long-term goal and you've written it down and it turns out that that doesn't align anymore go, change it, right? It's that simple, change it. You've learned a whole bunch of stuff that will apply to that other thing, just change it, right? And just move ahead in the new direction, right? Don't change it very often, right? But when you know that the ultimate long-term goal for where you wanna end up isn't where you wanna go anymore, change it, right? And so, I mean, that's what I did. In fact, let me tell you a little about that, okay? So, I had this long-term vision that I wanted to create the biggest, baddest, awesomest podcast network in the world for developers, right? And a lot of it really boiled down to because I wanted to be famous. Being brutally honest, right? I love talking to people. I love helping people. I get a lot of fulfillment out of that. But at the end of the day, my core driver at the time was I want to be famous. I want people to like me. I want to be well-known. on the internet and I still maintained that a lot of it wasn't my fault. But at the end of the day, they came in and they chased my sponsors away, they tried to destroy my reputation. We had a whole bunch of stuff happen, right? And so all of a sudden, I wanted to be liked and well known. Well, I was sure well known, but a lot of the people that knew me didn't like me anymore. And I went through, you know, and I was, you know, up in having a successful podcast network and, you know, knowing all the people and everything else, right? And so I kind of had to go through this time period. I got really depressed. And, you know, I thought, well, I'll just fight my way back. And I fought my way back a little bit and then COVID hit and everybody said, we can't sponsor podcasts right now. And I mean, that that really, really set me back. Right. And so all of a sudden, didn't feel like they were options anymore and it really hurt and I went through this whole process of you know well man I just I can't be the thing and I can't do the thing and I you know there are all these reasons why it's not working you know and I went and got a full-time job at Morgan Stanley and that sucked and you know and you know but I ground through that and you know I was able to pay the bills for the family and do the stuff that I needed to do and thinking about it. And I'd had this idea when I was newer, right? Before I kind of got caught up in all the, hey, Chuck is the awesomest guy doing podcasts about programming ever. I remembered that I really did want to help people and that I really did want to kind of create that space for people to come and get what they needed. And so I pivoted, right? Because I kept trying to build the podcast network back to where it was so that I could just go back to being me, I guess. figured out was that no, that's not what I want to be anymore, right? I want to be the guy that people basically, even in their private thoughts, think, boy, I wouldn't be where I was today if it weren't for something that Chuck did, right? Now, I don't need testimonials. I don't need people calling me up and telling me how awesome I am, right? I don't need flowing rainbows coming off of my head, right? It doesn't matter, right? What matters is that I'm having that impact on people. And I ultimately also want to change the programming community so that people can take control of the kind of life they're going to lead, right? And that they don't feel so beholden to companies that they can't stay, or they can't leave, or that they feel like they don't have any control of their destiny or things like that. Whenever somebody says, I'm stuck these days, it hurts. It hurts me, right? Because they have this skill and these opportunities that just offer them so much and there's no reason for them to feel like they're stuck, right? Even with a lot of these big companies laying people off, I know so many companies that are just dying to hire somebody with a high level of talent, who they can work with, who will get stuff done. And so I really feel like most people really do have opportunities if they're willing to go out there and hunt them down. And so that's why I started building Top End Eps, right? back around to the podcast, because that's where I was, but now we're doing online meetups and we're doing, you know, in the membership, we're doing the book club that's also a membership or part of the main membership, right? We're putting together online conferences and things like that. And I'm hoping that all of this stuff will provide people with the opportunities that they need to be able to go out and interact with the community. And so, you know, I'm doing some other stuff and I'm trying to pull these resources together how to continue to grow so that you can put yourself in a position to where you can have what you want. Right. And so then it's, okay, well Elon Musk took over Twitter and I don't like Elon Musk. I'm not commenting at all on the situation at Twitter. I'm just saying, it seems like there are people who are in this position, right? Well, I want you to be in a position then to where you can say, well, then I'm not going to work here for Elon Musk. I'm going to go somewhere else. Right. Um, you know, some other big company laid me off. And so, but, but that's fine. You know, land on my feet here in a week, right? Because I know people and I have skills and I have what it takes to get what I want. I'm tired of working for an employer, I got there, right? I think I might want to go freelance. Okay, well let's enable you to go freelance and have the freedom you think you want. And then you can figure out if that's a good fit for you or not. And I find that a lot of people, they figure out whether or not something's a good fit for them after they try it, right? It's the same thing with a job, right? People go work at a or two, they get past the honeymoon period and they figure out that this is not the place for me, but the guy in the next cube over loves it, right? And so, you know, you figure it out and then you change. So that's what I'm driving at, right? So I figured out that I wanted to show people that, hey, look, this is your career, it's your life, you know, make of it what you want, right? You're gonna have to work, but if you do the work, you can have what you want, okay? So that was the pivot for me, right? It can be a pivot for you too. But at the end of the day, you kind of have to plan it out. So I'm looking at things and I'm going, where do I want to be at the end of 2023, right? Because right now is the end of 2022. And I didn't plan at the end of 2021 and I've kind of been planning a quarter at a time, which is kind of what I still do. But I kind of picked this up in June again and I'd done it before, but I've gotten really, really specific on the way that I'm approaching things So I'm looking at things and I'm thinking, okay, where am I going to be in a year? Right? And ultimately where I want to be in a year is I want to have helped hundreds of developers take control of their career. Right? And I want to have helped hundreds of developers move from maybe the top 50% to the top 20% or the top 20% to the top 5% or the top 5% to the top 1% or from the top 1% to just the elite of the elite of the elite of the elite, right? And so I want to help you build the practices that are gonna get you there. And that essentially, like I said, is down to consistent learning, meeting new people, having conversations, and growing to the point where you are the person that can do what you need to do. Now, that doesn't mean you have to be in the limelight, but I do find that there's a certain level of value in putting yourself out there community. And so that's what I'm pushing for is that kind of option to allow you to grow. So for me, right, I'm looking at I want to have reached, you know, I want to have impacted hundreds of developers in the way that they take control of their career and move up, right? I want to be making enough money from the either podcast sponsorships, things like that. I want to be making enough from that to be able to completely support my lifestyle. I want to hire a couple more people by the end of next year, right, so that I can help provide that. And I want to provide opportunities for other developers to come in and advance their career by building content for top-end devs, right? Some of it paid, some of it free, right? And so those are the things that I'm looking at. And I've got some more specifics under each of those things. But that's what I'm looking at there, right? And then, you know, I want to be able to... So my oldest son, a year from May 2023, so May 2024, is likely going to go on a mission for my church, right? I want to be able to pay for all of that, right? You know, I want to have the money saved up, right? If he wants to go to college, I want to be able to pay for that, right? And so, slightly longer term than a year, but are things that I need to be acting on within the year. Right? And so I've got those kinds of things figured out. Right? I want to be able to take a trip with every single one of my kids at least once within the next year. Right? I haven't told them that, but it would be fun to just say, hey, you know, you need to pack for three nights. We're going, you know, and then when we get on the airplane and fly to Anaheim or fly to Orlando and go to Disneyland or Disney World, right? Just have them go, whoa, you know, And then the next kid, same deal. One of my daughters is so into Harry Potter, it's a little bit ridiculous. So we go hit Universal Studios. But you get the idea. And so those are some things that I'm putting together that aren't really have anything to do with my career, except that I need to be able to pay for them. And so just figuring those things out. There are some people I owe some money to that I need to pay back. off within the next year. So you get you get the idea right. And I've got this all listed out of stuff that I want to do. And I recommend that you do you sit down and you write it out. Okay. And then the next thing you do, I've been doing is just kind of putting in kind of the milestones for it. Right. So, you know, with paying people back, it's real, it's real easy. I paid him 1000 bucks, paid him another 1000 bucks, right till I'm, I've got him paid off or, you know, bringing people going to market this, right? So it's how do I get people on the email list? How do I get people listen to the podcast? How do I move people from the mailing list in the podcast to, you know, and so just making a plan for that, right? And then I just break it down further just like we do for a lot of our programming tasks, right? It's, hey, I need to do this and I need to do this and I need to do this. The only difference is, is I can't write a test and know if it's working other than delivering it and seeing who picks it up on the other At the end of the day, those are the kinds of things that I'm doing. So at the end of the year, I've got some pretty specific things. I may post it. I may not. I don't know. One system that I'm using for this is called Linear, linear.app. And so for those big goals for the year, I'm creating a project for each of those in Linear. And then from there, I may break it out into multiple projects. So the marketing. than I may have a podcast project, right? We use a different task management system for the actual episodes for the podcast, but for some of these other things, that's what I'm doing. And just kind of having that in there and being able to kind of populate a lot of that stuff gives me an idea of how much work I have to get done. So once you have your yearly plan, once you kind of know what you've got to get done this year, then what I do is I start breaking it out and saying, okay, well, where do I need to be to be on track for the next quarter, right, for the next three months. So at the end of March, where am I gonna end up, right? Where do I wanna be? And I've been using another tool for that, and that is, and if you're looking at the video, I'm holding it up, but it's called the Full Focus Planner, and I'll put a link to it in the show notes. But essentially what it is, is it's a planner, and I'm gonna walk through some of it and describe what I'm looking at. But the way that it works is, each planner is a quarterly planner. It's not a yearly planner. That's important for a few reasons. One is that I have a hard time seeing specifics a year out. I just do. In fact, I don't know anybody who's really, really good at it. But I can get my head around three months and then if I have something that... So for example, we're putting together the online conferences. I have one scheduled in January, one in February, and one in March. But I need to be doing work towards the ones in April and May right now. And so, you know, I'll have those on my radar. I'll have them on the schedule. But I'm gonna be doing the same kinds of things for the other conferences that I'm doing now. And so I can see those specifics in my head because I can just lift them and transfer them to the other one, right? Podcast delivery, right? It's something we do on a routine basis. And so I don't have to think a ton about it. You know, I'm launching the control your coding podcast. And so yeah, you know, launching a podcast takes a little bit of work. And then, you know, it just kind of goes along with delivery for everything else. And as long as I have the recording in my calendar to do the scheduling, right. And I'm thinking ahead as far as, you know, what's coming up and how do I market it through the podcast that I'm in good shape, right. And so it's that kind of stuff that is mostly routine But at the same time, I also anticipate that as we get more members of top end devs membership, or as we get, maybe as I fill up the coaching groups, I'm going to run into things that I haven't run into before. And so I'm going to have to compensate for some of those. So that's kind of the place that I'm living at in these days, as far as planning that out. And so I'm not going to plan out the, well, I need to account for having so many people in eight months in because I don't know when that's going to hit and I don't know what problems it's going to cause, right? Or what problems I'm going to have to solve. And so I don't plan that far out. I just plan three months, right? So for right now, what do I need to be doing for three months? Well, in order to fill the coaching, I need to get so many, you know, coaching applications. And I need to get so many people on the calls where I'm helping them out. And I usually try and coach them and then just ask them if they want more. I don't do the hard sell thing, you know. You know whether or not it's gonna help you typically. And then it's just down to how does this fit into the rest of my life and my budget. So, you know, so I can break that down, right? I want to sell so many sponsorships, so I've gotta get these projects done, right? So I'm working on my media kit right now. And you know, and I've got that, I've actually got it in my planner to finish that this week, right? And so those are the things that we're looking as far as planning goes to get that figured out. So how do we break it down from there, right? And this is the same thing for learning, right? It's like, okay, well, I wanna be a team lead. Well, then I need to spend at least part of my learning time learning how to be a team lead, right? So I need to learn leadership, I need to learn communication, I need to learn, you know, right, and so those are things you can go pick up, right? You can go pick up books, you can go watch seminars, you can go, there's a ton of leadership content out there, also it's you know I I'm kind of bored doing react these days right or maybe it's still the bee's knees maybe whatever right so so then it's I want to learn react more deeply and so I'm gonna go watch some of the more advanced react talks at conferences right and so that's your weekly learning or daily learning right and and I'm gonna go reach out to the the speaker and have a conversation right? And so you get the idea, right? This is how it all kind of plays together. But you can sit down and you can figure out what approach you want to take for the next quarter, right? I'm gonna get this content, I'm gonna reach out to these people, I'm gonna do this kind of work, and then it's gonna start to deliver for you, right? So for me, what I do is the first thing in here, I'm just gonna kind of flip through the front of it because it's got a bunch in here. I of our people are on audio only. I'm gonna try and make this as audio friendly as possible, right? So the first thing that's in here is goals, right? And it's got annual goals at the front, right? And so I haven't filled that in yet. I'm working on that now, right? But annual goals, and then the next one is your goal details, right? And so the only one I've put in so far is And if I stood up and showed you the big belly I have, you would think I'm even more crazy. But that's a that's a goal. OK, and it has goal details in here. So motivators, next steps, what you're going to do to celebrate when you get there, goal progress. And then it has a streak tracker where you can actually mark off, you know, how many days in a row or how many days out of so many days you've done. Right. So it's got a bunch of boxes at the bottom that you can check off. Right. So when I'm done recording this, I'm going to go swim. And then I'm going to come home and try not to die of exhaustion. But then I'll mark it off. I'll mark off, today's the 19th, so I'll mark off the 19th on month one. And then the other goal details. And they've got a bunch of these that I can fill in. Why do I want to do it? What am I going to do next for it? And stuff like that. And then they've got some calendar pages in here that I don't use. a longer term scheduling stuff. So like if you know if I have something that I need to look at making sure that I have in here then then that's what I do. Then as daily rituals and this is something that I'm working on right now. Right. So this is where you could put in your daily learning. Right. And the rituals are actually morning evening workday startup and workday shutdown. And I love that. Right. So my workday startup could be I'm gonna learn something new today. And then the workday shutdown could be, I'm gonna commit code, right? And not at work, right? Everybody commits code at work, right? No, I'm gonna commit code to advent of code, right? I'm gonna commit code to whatever, right? To whatever project I'm working on. And at the end of the day, that's just something that you deliver, right? And then the next page is the ideal week. And I love this too. used a lot in the past. In fact, usually what I've done is I've actually put it into a Google calendar just called ideal week. And then I just turned on the visibility when I'm planning my next week. Right. And so, um, and I've only filled in Monday in here and I thought Sunday was Monday. So there's a bunch of stuff scribbled out, but yeah, you know, so I've got some stuff that I do on a regular basis. Um, I'm going to be getting up early and working out. And so, you know, Monday starts at 5 a.m. with a workout. pool at 7 a.m. drive my daughter to school. On on Mondays I have a stand-up meeting at 9 o'clock that I forgot to write in there. I've got a mastermind call at 1030. I've got JavaScript Jabber at 1130 and then I have a team meeting at 530 in the evening right. So I just do that for every day and make sure that that's all in there. But here's the real kicker is that at the end of every week see what went well, what didn't go well, how you did on the big three goals that you have for the week, right? So my big three goals for this week. Um, and so, yeah, just sit down and just figure it out, right? What are your big three goals? What are your goals for the quarter? And then what are your goals for the week? Right? And so, um, I'm finishing up the resume course today. Um, I promised a few people they would have it. And so I have to finish it. Um, I'm going to have my editor hit it, but I'm going to deliver kind of the raw video, right? rehearsed it enough to where I can do it, and it won't be painful to watch. But, you know, he can clean it up and it flows better. So, resume course, and then I need to start scheduling the meetups for January, right? So I've got some people who are gonna come. Like I just talked to Mishko, right? So probably do quick.io or builder.io for the January JavaScript meetup. I've got some people I can talk to about stuff for the Ruby. Ruby January meetup, but then also we do the membership calls on Wednesday and Friday. So for those, it's getting somebody to come talk about 401ks and how to maximize that. Have somebody come in and talk about freelancing. I can talk about freelancing. Some of these are just going to be me. Make sure that I know when the Q&As are going to be, so people can just show up and, hey, I'm stuck in my life. How do I get unstuck? Um, and then the book club stuff, right? Make sure that's all scheduled and good to go. Right. Um, Bob's already told me he's going to be here. We're doing clean coat or clean architecture, um, with uncle Bob. And he was out of town last week. I think he had a family thing, but he said he's back and he's going to be on, on Wednesday. So, um, you know, looking forward to that and, uh, you know, so just making sure that that's all scheduled. to figure out what our next book is and see if I can get the author to show up. So those are all things. And then the other one is the media kit. Because I'm having people ask me about podcast sponsorship, and so I need to be able to show them what we have and what we offer. And then from there, we hopefully can close some of these sponsorship deals and I can get closer to my revenue goal ahead of time. and stuff, but it also makes it so that I can spend more time on the podcast and less time trying to figure out how to pay my bills. And then it also has like, how did last week's big three go? I didn't do so hot on that. I'm still figuring that out. And then one other thing that has in here is workout, or it says rejuvenation and how remove, connect, or relax a bit better this week, right? So, uh, one of them is working out, right? So I have a program called Tridot that is giving me workouts for my, uh, triathlon training. Um, I need to wake up earlier and go work out because if I don't do it in the morning, I tend to not do it. Right. And then I've got, and then it's got the daily planner, right? So today, um, the kids are out of school, so I did not have carpool. That was kind of nice, but I've got my three things. So one is, is I have to finish the resume course. The other one is I have to make sure that subscribers have access to the resume course, right? Because somebody emailed me and said they couldn't find it. And then the last thing is that just getting that workout in, right? And so I need to start moving the needle on that now because if I don't start moving the needle on it now, there's no way I'll complete an Ironman in September. And I already have a race picked out. It's Ironman Maryland is the one that I'm aiming at. So anyway, you kind of get the idea. that I have to move because my mom is taking us all bowling for Christmas. So anyway, but yeah, so it's just got a schedule page. It's got a page for notes. You've got your daily big three and you just kind of work through it. And so I just sit down at the beginning of the week, plan my week, make sure all the, you know, appointments, calls, podcasts, whatever I have going on is in there. And I make sure that I have time in there for my learning as part of that startup routine or whatever. But that's how I do it. That's how I plan it all in there. And I'm really liking the full focus planner. It's kind of what I've been looking for for a while. And I know I kind of got into the weeds a little bit there, but at a bare minimum, right? If you're going, I don't want to buy a planner. I don't want to use some system. At least put it in your calendar when you're going to do all these things, right? When you're going to commit code, write code and commit it when you're to read or watch a video or whatever you're going to do to learn. You know, make a list of the people you want to connect with and just reach out to one of them every day. That's real fast. You know, figure out when you're going to make that content. Right? I mean, it can be a 10 minute. It doesn't have to be an hour long like JavaScript Jabber, right? It can be 10 minutes a week, right? I'm going to talk about whatever I learned for my learning this week, right? Hey, I picked up this library and I, you know, I wrote code against it every day this week and this is what I like and this is what I did. Good podcast, that's a good podcast. People wanna make it into this major thing. It doesn't have to be a major thing. And then, yeah, you know, what meetup am I gonna go to this month? Well, I don't see many meetups out there for my thing. So I'm gonna go find one that either streams theirs online and gives opportunity to mingle or come to ours. for each of these, definitely gonna do JavaScript one. And the way we're gonna do them is, cause part of the deal with meetups is kind of the interactive opportunity to learn and to whatever from each other. So we'll have people come and do some kind of presentation. But I also want people to be able to get to know each other cause that was always the big thing for me when I was a new programmer was I'd show up to the meetups and it turned out that those were the people that got me my job two or three years down the line, right? It was people that I got to know now. And so what I'm looking at is I'm going to use a system, I think I'm going to use gather.town and what it allows is you can set up kind of a space, like an office space, and then people can come in and they can actually, you know, walk up to other people and have a conversation. then they'll have a little table where people can go talk to them. But that's the deal. That's basically the way that we're doing it. So yeah, that's what we're looking at. But just schedule it in. Go find where you need to be to do that. Go figure out which conference you can make it to. Go talk to your boss and see if they'll help cover the cost of going. Will you buy the ticket or the airfare or And I've had some employers that were really good about that and some that really weren't. But again, just kind of figure that out. That will get you down the road, right? As you're figuring out how to get down the road in your career, the next step and the next step and the next step until eventually you get what you want. So that's how I do my planning. That's how I would do my planning for 2023 is just to summarize, I would think long-term, where do I want to be, right? I want a platform that really helps a ton of people. level up their career, move from one bracket to the next, top 50 percent, 20 percent, five percent, one percent, elite of the elite. I want to help people make that movement multiple times. That's where I'm looking long-term. A little shorter term, that means we're going to run these things. We're going to make this content. paid and this free, right? And then, you know, shorter term than that is, you know, how do I fill the meetups? How do I fill, right? And so you do this with yours, right? In order for me to become a senior developer, I need to learn React better. So these are the next steps that I'm gonna learn. These are the next things I'm gonna learn. These are the next steps. This is how I'm gonna figure out what to learn, right? So I'm gonna go subscribe to newsletters and blogs and podcasts and see what they're talking about. You know, and that may be step, right? It's just figuring out where people are talking about what I need to learn next. But at the end of the day, that's the approach, right? So you start at the high level and you work your way down, right? And then from there, just making sure you have those times set aside so that you can sit down and you can take your learning journey to the next level. And that's it. I mean, I know I rambled a little bit, but for the most part, that's how I do it, right? And so yeah, I sit down every quarter for an hour or two and I figure my stuff out, right? And then I just break it down, break it down into easy chunks, right? And that way I can do what I need to do. Now we added a section to the podcast and this is the self promo section. And I've mentioned some of the stuff that we're working on. Mostly, I guess the things that I want to shout out about are the book club. Like I said, Uncle Bob will be there on Wednesday. This goes out in a couple of weeks though. He'll probably still be coming. He's been coming to him. topendevs.com slash book club. We are really ramping up hard on the membership. And so you can get that at topendevs.com slash sign up, sign underscore up. And then Yeah, we have Top Endeavs Summit, and that's gonna be about a lot of the soft skills and career growth and how to learn and how to pick up tools and stuff like that. That's gonna be at the end of January. And just go to topendeavs.com and click conferences, you'll find it. But yeah, those are kind of the things, and then if you click on meetups, it'll show you all the meetups. But yeah, that's what I've got there. As far as picks go, I've been picking, I think last week I picked antidote. I don't know if I picked this yet, so I'm gonna pick it. But there's a company that does kind of like escape room puzzle games. And we've been doing an advent calendar one. And the one we're doing is from 2021, I think it's from last year. And it's the mystery of the ice cave 2020. Anyway. So what it is is, uh, it's relatively simple. Um, but what you do is you pop open a door and you pull the stuff out, has like cards and stuff in it, and you take the cards and you, you read them, right? You read the story and then you open the door and then use the stuff to solve the And then the puzzle will give you three numbers. And the three numbers go into basically this combination lock that you wind up cutting out, right? And it has three sliders in it with the numbers. And so you slide it into the numbers and then you flip it over. And when you flip it over, it has three arrows. And so you move in the directions of the arrows, right? So you might go up and to the right and then down and then down, right? Or I think one of them was up and to the right, over to the left and then down to the right or something like that, right? And so you wind up with the door that was right next to the one you were just, you know, anyway, so, um, and then you can double check your work because each door has three shapes on it and those three shapes show up underneath the arrows. And so if it all lines up, then you know, you got the right one. And so that's when you do the next day. And it's been pretty fun. The kids really love it. Um, everybody has to take a turn, you know, looking through the door, seeing what's in there and stuff like that, but it's been fun. Game Geek awaits it at 2.08. And yeah, it's been fun. We've enjoyed that. So I'm going to pick that. I just watched the World Cup Final. That gives you an idea of what I watched yesterday afternoon on a replay. And I was a little disappointed that France didn't win, but it was a terrific game. You know, once France kind of woke up and started playing, It was a really fun game to watch. And it came down to penalties and yeah, good stuff. Anyway, so I'm gonna pick that. And then a lot of people are moving off of Twitter or they're kind of dual posting to Mastodon. And so we set up a Mastodon instance. It's at topendevs.social. You're welcome to join our server. You can go join one of the others. I'm on mastodon at chuck at topendevs.social. Yeah, really really enjoying that and then I've been playing this game off and on on my phone. It's called Disney mirror verse and it's it's it's it's basically you have different characters with different abilities and you go and you battle and it's You know, it's fun and it's fun to kind of see the different takes on the Disney characters that came through the mirror verse Right, so they're a little bit different from what you're used to but it's it's fun and I've enjoyed that so I'm gonna pick that as well And yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to watch Yellowstone season five. I haven't been able to see it on Paramount Plus or Peacock. So I don't know exactly where it's gonna go, but yeah. And then I'm really looking forward to 1923 with Harrison Ford and I think it has Helen Mirren in it. Anyway, it looks really good too. So I have to say that 1883, I liked it better than Yellowstone. But I've been a Tim McGraw fan forever since he was doing country music. So. Anyway, shout all those things out. We do also have JavaScript remote conference coming up in March. So keep an eye out for that. I guess I'll wrap it up there. Until next time, folks, Max out.