Software Developer Work-life Balance | 6 Principles for Success

Working long hours is not going to make you a better developer, is exactly the opposite is going to happen, it's going to make you burned out, it's going to make you stressed, it's going to make you less effective, less clear in your communication, probably not nice to work with, and definitely worse at your job. So if you are in tech and maybe like me you have ADHD, a healthy work-life balance is not an option, it's something that you must do in order to work, in order to function. And it's also essential if you want to grow in your career, if you want to get better, if you want to get promotions, if you want to learn more, you need to be in top conditions. Working long hours is not moving you in that direction, so make sure whenever you have to work long hours, you understand if that is necessary, sometimes it's a necessity, and we all do it, but making that a chronic thing is not good. So in this video what I'm going to talk about is, what are my principles and why I follow them, why they are important. So we're going to discuss them, what are the principles and why for each of them. Hi, my name is Anto and I am a software engineer, I've been coding for years, I've been managing teams for years, and during the time I made lots of mistakes and I learned from these mistakes, so these are the principles that I have built so far, maybe in the future I'm going to have more. Hope you're going to enjoy this video, let me know in the comments if you have questions, always happy to answer. Principle number one, long hours is not equal to more productivity. So working long hours is not a badge of honor, and it's an indication of a number of things. One, you may have poor boundaries, you cannot stop thinking about work. The other thing is that it's an indication that you may lack prioritization, you may not be able to prioritize what is really important, and then you always fill your plate with everything possible, everything that you can do. And finally, it's an indication that there is a need for fixing the culture in your organization. If everybody's operating that way, they're just consuming themselves. So it's important that you identify these things and you try to change them. Principle number two, consider the opportunity cost. What is the opportunity cost? So in finance, the opportunity cost is whenever you do something with your money, you're not doing something else. So you are paying that opportunity cost. In your work-life balance is exactly the same. Whenever you're spending hours working, you are not doing something else. You're not resting, you're not learning, you're not spending time with family, you're not exercising. So always ask yourself if what you're doing is too expensive. So if the opportunity cost is not worth the effort, then make sure you don't do it, or make sure you create those boundaries that we mentioned before. Principle number three is protect time with your supporters. You may ask who are your supporters? Your supporters are your family, your kids, your friends. If you cut them off of your life because you are too busy working, there are a number of things that will happen. The first thing is that you don't realize, but most of the time, everything you're doing is for the people around you. So don't sacrifice them. And one thing that I learned with years is consider in terms of time left. I do this with my kids most of the time. So whenever you have your kids and you look at them, do you think they're going to be kids forever? No. So you have a limited number of activities that you do until they grow up. So how many times can you go for a walk in the park with your kids? Once a week? How many weeks until they don't care anymore to go with you and they're going to be busy? How many times also you can have quality time in terms of watching a movie, or going out for dinner, or having a Sunday lunch altogether? If you sacrifice that, that time will never come back. Never. And you can say, okay, we have time for that. It's not the same. What you can build now when they're kids, you cannot build it later. So make sure you don't sacrifice that. Otherwise you will live the best part of your life maybe after work in misery by yourself. Because you haven't built those relationships. No one knows you. They may love you, but you have built such a huge gap between you that they don't probably know you. Principle number four is don't abandon yourself. What does it mean? Abandon yourself is dedicating time to yourself. It's important that you can only help others. You can only grow when you are in perfect conditions. Think for a second. If you are feeling poorly, can you do a good job? No. But what do you do to not feel poorly? So what I do, I prioritize quality of food. I prioritize quality of sleep. I try to do meditation whenever possible. I walk and I try to do exercise as regular as possible. It's always possible. No, it's not easy. It's not easy. But that is the point. Your work is not just sitting at your desk. Your work is everything. To be at your peak performance, you need to work on every single aspect of your life. You cannot just work on one single thing. So mental and physical activities are the best developers tools that you can use. Make sure you don't forget that. Principle number five, keep learning daily. If you are not learning daily, you're not going to feel any progress and you are crystallizing your knowledge to a specific point in time. So you don't have that flexibility to pick up new things later on. So dedicate time to learning. Make sure your environment is providing you the structure to learn. If you're not learning, try to change internally or externally. Keep learning. Continuous learning is what we need to do, especially in the era of AI. So now the last principle is always be kind. Always be kind is a skill, is not a weakness, is probably your best strategy. Why? Whenever you are kind, one, people are listening to you. And two, you are building something that is called reciprocity urge. And reciprocity urge, essentially people around you, if you are nice with them, they will respond to you in a nice way. You don't have to be fake, it's important. You must be genuine. And whenever you are nice and kind with other people, that will change the entire culture in your organization. Or you may not want to change the organization. You may not be able to change your organization, but you may create little pockets of happiness inside your teams. So always try to be kind and that will pay back multiple times. So these are my principles. Let me know what are yours down in the comments or ask questions if you have any. Hopefully you like this video. If you like, don't forget to like and subscribe and see you soon. Bye!