15: Ep. 15 | Q2 Goals Retrospective

Bethany (00:00) Welcome to the Overcommitted Podcast, where we discuss our code commits, our personal commitments, and some stuff in between. I’m your host, Bethany, joined by…

Jonathan Tamsut (00:08) Johnathan.

Erika (00:10) Erica

Brittany Ellich (00:11) And I’m Brittany.

Bethany (00:12) We are software engineers who initially met as a new hire group at GitHub and found a common interest in continuous learning and building interesting projects. We continue to meet to share our learning experiences and discuss our lives as developers. Whether you’re pushing code or taking on new challenges, we’re happy you’re listening. All right, so I looked at the calendar. Can’t believe it’s already July. We’re halfway through the year.

Jonathan Tamsut (00:26) Thank you.

Bethany (00:35) New fiscal year if you’re at a company that counts fiscal years that way. And I know we kind of started this as an accountability group as we mentioned the last time we did this. So I thought we would do another retrospective for Q2. So let’s start off with what were some high level goals that you had for this quarter? And whether you felt like you achieved them or if there was any unexpected wins that weren’t originally on your list.

Jonathan Tamsut (01:00) I just want to say I hope everyone had a good fiscal quarter.

And I guess I can start goals. So

Yeah, what were some of my goals? think, yeah, so one of my goals this year was to read more. And I actually upped my amount of books I wanted to read. think I’m at like, I think my goal is maybe 24 books. Actually, wait, sorry, let me check on Goodreads. I should have had this prepared, but podcasting is, you know.

Anyway, so there’s some number of books I wanted to read. I actually just finished a book yesterday. Okay, yeah, so 24 books is my goal. I’ve read eight. And what I will say is having a reading goal has made me read more books. Other things I’ve learned is I really like books about military history, and I like I’ve discovered the genre I really like, which is historical fiction. I just read a book called Munich by Robert Harris, which is

a book about it’s like Hitler and Chamberlain and all those sort of leaders right before World War II signed an agreement to not go to war. And it’s about this like fictional character. Obviously Hitler broke that agreement. Anyway, so reading’s going well. One of my other goals was to spend a lot more time studying machine learning. And I’m tracking my hours and that I’ve been doing a lot of. I think that

At the beginning of my quarter, was, at the beginning of the quarter, my goal was like 80 hours week of studying. And, you know, since I’m not working, I just could very easily surpass that. I think I’ve done like, let’s see, I think I’m almost at like 200 hours of just machine learning since the beginning of the year. And one thing that has helped me is I’ve been tracking my time. And so it’s less about like, you know,

getting specific things done and more just like, I want my five hours of machine learning studying done today, which I could do because I have nothing else to do. And yeah, so that’s been going well and I’ve seen marked improvements in my math skills and my machine learning skills. I have written some blog posts. I have some tutorials coming out. I’m working on a tutorial.

that I wanted to film on YouTube where I build a neural network library and train it to classify handwritten digits from scratch. So anyways, that was long-winded, but goals are going all right.

I yield my time.

Brittany Ellich (03:15) That’s great. had to go back and look through my notes to remember what my Q1 goals were. So I haven’t clearly been doing a very good job of actually tracking those. think one of them was to do my newsletter, which I managed to keep up with the balancedengineer.com. You should subscribe. And

Yeah. So I managed to send one of those each month or each week. And I actually ended up revamping the over the setup for it recently, which was really fun to start thinking about what do I really want to work on? and you know, create a new, a new setup for that. The other thing was to do the talks that I had planned. So I did a talk at Boise code camp, which was awesome. And I talk at go for con EU, which was also awesome. I don’t have a ton planned for Q. What is this Q?

three I guess so probably not going to include that on my on my goals for this next quarter and yeah I think Q1 Q2 went pretty well overall

Erika (04:07) I think we’re entering Q2. Yeah, I think this is… This is the end of Q2?

Brittany Ellich (04:10) Wait, no, this is the end of Q2.

Bethany (04:14) So it depends if you’re tracking fiscal year or the regular year. We’re entering Q3 of the regular year. We’re entering Q1 of the fiscal year.

Jonathan Tamsut (04:18) Bye.

But doesn’t Microsoft have its own unique way of doing this? That’s not… Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (04:27) Yeah, so that’s a very much, yeah, that’s

Bethany (04:27) That is the unique way, yeah.

Brittany Ellich (04:29) the Microsoft-ism. It’s probably not relevant to anybody who does not work for a Microsoft company. ⁓

Jonathan Tamsut (04:33) Yeah.

Erika (04:34) Okay, yeah, whatever. Some quarter of some year, I guess.

Brittany Ellich (04:41) A quarter

ended and a new one is beginning.

Erika (04:43) Ha!

Yeah, my goals were very broad and it had mostly to do with like increased number of pull requests merged and I sort of added PR reviews to that as well, like sort of fuzzy goal of like increasing my impact on the team. And…

I’ve not looked at my numbers in a while or like trends, but I feel like I’m making more impact. And vibes are good. And I think like similar to your sort of like, I’m gonna like, you know, set aside like five hours instead of like trying to do these certain tasks. I’ve kind of like, sorry.

like set aside some like again fuzzy goals of like improving my pull requests overall like time to merge like improving like how I open them, how I describe them, how I see them through and like each PR I try to find like one small thing to improve on. So I think that’s where I’m feeling that that.

satisfaction is that looking over my PRs for like this past quarter they look more polished, they look more thought out. There’s like plenty of discussion on some of them but it’s all really good positive discussion like about like tricky parts and performance and stuff so yeah I think I think I am

Improving there, we’re gonna talk about lessons learned in a bit, but yeah, I do have something that I’m currently working on for my reviews, which I’ll bring up then.

Bethany (06:18) I that we have kind of the whole scale of working on goals here. I personally barely remember the goals I set. I think there was something around throwing more parties. I have not thrown any parties. I also have not… I made progress towards the beginning of the quarter in the design course, but…

That kinda, I just fell off of it after a while. I think the one that I have been pretty good about keeping up is maybe the public speaking one or trying to get a talk in. I have been applying to talks. Haven’t gotten into any yet, which is fine. I mean, it’s all about the experience of learning how to craft a CFP really well. So I think it’s been still very valuable and I’m trying to get into.

the speaker bureau that we have at work that might help also with just becoming a better speaker and learning some better tricks and getting some opportunities there. So that’s the biggest one I think I have been keeping up with, but I’ve really fallen off a lot of my goals just with how busy it’s been with, I feel I had a lot of travel over the past few months and that just threw me off with the routine and stuff.

Definitely want to talk more about how to get back on track and get back on the horse, so to speak. But like Erica mentioned, taking all of this, let’s talk about lessons that we’ve learned and any surprises that happened. Erica, you want to kick us off?

Erika (07:46) Yeah, I realized after our episode on reviewing, like pull request reviews, that I think I’ve been doing them wrong in some ways of like only looking at the diff. And we were talking about this a little bit with the UI of what it shows you and like how it leads you to focus on the code that’s changed. And like that’s really not

great way to like review what is actually changing like you have to zoom out and look at the end-to-end code path and Yeah, I also Realized this in like a recent review and I think I kind of like led somebody astray like somebody didn’t have all the like Context in this area that we were working on and I made some like comments about the changes but didn’t

put them in the context of what was happening overall. And this PR has been open for like over a week because this person, like, to be fair, like it’s like a bunch of domain contacts that like, they’re like, I don’t, I don’t have that. And yeah, like I think.

part of this is like, I’m commenting on this one piece of code, but not at all telling you how it fits in the context overall. So that’s something that I’m going to maybe take as a room for improvement for next quarter.

Brittany Ellich (09:03) For what it’s worth, I just grabbed our episode transcript and fed it into Claude to tell us what our goals were, if you wanted to reflect on those from last year, or from last time we did this. Mine weren’t too far off.

I think we’re talking about lessons learned and surprises, right? I think, yeah, I didn’t really have a ton of big goals last quarter. I think I wanted to run three times per week, which got really hard with traveling, but I’ve been doing it because I have a race in September that I’m preparing for, and I’m definitely going to try to keep that goal going. And I spent an hour each week on talk preparation and polishing, which was pretty good. I think it was…

I think this next quarter I want to be a little bit more explicit about what my goals are going to be and do a better job tracking them. think things kind of fell apart when we were like, hey, let’s start a podcast. you know, life got busy, but I think I’m ready to, you know, refocus and feeling the new year vibes, quote unquote, with our new fiscal year, but is only relevant to us.

and I’m ready to get started and refocused.

Jonathan Tamsut (10:03) I think, yeah, think, sorry, we’re talking about lessons learned. Yeah, I mean, I think big lesson, I mean, I guess this isn’t a lesson I really learned, but just an experience I had is that life changes, life comes at you fast. So you gotta be able to adapt your goals. I also think I like, you know, I think,

You know, prioritizing is important. I think I often have too many goals, but prioritizing is also like the hardest because it requires you to like think of your values and think like, well, what do I want to spend all this time doing? And that’s sort of like strategic thinking. It’s just like scarier, harder, especially in sort of like a job career switch search context.

Yeah, mean, think, yeah, like having focus is important. And I think that’s something that, you know, I can do better. I think, you know, I’m looking at my quarter two goal achievement plan and I had three goals and…

I actually accomplished technically two out of the three. One of the ones I did not accomplish was spend 10 minutes stretching every day. That was just totally unrealistic. I was never gonna do that. But yeah, I think having a habit’s important. And yeah, I don’t know how to get myself to stretch more. I need to do it, but I just really don’t want to if you guys have any tips on how I can force myself to do it. Let me know.

Erika (11:20) So I think we’re also gonna talk about like start, stop, continue. But one of the books that I read recently was something called Feel Good Productivity. And…

It’s definitely shifted my mindset on things that I don’t particularly want to do, but maybe need to do. So like the approach of this book is like a bunch of like experiments you can try. And some of the ones that I’ve tried recently that have really helped are like adopt a persona. And like.

Like I do this with like my workouts now of like, who do I want to be when I’m like doing this?

was thinking of myself as like an athlete or something like that, like imagining that person doing this activity and then kind of pretending to be that person. And then the other thing is asking yourself, how can I make this fun? So that’s like, will like…

have like a piece of candy after I stretch for 10 minutes or like, you know, I’ll like listen to my favorite song or like something like that where you like try to find some way to sort of sweeten the activity that you don’t particularly want to do. Those have both been super helpful for me. Yeah, especially in like work settings, but like I said.

exercise too can definitely be a drag.

Jonathan Tamsut (12:41) I’m curious to hear what your workout persona is. Are you just pretending you’re Arnold as you’re pumping iron?

Erika (12:47) Okay, this is gonna be like super dumb, but the one that I found that works the best for me is like imagining myself in like the Triwizard Tournament and like I want to be the winner and like everything I do I’m like, what would make me like the winner of the Triwizard Tournament?

Brittany Ellich (13:04) That’s amazing. I love that.

Erika (13:05) Yeah, that’s

Jonathan Tamsut (13:07) glad I asked. I’m so glad I asked.

Brittany Ellich (13:10) For what it’s worth, the thing… sorry.

Erika (13:12) No, it’s now public information, my inner monologue.

Brittany Ellich (13:16) I always think about being on a show like Survivor or The Amazing Race and like that’s my motivation for running more. And when I’m like, I need to run like, what if I finally get called to go be on Survivor? Like I need to have these skills. And so, you know, whatever it takes to get that going. I love it. That’s awesome.

Jonathan Tamsut (13:35) I was really into Lance Armstrong when I was a kid before he was exposed as a doper. And I still do it now where I pretend I’m on the Tour de France and I’m on the spin bike. I’m leading the peloton, 100 meters left, got a sprint, I want the yellow jersey.

Erika (13:51) Yeah, I get it though. There’s not that like endorphin high with stretching.

Bethany (13:51) you

Jonathan Tamsut (13:55) Yeah, it just hurts and I’m just super stiff. Who’s mom? I think one of our moms gave some advice. I should do it while watching TV. I think that’s actually good advice. Thanks, thanks mom.

Erika (13:58) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (14:04) Yeah.

Yeah, that was my mom. Thanks, mom.

Jonathan Tamsut (14:09) Thanks,

thanks, Brittany’s mom.

Bethany (14:10) Shout out to our moms for listening to this and providing comments on our videos and such. I’m learning a lot too. guess one of my goals going forward is definitely I’m trying to think how to get more exercise in so I’m taking notes as well. This is great. I think…

For me, the biggest lesson learned is that I’m just a creature of routine. I need a routine, but I also am a big people pleaser and will blow through my boundaries or my routine if it means I hang out with people that I haven’t seen in a while or I get dinner and drinks with my coworkers at an offsite or whatnot. So…

I think I need to defend those boundaries a little better for what I truly value. If that is social time, then I think that’s great, but I also need to readjust and be realistic with the energy I have available and not expecting to do everything. So I definitely think that that was a big lesson that just came at me this quarter. I also think my priorities did shift a bit.

towards the beginning of this quarter I was definitely eager to start talking in places and get that blog up and things like that and I still do want to do those things. I think right now though my priorities have just been regaining the energy that traveling and work events and such have I’ve lost through that so I’ve kind of taken a step back to just

take more breaks, be more in the moment and relaxing. And so I think that’s been my biggest priority, but I am definitely excited to get back to doing the things that I was excited about at the beginning of this quarter. Which, like Erica mentions, brings us to a little round of start, stop, and continue. I thought this would be a good way to kind of sum up what our thoughts were for this.

this quarter before we talk about what our next goals are. So for those who haven’t done this exercise before, it’s basically we list three things. One is stop, which is what habits, practices, or commitments should we leave behind? The other is start. What new things do we want to try in Q3? And continue. So what’s working well that we want to maintain?

Erika (16:22) I can start. I was sort of mentioning before that one of the things that I’m doing this quarter is covering some extra management responsibilities. And with that comes meetings. And as an introvert, I don’t typically enjoy meetings. And I have a lot more of them now. And so…

I realized with sort of an onslaught of extra meetings that this feeling of almost dread or really not wanting to go to these meetings is pervasive but also pretty harmful. for my own mental health, I’m like, if there’s that thing that I really dread doing, like…

Like that’s going to be harmful for my happiness overall. So I’m kind of adopting this. I guess this goes into the starting. Like I’m sort of the stopping part is I’m committing to stopping like meeting dread, meeting angst. And yeah, the starting is sort of I’m what I found that has been working for me is like

this sort of like persona adoption and also like viewing meetings as an opportunity to I’m using my three C’s. So connect, communicate, and clarify, which I think are the main points of like

in in person or like virtual meetings, like what you can do that you can’t do over a Slack message is like look face to face, talk, make those personal connections, and talk things out that might be confusing. So I’m trying to trying to start viewing them as more of an opportunity and less of a drag or dredge on my time. Yeah, I

For the record, always look forward to this meeting and meetings with you, which has always been the exception to my distaste of meetings. But yeah, I’m trying to adopt that more for all of the meetings that I attend.

Brittany Ellich (18:20) I love that so much. My stop is, it’s really not necessarily stopping, but I want to spend less time on it. I think this year I decided that I wanted to do more creating of things and just sort of threw a bunch of stuff at the wall. I’ve been writing a bunch of blog posts and…

writing the newsletter, and I think I want to spend more time reading and less time creating things, which I know is contrary, I think, to a lot of the advice that you see consume more or create more than you consume or whatever, but I’m ready to consume more. I think I’ve gone through a lot of the things that I’m really passionate about and want to focus on, you know, higher quality writing and more

learning from other people. So that’s why I’ve sort of pivoted my newsletter to be sharing posts from other people. And I am hoping to read more, which we’ll get to. Spoiler. Yeah. And just trying to share more. yeah, that is my goal.

Jonathan Tamsut (19:13) Yeah, things I want to stop. I think I want to like get out of the house and do work more. I think I’m just always more productive when I go to a coffee shop and like do work. think that’s kind of my big stop. Stop working from home so much. Get out.

Bethany (19:26) Yeah, I definitely feel that a lot. I’ve been in my house a lot too. I think I have trouble framing with framing the stop sometimes because it’s like, it almost sounds like a start in some ways. But in terms of habits that I’m trying to leave behind or not that are maybe holding me back.

I’d like to stop feeling, well, not feeling tired after work, but basically stop using all my energy in one place so that I have energy to do things outside of work. And I think I, there are times where you have to give a lot of energy to work and that’s fine, but when it’s a consistent, it definitely can hold you back and also prevent.

your longevity within being able to work at the same quality. So I definitely want to make sure that I am pacing myself a little better there and not basically keeping good boundaries. For starting, I really want to start getting in a habit of being active in whatever way that makes sense.

I used to run a lot and do weights, but it might look more like just doing an exercise class for while starting out again, but definitely want to get more active. And hopefully that would also help with feeling more energetic and things I want to continue. Definitely want to continue getting interacting with in the public space. So we do have something to talk about later, which also spoiling.

But definitely, I love doing this podcast with you all and chatting with you all every week. Wanna continue trying to do talks and yeah, yeah.

Alrighty, so moving on, if you all had to sum up your quarter three goals, what would they be and what does success look like there?

Erika (21:15) So the meeting dread, I think adopting a positive mindset for maybe I’ll say 80 % of my meetings. I won’t go for 100, but I’ll go for a solid majority. And then this poll request review, like really…

doing a code path focused pull request review as opposed to a diff focused process. And then I’m not sure what this looks like, but I really do need to continue deepening my understanding of Ruby. And I have not been spending dedicated time to that.

And I really do think I need to. I’ve been doing it more like as I work, but I think I need to dedicate like an hour, two, three a week to really like advance my skills there.

Brittany Ellich (22:11) I my more concrete goals for this quarter, I’m planning to continue the goals that I had from last quarter where I’m gonna be doing my newsletter every week and running three times per week. But I don’t really have as many talks that I need to practice for over the next quarter. So I’m gonna drop that one. I am gonna try to read six books.

That would be, you know, for one quarter, I think that would be 24 per year on average, which seems doable. And I’m currently drawing once per week, but I think I want to do a month where I try to do one drawing per weekday and just like really focus on that, because that’s one of my favorite things I’ve been doing this year is just drawing silly memes and cartoons. And yeah, so keeping up with reading, making, drawing and then running.

Bethany (22:52) I’ve loved your drawings. I support this goal of trying to keep those up.

Brittany Ellich (22:57) I have a million ideas and I can’t wait to actually spend time focusing on them. think August I don’t really have anything scheduled so I’m just going to do like a full month where I’m like every weekday make something and I think that’ll be really helpful.

Jonathan Tamsut (23:09) I’ve been trying, I’m curious what your approach is, or what your tooling is, because I want to have a bunch of cool drawings for this blog post I’m working on. I want to animate some neural network stuff. And I’ve just been doing it on a piece of paper and taking a picture of it and uploading the picture to my blog, but I wonder if there’s a better way

Brittany Ellich (23:29) Almost certainly. There’s actually somebody that I follow on blue sky that does really, really well. I need to look up exactly what his handle is. Bear with me.

Jonathan Tamsut (23:30) Yeah.

Brittany Ellich (23:38) Sam Rose, samwho.dev. And he does absolutely incredible animations. They’re just like absurdly good. Everyone is very detailed. So I highly recommend looking at whatever he’s doing because he, yeah, he does some really, really cool animations that I would look into what he’s doing. I use a tool on my surface.

Jonathan Tamsut (23:57) Mm.

Brittany Ellich (23:57) It’s good for drawing, but I don’t think it would be great for animating.

Jonathan Tamsut (24:00) Yeah. Yeah, I’ve thought about messing around with three blue, one brown. This guy makes math videos. He has a library called Manum that does math visualizations. But anyways, yeah, my goals. so this is good. This is kind of my first time really thinking about them.

Brittany Ellich (24:11) Soon.

Jonathan Tamsut (24:20) you know, since last quarter. So yeah, mean, one of my goals was, so I did VO2 max testing, which is kind of a measure of your aerobic capacity. And one of my concrete fitness goals was to improve my VO2 max. Like VO2 max, like there’s a lot of research that correlates it highly with like longevity. So I’m just trying to have like good VO2 max. So yeah, I want to improve that. And I kind of have like a training regimen that I just, I need to follow.

that’s based on heart rates. I got a heart rate monitor and I’ve been doing that. In terms of blogging, I’ve really been trying to publish a blog a month. So if that’s three months, that’s 12 blog posts. think, or sorry, blog post a week. That’s 12 blog posts. So I think, yeah, maybe, yeah, I’ll say 12 blog posts. I think that’s very doable.

unless I’m working full time, in which case that all gets thrown out the window. Yeah, I want to read. guess, yeah, like if I’m reading 24 books, or yeah, 24 books, that’s six books a quarter, so guess six books, and then, you know, continue.

doing like machine learning setting. Like right now I’m kind of focusing on like math and I’m just trying to like build things from the ground up. I’m like, depending on job stuff, I may finish my grad school program next quarter, which for the viewer, I’m doing a master’s in machine learning. But if I do get a job, then I won’t do that.

So no claps. And yeah, so those were kind of my goals. I think fitness. I also really want to get into meditation. think I kind of went through this two week span where I was convinced I had ADHD. And I was like, yeah, I have ADHD. like.

started reading about it. I think a lot of people have attention issues now just due to the nature of our world. I don’t know if I have diagnosable ADHD, but I definitely do think that being able to quiet my mind is something I want to get better at. I actually got a really good book on meditation, the title of the book I forgot, but I will…

post it in the show notes and send it to you all. But it’s basically, it’s supposed to be like the best intro to meditation for like Westerners. kind of is this like, I think it’s like this like doctor. kind of, you know, kind of guides you through meditation. So yeah, I think getting into meditation would be cool this quarter.

Bethany (26:34) I think that’s awesome. I feel like meditation has always been so difficult to prioritize, but it’s so important to just take time to just be. So, really excited to see, maybe take a look at that book for sure. For me, I would like to get back into

creating the blog that I was doing, I might do a little less on the design course, because I did end up making a design for the blog that I feel happy with, so I think I’ll just iterate on that. I feel like I’ve been talking about it so much and then I’ll put it out and everyone will say all that for just that, but I think as somebody who’s not artistically minded, it takes a while to just kind of feel out how

how I want this to look. So it’s been really good. I’ve learned a ton from that design course, but I think I might just try to push on iterating and then getting back to that when I have more time. I do want to read a decent amount. I read, I think, 15 books this past quarter.

And for the people who said that short books did not count, there was no short books this time. They all were greater than 100 pages. um, but, uh, yeah, I definitely want to continue with that, but it’s been more of a relaxation thing. So I think that’s been less of a, uh, something that I’ve had to stretch for recently. Um, and then I would like to integrate movement into my routine, uh, however that looks, but I would like to.

least get some significant movement in three days a week I think would be a good target goal. But less pressure on myself for what that looks like. Yeah. So I think with that we can go on to our fun thing. So I thought while we were reflecting on the quarter I thought maybe we could talk about some of our favorite things that we’ve really found enjoyment with. So just

Talking about something you’ve really been into lately, it could be just an item, a food, a habit, or a book or whatnot, but just want to hear what y’all are into at this given time.

Jonathan Tamsut (28:38) I’ve been into matcha. It’s a new development in my life. It’s very exciting to me. I got a little sifter. I got a little thing that spins, know, so you can whisk or whatever your matcha. And I drink it every morning. It doesn’t make me feel as jittery as coffee, and I like the taste. So that’s me.

Bethany (28:59) Do you do it like with milk or do you just have it straight?

Jonathan Tamsut (29:03) I kind of just like it’s dependent depending on yeah I have these like I have this like I’d like liquid stevia that you can buy from Trader Joe’s and Sometimes I pull droplets of that sometimes they put almond milk sometimes they put Oat milk just I don’t know just kind of you know it’s it’s whatever whatever I’m feeling that morning Like to get like to keep it fresh

Bethany (29:21) That sounds lovely.

Brittany Ellich (29:23) I’ve been really into E Ink tablets. I got my Kindle out and I’ve been reading on my Kindle instead of on my phone and it’s so nice to not have the distractions that come with my phone. So I’ve been, you know, whenever I read an article, I usually send it over there, but I’ve also been researching some of the E Ink tablets that you can use to like write and draw on. And I just ordered one. So I’ve been really into researching them and finally ordered one from, I think,

supernote yesterday. So we’ll see. I’ll let you all know how it is once I actually get it, but I’m hoping it’ll make it easier to have something readily available to write notes on the things that I’m reading or just to write things down instead of typing everything.

Erika (30:06) you

I’ve been super into these feel good productivity experiments. The one that I haven’t mentioned is one called the Wheel of Life. And he didn’t come up with this one himself, but it’s like an exercise that you do where you have these, like the categories are set and they’re generally like people, work, and like body or like physical environment.

And so like the idea is like you fill in the circles of like how you feel, how fulfilled you feel in those areas of your life currently, and then how like what your ideal state would be. And it’s been super helpful for me to be present in the times that I’m like the times that I’m in. like.

I felt like I was sort of stuck in this rut. Like honestly, ever since I had Isabel, like always feeling like I’m never doing the right thing. Like I’m always like, you know, either spending my time like not being enough of a parent or like not being enough of a employee or whatever. And like, I feel like this has been really freeing for me to be like, even if all I’m doing is like.

watching her ride her little bike outside. Like, okay, I’m like filling my like outdoor physical environment bubble. I’m like filling my family time bubble and like kind of using that framework to embrace like the things that do matter to me. So yeah, highly recommend that book. We’ll link it.

But yeah, and it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for me it’s been super helpful in like having a more positive outlook on myself and the things that I do.

Bethany (31:41) I love that. I feel like so many productivity strategies depend on making you feel bad about yourself, so I love that this one really flips it on its head and is a positive thing because after all, it’s your life. You get to spend it however you want and it should be a positive experience. So that’s really cool.

Erika (31:58) now.

Bethany (31:58) For me, I’ve been very into keyboards recently. So I always go in and out of keyboard obsession, but I’ve never really gotten into customizing the switches and things like that. So I recently got, if you’re watching this, it’s in that corner right there, a keyboard for gaming called the Rainy 75. And it is a linear key, so it doesn’t have a bump when you’re pressing down.

And it sounds and feels incredible. So I really wanted that with my Moonlander, which I use for my everyday work. So I bought a key or like a switch tester, which I have some right here. I didn’t end up getting anything from this, but it helped me learn what I liked in a switch. So I ended up getting Wano Sakuras.

And they came yesterday and I put them into my keyboard and that sounds amazing and they’re pink so my keyboard glows pink now So it’s it’s been really cool, and I’ve been reading out about that a lot It’s funny though because I am NOT a fast typer whatsoever. I’m very slow like under 70 words per minute typing Luckily I’m not paid by the word thankfully but

Erika (33:11) ⁓

Quality over quantity.

Bethany (33:13) Yes, exactly, exactly. I also have a lot of wrist issues, so going to the linear switches has been nice because it’s, well, it’s been a day, so I don’t know. I’ll report back. But it theoretically takes less exertion to type, so I’m hoping it’s better for my wrists in the long run. We’ll see. Maybe it just was an excuse I’m making to get more switches.

Brittany Ellich (33:34) I love that. I need to pay you to like build me a keyboard because I don’t personally care about them, but I love the custom ones. So yeah, it seems like a really fun hobby.

Bethany (33:34) Alright.

let me know. I will,

I will do it for you. Okay, well, now is the time that, it’s an announcement time. So Brittany, I don’t know, do you wanna, do you wanna take on the announcement?

Brittany Ellich (33:52) yeah, I guess so. Yeah. So we, have been talking a little bit on blue sky about launching a tech book club, kind of similar to what we do internally at GitHub, but as you know, an over-committed book club. So when this episode comes out, that will be officially launching. We’re going to dive into our first read, which is looks good to me by Adrienne Braganza. I’m so sorry if I mispronounce that, but, she actually reached out and mentioned

but if we get this going, she wants to see how it’s going and be a part of it. So I’m hoping we can do a synchronous meeting with her. So the book club is gonna run asynchronously through GitHub discussions and I will post the repo in the show notes. And we will start, like I said, we’ll have a kickoff introduction discussion on July 8th when this one, when this episode releases and then start our weekly chapter discussions on July 15th.

There will be a Discord community where you can connect with fellow readers throughout the journey and we will plan a synchronous wrap-up discussion at the very end, hopefully with the author, which would be super cool. So that is the plan. Excited about it.

Bethany (34:57) So excited. It’s definitely in line with our goals of trying to read more and be more present in the community and I think this would be, this will be awesome. I’m excited to really kick this off.

Alrighty, so with that, thank you so much for tuning in to Overcommit It. If you like what you hear, please do follow, subscribe, or do whatever it is you’d like to do on the podcast app of your choice. Check us out on Blue Sky and now Discord and share with your friends. Until next week.