Mental Health and Dev ft Dr. Courtney Tolinski - Depression, Anxiety, Imposter Syndrome, Focus, Motivation, Burnout

Welcome to Syntax. This is the podcast with the tastiest web development treats out there. Today, we've got a guest, someone that knows a lot more than us. We have doctor Courtney Tolinski on the show. She's gonna be talking to us about mental health and web development.

Just a kind of a interesting time right now with the coronavirus going around, And I think a lot of people are hurting. So I thought it's a great idea. Scott said, like, hey, what do you think about having Courtney on the show? I was like, perfect timing. I think this is this is absolutely perfect.

So today, we're sponsored by Sanity and FreshBooks.

Sanity is a structured content CMS. FreshBooks is cloud accounting. We'll talk about them partway through the Node, but welcome, folks. Thanks. Hi. And I'm happy to be here. Yeah. Happy to have you here.

We're we're we're also,

up in the house. This is the perfect opportunity to have everybody. Right. Yeah. Can I just say what I'm experiencing right now is Scott and Courtney are sharing this, like, set of, like, Android earbuds that they got from a gumball machine, and they're like like

Same as in part from each other? It's like we're doing a duet. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We're both speaking in the same mic. This is this is a budget budget, budget program we got going on here, Wes. That's what's going on.

So I'll let you Scott of kick it off there, Scott, and, and get going.

So with us on the show today is my lovely wife, doctor Courtney Tolinski.

She is a doctor of educational psychology.

I don't know. Do you wanna give a little brief introduction about who you are and what you do?

Sure.

So I am a doctor of educational and clinical psychology. I work primarily with children and adolescents, but I love to work with adults as well. Currently, I am the director of a learning evaluation center here in Colorado, and I do a lot of diagnostic evaluations for things like ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, and mood disorders. I've also done a lot of, therapy as well with children and adults.

So thank you so much for having me. Awesome. Well, let's get started.

So I I asked a a question on the, the Twitter a couple weeks ago just about what sort of questions people might have for Courtney. And I what I did is I I broke these up into several different sections, and I figured we could talk about each of these just sort of generally and then, you know, address some things directly.

We have we're gonna be talking a little bit about depression, anxiety, focus on job performance, motivation, remote work, stress, and we'll just have a conversation. It's gonna be pretty relaxed. And, and, honestly, I know Courtney probably would want this disclaimer, and I don't wanna speak for her. But despite the fact that she is a doctor of psychology, if you have anything directly with yourself, you should probably reach out to someone rather than take advice directly from this podcast. Is that fair to say, Courtney?

Yeah. Yeah. It's important to always, of course, speak to your doctor, or therapist if you're having serious issues. But, hopefully, this general advice that I'm able to give will be helpful to a lot of people. Yeah. Totally.

So the first little bit, we wanted to talk about depression. So I wanted to read some, some messages anonymously that people had sent me, just so we can get like, you know, hopefully if you're feeling this way that you can have a little bit of, I don't know. What's the word I'm looking for? Togetherness with other people who are potentially going through the same thing. So some people say, honestly, just explaining depression would be great. Too many times I've heard, but you don't look sad. And that is really, something that depressed people hear all the time. You don't look sad. You you know, you aren't, like, why don't you just feel better kind of thing.

Another one would be, as someone who struggles with depression, what are some things that I can do to rekindle the things that I enjoy, like developing and hobbies? This would be a great benefit for me for learning more dev related things than doing outside work. Another, my depression is due to some things in my personal life, and I'm 2 years into it. Coding has brought me a little life back and the only thing I have to do. So do you wanna talk a little bit about the basics of depression and maybe, what it is and and how people experience it?

Yeah. So, I mean, depression is more than just feeling sad. Right? It's it's certainly a sad affect, but it's this sense of hopelessness that, things will not get better. Things are awful, and they're not going to get better. And on top of that, there's a loss of interest in the things that you like to do. Right? So if you enjoy coding or, you're a golfer, whatever that hobby is, you all of a sudden find yourself having a really hard time getting out of bed, just kind of taking care of Vercel, and getting out to do those things that you used to enjoy.

And there's a a host of different other, like, symptoms JS we refer to them that go along with it. So sometimes it's being extremely irritable can be like gaining a lot of weight or losing a lot of weight, just a general sense of fatigue and tiredness. So there's a lot of different factors that can look into depression, but it's not always just feeling sad. Right? It's feeling sad and then it affecting your life to the point where you're not able to function, whether that's going to work or going out socially with your friends, or just, you know, engaging in your relationships in general. So that's that's kind of a good overview of depression.

And just like anything, it's it's a spectrum. Right? So sometimes people who are depressed can be outwardly the, like, happiest people you've ever met. Like, I've had some clients that just, like, radiate sunshine, you know, from the outside, And, internally, they're, like, you know, in a sense, dying inside. Right? But they don't show that to other people because a lot of times they've heard the message of, oh, you you need to be happy, right, or it's not okay to feel sad. Mhmm. So instead, they internalize that, and they don't express Wes, and the depression kind of eats away at them.

And then there are other people who do outwardly look really sad and look really tired, and those people are, you know, easier to treat from my perspective. But but it it can look different.

And it's, I think, important to not assume that just because somebody looks happy that they're not dressed. Yeah.

So do you have any, recommendations specifically for people who are having a hard time enjoying the things that they or, like, that they used to love to do, specifically coding or or even outside of coding hobbies? Do you have any general advice for people who depression is getting in the way of the things they enjoy in life?

Yeah. I the biggest thing that I always encourage, like, my clients to do would be self care. Right? And so a lot of times, I'll have them make a list of all the different things that they enjoy doing to take care of themselves, just to help get them out of bed if if they're that depressed. Right? It's a range, of course. So some people are, like, functionally depressed Wes they're able to go to work, able to, engage in, you know, their normal day to day life, but, internally, they're not getting the, like, pleasure that they used to out of it.

But self care is really important.

Taking care of yourself, making sure you're getting dressed, keeping up on those haircuts. Right? Shaving or, you know, whatever it is for for dudes. For girls, it could be, like, putting on makeup or, you know, whatever it is that makes you feel your Bos. Doing those things are really important.

You know, and then I think just encouraging other people to help reach out to you, you know, asking your friends, letting them know and being vulnerable and saying, hey. You know, I'm having a difficult time. It would be really helpful if you, like, checked in on me once in a while if it's that extreme.

Or, you know, if you're able to, like, functionally interact in your day to day, then scheduling. So making putting it in the calendar as, like, like, an event or an appointment that you would need to make. So things like if if you enjoy golfing. Right? Putting that in the calendar. Every Sunday, I'm gonna go golfing at 11. Right? And and keeping that appointment as if it were a doctor's appointment, really treating that very seriously, just to help keep some of those hobbies. And, you know, you can scale back if it's too much to do your normal 5, 6 hobbies, whatever you do.

Scale back to 2 or 3, but figuring out what's important to you and then scheduling it and prioritizing those things.

Yeah. You know? And I don't know how I don't think we've ever gotten to this on the show, but I've been on and off antidepressants since my concussion. And I tried several different ones. And, you know, over the course of time, it it's funny that you mentioned the, you know, weight gain, weight loss, but some of the antidepressants made me gain, like, a lot of weight. Not to mention inside the concussion, I couldn't work out. I gained, like, like, 15, 20 pounds, and that almost fueled everything more because you just feel worse about yourself. Right. And I I think that tip about doing your self care things is really super important for me, especially.

I know I'm not very good at it, but when I am feeling, those feelings or or, you know, that sort of flow of life, just getting up and doing my hair, shaving, whatever goes a tremendous distance that, like, you don't want to do it, and you don't feel like it's going to make a difference. It sounds dumb. It seems like, oh, this isn't gonna do anything, and it works so well for me.

And just taking care of yourself in those place makes a a big deal. So I think the next Node we wanted to talk about Wait. Hold on. I have I have Node quick question Yeah. While the doctor is in.

So, like, Wes let's say I've got a friend, who is suffering from depression. You say, like, go out and talk to them. Like like, what do you say to somebody that that has depression? Right? Like, that sucks or oof. Like, that's obviously not not what you should say, but, like, I always find it a a little bit weird. Like, I'm like, oh, like, what should I say? How should I dance around it? Should I come on? Yeah. Well, do you find that you, like, know which of your friends

has depression, or is it just, like, a general sense that maybe there's something going on? I would say there's a couple of friends who have have have come out and told me. Yeah. But I don't I would assume that there's probably more of my friends that don't even don't even tell me. Yeah. Yeah. So I I think just generally checking in and not putting any assumptions on, like, hey. How's that depression going? Right? Like, nobody wants to be reminded of it necessarily, but checking in and saying like, hey, man. How's it going? You know, how have you been? Just having, like, a general question, you know, and and seeing how they respond. If they're like, oh, you know, things are great. Things are good.

Then, you know, don't assume anything. Just take them at what they're saying and invite them. You Node, make it a point to reach out to them more, check-in with them, and invite them to things, and not just assume that they will take you up on it necessarily.

It's a good point. Yeah. My 1 buddy of mine that said to me, hey. Just wanna go for a run, or you wanna go do the stairs? So, like, in in our city, there's just massive stairs that go up the mountain, and, like, that's I was just like, hey. Just just trying to think of, like, how do you proactively invite somebody out to do something, and, like, also, I know exercise is is helpful as well.

Right. Yeah. And, yeah, that, of course, goes without saying a great diet, exercise, sleep. I mean, those things are so valuable in terms of taking care of yourself just on a day to day, but especially for somebody who's depressed.

But, yeah, checking in with your friends if you feel like something's going on or something's not right.

Just having, like, that general leading question of, hey. How's it going? Mhmm. I think can, you know, speak volumes.

A lot of people, they're they're afraid to reach out. They don't wanna burden people with their their sadness, right, or their depression.

Yeah. But if you extend that interest and genuinely show that you care, then I think that that goes a long way, and people will feel like they can trust you and that they can, be more vulnerable with you.

Totally.

So let's get into the anxiety side of things because that's a a big part of this as well, and especially right now when everybody is sort of on edge and anxious in general with the current state of the world. So, we're we'll talk a little bit about some of that stuff directly, but I think a lot of the concerns people have with anxiety follows around the idea of maybe, like, inadequacy or impostor syndrome or those kind of things. So when I asked this question, I got the question about talking about impostor syndrome just about a 1000 times. So I wrote impostor syndrome times a 1000 here because that's how many responses I got about it. And it's funny because no matter how many times you talk about imposter syndrome, it seems like that's such a a big topic. I know I myself and many other people, you know, often deal with these issues.

People often are asking, how do I deal with increased anxiety during the current situation? How do I avoid anxiety and feel useless when working on products that don't appeal to you? I wanted to ask the doctor, why do I feel that I have to work on 1,000 projects that seem to never finish? It's anxiety inducing.

I'm under depression medication. Sometimes I feel scared that I am so slow. It doesn't feel accomplished enough like people working at Fang. Do you know what Fang is? Yeah. Facebook,

Apple, Netflix,

and Google. Google? Oh, okay. Etcetera. And being an SE, software engineer Yeah. How how to deal with assist how to deal with anxiety caused by today's ESLint. So it seems like the overarching message is that, when people have imposter syndrome, they feel inadequate.

They feel anxious about the amount of workload they have, and they're anxious about their current

first, have either of you experienced imposter syndrome in your career?

Absolutely.

Yeah. Wait. So tell us about it. What is that like for you?

So for me, you know, I remember getting my 1st dev job.

My my manager and boss at the time, Ben Sheff, he hired me when I really didn't know what I was doing. Like, I was hacking together WordPress templates and stuff. And so then all of a sudden, I got hired for my 1st dev job, and it was building Drupal sites. I'd never seen Drupal. I'd never really written any PHP, considering I was just, like, modifying CSS and HTML within WordPress templates.

And all all of a sudden, I'm handed a client, not to mention he was actually at a conference the 1st week of my job. So I was like, oh, here's your client. They're a Drupal 6 site or whatever, and, you don't know what you're doing. You don't know any of the tools. Your boss isn't there.

You know, like,

what do you do? And I just remember feeling like, I am going to get fired from this job. I don't I'm not I do not know what I'm doing here. And sure enough, you know, the man is amazing. He was a great teacher, a great mentor. He didn't expect me to know those things. He taught me so much, and I grew into the role and eventually ended up, after he left, getting that senior position that he had and then moving on from there. But there's just about every single new job I took, except for maybe 1 or 2, I felt like the job was way above my skill level, and it was scary. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, so in that time when he wasn't there and you were kind of holding the reins yourself, what did you do to talk yourself through

it? Yeah. I I just did what it was asked of me, and tried to do my best and ask questions wherever possible, you know, via email or chat or whatever. I had never met him at that point besides on phone, so, we didn't have, like, you know, the kind of rapport we do now as friends.

So I just I just didn't did my best to complete my assignments to the best of my ability

and, like, not mess things up. But, I guess, ask a lot of questions would have been the the thing I did, first and foremost. Yeah. So ask a lot of questions and and really just try your best and hold that confidence in yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Wes? Have you ever gone through that? Yeah.

Not a whole lot. I I I've certainly been nervous in lots of situations where I feel out of my out of where I should be. Specifically, the big one was when I like, 8 years ago Wes I went to interview at Google.

And I even just Wes they emailed me, they're like, hey. You wanna work at Google? I was like, me? But I I I started like, I was certainly nervous, but I don't think I had impostor syndrome because I knew, like, if I'm not a good fit, if I'm not good enough, they'll say no. And they did, and and that was fine. And my wife always tells me I'm unapologetically confident, meaning that, like, my confidence level JS probably in a lot of things. Basically, I'm just like, I don't know. We'll figure it out. Or I Right. Like, these are just regular people walking around. These are regular people working these Certainly, they've learned over time, and I could probably do that as well.

So just knowing that, like, the worst that could happen is that you won't get the job or you'll get canned. I guess, if if you do get a job in a place where you feel out of your bounds, that that can be a a big sort of a scary thing for people. Right. But if that's the case, I know that, like, just surround yourself with people that are a bit of a support network.

Right. Certainly friends and communities that that can help you out in those situations that you know you eventually will hit.

Yeah. Yeah. Well and I'm wondering I think there's, a big difference between imposter syndrome and just maybe, like, low self confidence.

I wanted to get your thoughts on that, especially in your field because so imposter syndrome is the idea, right, that you you have the skills. You're highly qualified for this job, but you feel that you didn't deserve it for some reason, and you externalize, like, your success to outside factors. So it was luck. I just got lucky, right, that I got this job, or, I fooled them somehow. Right? I tricked them into thinking that I could handle this job. Right? And they'll find out eventually that I'm a fraud. Right? So that's, like, the crux of what impostor syndrome JS, and the reason that it's so powerful is because people can't talk about it. Right? They feel like, oh, well, I can't tell people because then they're gonna find out that I'm a fraud.

Yeah. The jig is up. Right. So they're holding it in. Yeah. Exactly. Right. The jig is up. They're holding it in, and, it eats away at them because they're not able to talk about it to anyone, and find out that other people feel the same way. Right? So there's that set of imposter syndrome, but I also think that there's just, like, maybe a social comparison or, like, a low self esteem and feeling like, I am really good, like you're saying with Google. Right? I'm a great developer, but maybe I'm just not the right fit for them.

Right? But but you could take that the other way and say, oh, like, why didn't I get that job? You know, everyone's just so much better than me. I'm I'm not as good as everybody else. Right? And that's different than imposter syndrome.

I think that's just, like, a low self confidence or low self esteem.

Yeah. I think I I definitely see that. Yeah. Teaching a boot camp for many years, I see that a Scott, and I think people chalk that up to imposter syndrome because it has a cool name. Yeah. But it it definitely is I I think in a lot of cases, it is just low confidence in Right. Their skill set in in whatever it is because you see that imposter syndrome just disappear, once they're in it for a couple weeks. And, this is not as scary as I thought it would be and Right. Just anxiety or or being a little bit afraid that you're not as confident to go into situations is probably so I I don't know what to tell people how to get around that. Like, I have that with my my kids as Wes. Just when we encounter situations where they're they're scared or they they don't think they can do something, like, Lux JS trying to learn how to play hockey right now, and she gets frustrated really easy. And Yeah. We just had to sort of talk her through and, like, you know what? You can get better. You get really good at this. Right. I don't know I don't know how like, how would you tell that to a developer who doesn't think they're good enough?

Right. Well, we I mean, I'm I didn't really get to speak about my background at all. I'm a child and adolescent psychologist. Right? So that's predominantly my field.

Is educational and and clinical psychology. I worked with a lot of adults, but I I really enjoy working with children, and that's my expertise. And so one of the things that we do with kids, and it's kind of like this new movement in education, is to talk about growth mindset. Are you familiar with that? No. No? Okay. About it. Yeah. It's the idea, right, that our brain is a muscle. Right? Is it it's actually a Vercel? Well, that's the term that we use. I don't know if it's an organ or a muscle. Yeah. This is a brain organ. You can Google this. Okay. Well, we refer to it as a muscle, right, in the sense that you can develop your brain. Right? Your brain is constantly changing, and we talk about neuroplasticity and how our brain is not, like, set in stone as we once thought it Wes. Right? That we can constantly change and evolve, and that those, like, synaptic connections that are forming in our brain are able to develop even into, like, our our late adulthood.

And so there's the idea of growth mindset where, you know, maybe you're not able to do something right now, but we use the term, like, I haven't done it yet. Right? So that's with little kids. Right? So I I haven't done this yet, or I I haven't figured this out quite yet. And that that word yet is really powerful, especially with kids, but I think that adults, that could be really powerful for as well. Just the idea of it's it's not like this finite black and white thing. Well, they're really great, and I'm not. Right? There's there's a lot of gray in there.

And when you get into that mindset, that's called the cognitive distortion, right, where you're assuming something. And there's there's a whole slew of cognitive distortions. I don't need to go through them necessarily, but it's the idea of just being flexible with yourself and knowing that I have a lot of these foundational skills, and, it's okay if I don't know everything. Right? There's always room for practice and room for development within my skill set.

I see that a lot with people developers who are coming from HTML and CSS and moving more into complicated logic in JavaScript.

Yeah. We see it a lot because people bring this, I'm not good at math from being a kid, and they apply that. They sort of project that out onto their entire career. Like, I could never learn that because that's kinda like math. That's Right. Too complicated for someone like me. And, like, honestly, I wasn't good at math, but I figured it all out, through over the years, and I I think that's awesome. Like, you're not good at JavaScript yet, but you certainly can get better.

Yeah. Exactly. And, I mean, we all bring different skills to the table. Right? So if you're struggling with imposter syndrome, I think, one of the things that's helpful is just writing down a list of your accomplishments and the things that you're really proud of, what you bring to the table uniquely that maybe other people don't, right, or the things that you've accomplished that you can refer back to. Because it's really easy to forget all those things in the moment and to focus on the thing that you maybe aren't as good at as somebody else.

But when you go back and look at your accomplishments, it puts it into perspective to say, like, oh, I I really am skilled at so many other things, but maybe this Node thing is something that, you know, I need more development on, you know, that I'm not quite good at. So I think that that's really helpful having that that list of strengths.

What would you say? What are some of your tips for impostor syndrome?

I think JS a developer, it's easy to feel inadequate because of just how many people seem to be like superstar, like, excellent developers.

But there's so many thing, and and there's just an endless amount of things to learn in this industry.

Right? You're never gonna learn it all, and you're never gonna have every specialty. And if it looks like somebody has every specialty and every skill out there, they know everything. No. Every single person has a weakness in their dev game. Every single developer. Nobody knows Ruby, Python, JavaScript, WASM, everything. Right? Nobody knows all of the different slang words. So if you feel like you don't know enough, chances are, you know, just as much as a huge percentage of other developers who are doing very excellent work every single day. Not only that, but you are very ahead of the game. If you're listening to this podcast or if you're watching, YouTube tutorials or you're even cognizant of the fact that you don't know things, then you are ahead of the game. You are just a better developer than you give yourself credit for. So I guess that's my recommendation, and that's what I reach to JS that if I'm feeling inadequate in my skills, I just think about all the cool stuff I can build, Even if it's just getting, you know, the color green on the screen, just a green background or something, it's still cool that you're able to produce a website at all, right? I I think that's just, like I don't know. That's a big message to me JS this the stuff that we do, we're producing things, we're creating things, and even if it's basic, whatever, it's still awesome that we can do it.

Right. Well and that's the reason why I asked you too if you have, struggled with imposter syndrome because it's important to realize that you're not alone. Right, if you feel that way. And, again, circling back to what we were saying, imposter syndrome is the idea of I can't talk about it because then other people will find out. Right? The reveal will be will be there. So hearing that you too have struggled with it, you know, you can assume that a lot of really great developers are struggling with the same sense of anxiety and feeling like, you know, I'm not good enough.

Right? So it's important to understand that that everybody feels that way, and what it shows is that, there's a strong sense of, like, high achievement there. Right? And that's something that, that you should really be proud of because people who are not high achievers are not going to feel that way necessarily, and that says a lot about yourself as a as an individual and a developer.

So let's take a a quick break to talk about one of our our sponsors.

For this episode JS Sanity.

And, we did not line this up for Sanity to be on the mental health, podcast on purpose or anything, so, don't think we're we're doing that. But, with more about Sanity images, which is a neat,

feature from Sanity, is WES. Yeah. So we talk about Sanity. They're a headless CSS, structured content CMS before. And one thing I wanna spotlight right now is everything around handling images inside of Sanity. So, you know that if you are using images on your website, you probably need to resize them, do some transformation to them, put them on a CDN so that they are fast all over the world because that's probably one of the largest pieces, of data download on your website. So Sanity has, an entire pipeline for working with your images, and it's it's pretty cool because you can take an image, put a hot spot on it. So maybe a hot spot might be someone's face or a product.

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Thank you. So the next spot we wanted to talk about would be focus on job performance. We did get a lot of questions on this as well, and here's one. It says, how do I keep motivation and focus? I I find myself enjoying work, but I have a hard time focusing on it. All of the distraction free apps don't work because I can turn them off, and they literally have no power over me.

I do have a small note about these distraction free apps.

Most of them have, like, or at least the good ones have, like, a hardcore mode. So look for hardcore mode where you literally can't shut it off. I know Focus App for Mac has that where there is no way to shut it off. So, like, if you if you have a hard time shutting those off, you find the hardcore modes and turn them on. It's it's difficult to Can I just say that I figured out how to get around it? I won't tell you how, but The hardcore mode? Me is like, I'm in a hardcore focus mode to do some work. And then the hacker in my mind is like, I wonder how that works. I have control over this computer.

That it's in, like, system processes or something. Or Yeah. I'm not gonna say, but it's possible.

That's hilarious. Okay. So, Courtney, what kind of message do you have for people who are having a hard time focusing? I know that I have some focus issues in general, and you give me a lot of good tips on focusing, so I know you have some good information here.

Yeah. Well, first of all, if you've got,

like, 20 tabs open as you have currently, like, that's that's not ideal. Right? This isn't this isn't even all of the tabs, Cor. This is just some of the tabs. Okay?

Yeah. I don't know what the optimum, tab to focus ratio is. I don't know if there's such a thing. 7.

7. Okay. So keep it to 7 or less.

Yeah. That's a big one. I really like Brian Tracy's book. Do you know what that book's called, Scott?

Eat That Frog? Is that Brian Tracy Eat That Frog? Yeah. I I think that's We talk about Eat That Frog quite a bit on this show.

Right? Yeah. It is it is Brian Tracy. Yeah. So his idea is to have a couple of frogs that you wanna accomplish in the day, and those are the things that you wanna tackle first. They're the most important, and they're your big frogs. Right? So you you wanna tackle those things first, and then below that, having a list of all the other little things that you wanna do. Right? But I think coming up with a list every day, sitting down first thing in the morning, these are the things that I wanna accomplish, and prioritizing that list is really important.

Beyond that, in terms of focus, I think knowing yourself and being really honest with yourself about your your habits is really important.

Right? So if you notice that you're constantly on Twitter, having that hardcore mode on Twitter,

you know, is is the smart way to do that. I think even just logging out of these services is key Yeah. Because it it stops that. Like, I just find myself mindlessly typing in tweet deck a 100 times a day. And if I log out, then it then I I go, oh, what am I doing? Like, oh, I was sleepwalking going to the social network.

Right. Yeah. I did that with Instagram. I have a huge problem of just, like, looking at Instagram just in the evening instead of being present.

Right? And so I just uninstalled it on my phone, and then I have to physically type it in on my phone and the what would you call it? The format? I don't know. The website? The URL? Yep. Or wait. Well, just the the website isn't as good as the app. Oh, I see. Yeah. So then I get frustrated, and I close out of it.

It's always a bummer for us web developers when the the advice is just use the web app because you won't be addicted. It's not as good. No. It's just

Just use the thing that we're, you know, that we do. That's not as good. Right. Yeah.

No. Totally. And and I think that's a a big thing because that barrier to entry, you just had a little bit of a barrier to entry there. I know that it is for me. I'll I'll I'm the the type who'll do command w, close the Twitter tab, and then command t type t w. And then be, like, wait. What am I doing? I was just there. Yeah. Like, do that over and over again. And, to me, those focus apps, in particular, block that really well. But I think the best advice you you've given me is that having the to do ESLint.

Is, like, so paramount. Yeah. And really having that to do list and and sticking to it and eating those frogs and making that the key to there is a big one for me. Yeah. And I don't know if this is part of those,

focus apps that you use, but one of the things that I recommend is called the Pomodoro app. That's that's what I recommend for kids doing homework. Right? So I think the same idea applies to adults as well, but it's really the idea of working for a period of time and working strategically. So, like, 25 minutes is solid work. Right? And then you take a short break, like, 3 to 5 minutes.

And thinking about in that break, what can I use that time for? Is it to go to the bathroom? Is it to get a drink? Is it to browse Twitter? Right? So using that time for the break and then going back and working again for 25 minutes. Right? So I recommend 25 minutes of work, 3 to 5 minute break, and you do that for a period of, like, 3 times. And then after the 3rd work period, then you would take a longer break, like 15 minutes.

And you can use that time to, like, go outside if you can, go for a walk, just get up and, you know, walk around the office or or browse Twitter, whatever that is.

But having, like, the designated work and break time, I think, really helps to structure it, especially for people who, you know, have issues with focusing.

So, I recommend that a lot for my ADHD clients, but I think that that applies to anybody because a lot of us are kind of feeling ADHD lately just with all of the distractions, right, and just everything that's around us all the time. There's so much to distract us.

So having, like, that structured work time, I think, really helps along with the designated plan every morning.

Yeah. Absolutely.

I think the next thing we wanna talk about is I I combine these 2 because a lot of people were asking about similar things here, and this is motivation and remote work specifically.

So I actually these messages this term that I never heard of, bore out. Have you heard of bore out? I've heard of burnout.

They said I wanna deal with burn out or bore out, and I thought bore out was a really interesting idea. The idea that you're just bored with everything, and you can't work on things because you're bored. And that, to me, sounds slightly depressive, like depressive symptom kind of thing to me, but, you know, the the boreout, the burnout, how do you deal with, how do you deal with the loss of focus and happiness in web development, especially in remote jobs? And then somebody says, working for yourself at home, you don't get the chance to bounce ideas of encouragement off of other people. What are some good ways to compensate to ensure you have a positive mindset? So how do you stay motivated? How do you stay sane? How do you keep that level of motivation up, especially while working from home like so many of us are doing currently?

Well, I don't I think these are more appropriate questions for you 2 than me. I know in my job, I'm I'm doing something different every day, and so I don't quite always know what to expect, and that keeps the bore out, I guess, low.

Certainly, there's a mental burnout with that. But what do you what do you 2 do? I think I think you could better answer that question.

Yeah. Honestly, this happens to me all the time, and it's it's just the fact that I can't do something for a long time. And if I don't like what I'm working on, I need to work on something else. And I've just realized that about myself is that, like, fortunately, I have a job where I can do that. Yeah. But I I can't work on something for for too long, and I've certainly had client projects where I'm just like, this will never end, and I hate it. And in my case, I just will need to work on a side project. I need to design fun. I need to do a tutorial, something like that to just totally switch away, and then I realized, I'm excited about the stuff. It's fun again. I'm building something from scratch. I'm using these new technologies.

Yeah. That was always the thing about me for agency life. That's why I liked working on agency so much. I even liked it working more on well, even when I worked for Ford, we were building prototypes. So it Wes something new Yeah. Wes.

And so, like, agencies, a lot of the times, your work is the work comes in, you build it, you ship it, you work on something else, and you don't support it for too long. Or or there isn't support because, chances are it's just like a brochure or something or or site that you know, you gave them a CMS, and chances are they'll never even log in to it. So these things just sort of sit there. So for me, that was always a big driver is the fact that you're always working on something new, and that's one of the reasons why I love web web development so much. But I could see if you're working on a product or, like, an application that is the application, then it could get really boring. Although, I've worked on Vercel up tutorials.com myself for so long, but the fact that I'm the boss and I can make the calls here, if I wanna learn framer motion, well, I can just rip out all of my animations and rewrite them in Framer Motion just for the fun of it, just to learn it. Right? And and that that JS, that's sort of one of the reasons why I love doing what I'm doing right now because I do get that freedom and the ability to to change all those things. So I don't know. What I would advise is maybe find some ways to switch it up in your job. I know you don't always have the ability to be the decision maker, but switch it up even if it is as simple. This is gonna sound dumb, but even if it's as simple as changing your theme in Versus Node, switch it up. Switch it up. Try it something different.

Get some new new flows going on, and try some new extensions, maybe some new new plug ins that make it so you can type or code differently.

Just try something new is really it. I know that that's sort of the message that we've been saying, because we both like to try new things. But if you get bored, try something new. If you need motivation, think about the motivating factors. What are the motivating factors in this work is often learning new things, driving yourself forward, pushing yourself in different ways. So if you're doing client work or whatever and you can't figure out how to drive yourself forward, really see what kind of variables you can affect Vercel. Like, hey. Can I try this new framework out on this project? Sure. Just do it. Ask your boss.

Ask for that time to maybe work on side projects or learn new things, and that will help maybe push you forward. Keep it fresh.

And it's just like one of our sponsors. We're gonna wanna keep it fresh, and that's FreshBooks.

Oh, it's just a cloud accounting software that Wes loves and uses every single day. And, I don't know about you guys, but our our tax time got pushed back. So, get more time to work in FreshBooks before taxes are due.

It did. Unfortunately, my FreshBooks work was only a a few hours this year, and I exported everything. So my Scott delayed, but I don't need it, because FreshBooks made it so easy to do my taxes this year.

Basically, I use FreshBooks to keep track of all of our invoices. So if we invoice someone for a sponsor, it gets sent out via FreshBooks, and expenses. So go buy a coffee or something like that on a on a meeting. I can expense half of that. I put it into FreshBooks.

At the end of the year, I those 2 things. They also have all kinds of really good reports, so you can see where you're at in terms of money coming in, money going out, who owes you money, who you need to shake down, things like that. So, check it Node, FreshBooks .comforward/syntax, and use syntax in the how did you hear about us section. Thanks so much to FreshBooks for sponsoring.

Thank you, FreshBooks.

Alright. The last topic we wanna dive into you know what? Honestly, Court, I think this has been so so good and so illuminating. We should have you on again to do more stuff because, you know, your your specialty is, in fact, educational.

So, like, maybe we could talk parenting stuff, talk, dealing with adolescent problems or things like that, but I think there's so many topics here that we didn't even get to cover.

Yeah. Let us know what you wanna see.

Yeah. Absolutely.

If you have more questions for Courtney or anything like that, we can have her back on again and and do a round 2 of this because, you know, there's just so much here. This last section is gonna be on stress. We got a couple of questions on stress, which is, how can I correctly identify the source of negative stress and not lashing out on the close ones, Node under stress? Sorry. Sometimes these these questions come in and we gotta interpret them a little bit. So, how do you identify the source of negative stress, and how do you deal with, not lashing out, being aggressive, and also how do you avoid eating to cope with stress? So, like, positive coping strategies for stress and just stress in general. I know a lot of us are under some really tight deadlines.

So managers you've you've experienced me firsthand being under some extreme stress from really demanding and honestly abusive, managers and bosses over the time. So I don't know what kind of advice you can give there.

Yeah.

Well, have you have you talked about the coronavirus situation at all on the podcast?

A little bit, but not really, because we haven't recorded in 2 weeks, and the world has been flipped out ahead in 2 weeks.

I know. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, we're all under an insane amount of stress right now.

It's paramount in everybody.

So this is a really, I think, pertinent topic right now.

In terms of identifying the source of stress, how I encourage my clients to do it is to really think about how we experience stress in our body. Right? And it's interesting. We think about, like, these basic emotions like anger, sadness, happiness, whatever. We all experience them, but we experience them differently. Like, have you ever thought about that, Wes, how you experience stress in your body, like, where you feel it?

Yeah. I I get Yeah. I get headaches.

If I have a stressful couple days, I wake up or or just get a a wicked headache that, like, no Tylenol or anything can can get away with. It's just, like, the worst headache that I can get.

Okay. Yeah. And for me, it's just like a sense of tightness, like Vercel tightness all throughout my body.

And a lot of times, I have, like, perseverative thoughts where I'm thinking about the same thing kind of over and over. I, like, hyperfocus on what it is that I'm stressed about. You know? So it it's different in everybody, and so it's really important to think about and pay attention to when you feel stressful, and think about where you're experiencing it. So pay attention to your heartbeat. Right? Is it beating really fast? Are your muscles tight? Are you clenching your muscles? Do you have a headache? You know, is your face flushed? Right? So think about those things because they're important cues to let you know that you're feeling that emotion. And, I mean, that seems really obvious. Like, we all know what stress is, but a lot of times, we don't identify it quickly. And when you can pay attention to it in your body, which, you know, is part of mindfulness and why that's so effective and so helpful, but when you can identify it in your emotively, right, emotionally in your body.

Yeah. Call it out. That's a really good point. Yeah. So that's that's the first step. And then,

once you're feeling stressed, thinking about it, like I said, rationally. So thinking about what what specifically is making me stressed.

And a lot of times, it's helpful to write it down.

So if you're at work thinking about what are the the things that might make you stressed. So what's an example of something that you might be stressed about? The world falling apart.

Right.

Yes. Yes. That Node. Yes. And then in a developer sense, maybe a boss saying, get this done right now, or you're you're in big trouble.

I don't know. Yeah. There there's a a lot of it, for me, was always around deadlines.

You know, sometimes having to pull all nighters to to work on stuff because the Node just wasn't working. Wes we know JS developers very specifically, there's that, like, joke. It's like, this is not working. I have no idea why this is working. I have no idea why, where where sometimes things just don't work, and it's so beyond you why this thing isn't working. I think I had a I had a bug last night, and it was so dumb. I was editing the wrong file. Of course, it's like,

why is this error still here?

And it was editing the user transactions file rather than the user transaction file, which just happened to look very, very similar in terms of layout of the React the component.

And here I've edited this variable, and I'm like, I'm still getting the errors. My code not compiling. I stopped and started. I checked the debugger. I'm like, why isn't this data coming in? And now, you know, all this stuff.

And sure enough, it's just something so stupid because, sometimes Wes it builds up and builds up and builds up, your your default systems for checking the things that are basic shut off. You know? Right. Yeah. And that that can get kinda tough.

Yeah. Yeah. So if if it's an error like that, then I think, again, just paying attention to how you're ESLint. And if it's something that you can't control at that moment, then you could do a couple of things. Right? You can just take a break, go for a walk. I think that you find a lot of your solutions, Scott, when you take a walk. That's one of the things that I'm always recommending to him, but instead, he kind of, like, digs in, and we'll just try and solve it, solve it, solve it. And his brain is not thinking necessarily rationally. He's thinking out of that, yeah, out of that frustration and stress. I've gotten better, though. I used to,

I used to have a problem when we when my office was carpeted. I used to flip my chair over. I used to just stand up and knock my chair over because it was like, alright. This isn't gonna break the chair. It's carpet. It's not that loud. It's not like I'm damaging anything. Oh, I was never I was never the type to get really that angry about it, but just flipping the chair over always, like, relieved a little bit of that aggression for me. And, like Yeah. I haven't done that in, like, 8 years or something. I haven't done that in a very long time, but that was like I I remember Courtney having a a chat with me just being like, you need to stop doing that. Like, you just need that's not that's not that's not a good to do. So, that was that was one of the things that Wes always my release of aggression, and now I don't I just don't have that much aggression anymore. I don't know what it is. I just found out how to chill out a little bit more, but I know that that people are saying, how do you do you avoid lashing out? And to be honest, it's we're developers. Right? When you're developing code, it's easy to be in this, like, straight up logical mindset where your brain JS, like, no emotion. It's logic. Logic. Logic. Logic. No emotion. And so, when we're solving problems, it's really easy to stay in that mindset, but you need to be able to keep yourself grounded in the the real world and and realize that, like, you know, there's there's things going on outside and that you need to not I don't know. You need to to be cognizant of everything rather than just, like, hyper focused on what you're working on. And and those techniques that you've listed, like going for a walk, are just endlessly, endlessly effective for me.

Yeah.

The the one that is really getting a lot of, attention right now, the coping technique, is the 4 I think it's 4478 breathing. Can you check that?

So, we pulled up in our recall here on health line.com. I don't have you ever been to Healthline West? Website's really nice, actually. Scott been on that line before. Yeah. I don't know when this came about, but, health line.com, I've been really loving this Wes website lately. I have no idea. It just started popping up, and they have, like, really good advice all the time. So they they TypeScript this JS, first, let your lips part. Make a whooshing sound, exhaling completely through your mouth.

Everyone, sit back and close your eyes and do this. Next, close your lips,

inhaling silently through your nose and count to 4 in your head.

Of course, the dog barks.

Then for 7 seconds, hold your breath.

Then make another whooshing sound and exhale from your mouth for 8 seconds.

All my ASMR people loving this.

So that is, that's it, really. It's it's basically exhale whooshing exhale, breathe in through your nose silently for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, then whoosh out for 8 seconds.

So silent silent in for 4, hold for 7, whoosh out for 8.

Yeah. You can also do belly breathing too, and the idea is to, like, expand your belly as you inhale. A lot of us breathe incorrectly, and so there's a lot of research on how to breathe correctly. So when you inhale, you want to expand your belly like a balloon blowing up, and then when you exhale, the air should be you should be, like, sucking in. Right? So drawing your rib cage up, which is, like, alternative to how we usually breathe, right right where we, inhale and suck in and then exhale and suck out. So the idea is to breathe the opposite. So when you inhale, blow up the balloon, and then exhale, bring up the rib cage. But the 4 seven eight breathing, actually, there's a lot of research in how it I I don't know the specific research. See, this JS, like, the mom brain sleep deprived.

My brain right now. No one is judging you.

But there there's a lot of actual, like, neuro, research on how the 4 seven eight breathing is is really helpful with it's called the vagus nerve. It's actually really interesting if you Google that, the vagus nerve, like Las Vegas.

But yeah. So that type of breathing is really helpful. I think, obviously, like, taking a break, and and realizing what's in your control. I think right Node, the issue of control is really pertinent. Just the lack of control that we all are feeling just with everything and and understanding, like, here are the things that I can control. Right? If you can't solve that bug currently, then that's out of your control right now. You know? What's in your control is that you can take steps and to work through and figure out a solution, but currently, what's out of your control is solving that bug. Right? So there are other things that you can do to help yourself rather than dig in your heels. But the 478 breathing, understanding what's in your control, taking walks, taking breaks, things like that, and then just kind of broader things to help with stress. Of course, again, exercise, diet, sleep, all those things that we've already talked about are just so important.

Yeah. And then other good coping skills, I think exercise is huge, and it's something that we totally underutilize.

Taking walks even can be a really solid exercise if if you're doing nothing at all, if you're totally sedentary.

Trying to make it a vigorous walk if you can is ideal.

But, yeah, all those things are really important.

As far as the the stressed eating, I know that's a tough one. I think a lot of us can be, like, not mindful in terms of our eating and just kind of, like, cramming in snacks. I know Scott is kind of guilty of that sometimes.

Like, I just I stocked up at the grocery store. I bought, like, 6 box of crack boxes of crackers, and I bought them for us to last, like, the entire month. And already, Wes, like, 4 of the boxes are gone.

It hadn't even been a whole week, and he ate 4 boxes of crackers. I well, I mean, clearly, Scott's under a lot of stress like the rest of us, but I was so angry. He ate all those crackers, but he gets into this habit of just kind of, like, mindlessly eating, right, as he's working.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And and some of us are more guilty of that than others, but I think the idea of mindfulness, if the stress eating is an issue, then portioning out your snacks and, having, like, a certain amount of crackers on your plate and then putting the box away, Right? Not having the box in front of you so that you can just continue to eat.

It's just thinking about those things. I think being mindful is probably the lesson of the day. Right? Just paying attention and noticing and then taking steps to correct the things that you are struggling with. What about, like, replacing

crackers with, like, baby carrots or something? Yeah. Then then if you're mindlessly snacking, you're at least getting some fiber and beta carotene and all that stuff. Yeah. It's that's actually really good because it makes your mouth taste awful,

and you won't eat any that's okay. I love carrots. Oh my god. Yeah. I can't even

chomp on some baby carrots. Although Courtney's gonna laugh because she buys me baby carrots, and then I don't eat them. Need them. But I don't eat them Scott because I don't like them, because they're in the drawer, and I don't think about them. And and if I don't think about them, then I don't do anything about them. I gotta it has to be visual. I gotta open the fridge and see the carrots and be like, oh, carrots.

She goes carrots.

So, I think that's it for now.

Courtney, as a, as a guest on the show, we're gonna be doing sick picks. And I, I don't know if you have anything prepared, but I invite you to give us a sick pick if you'd like. This is for those of you who this is your 1st episode, sick picks are the things that we think are sick. Courtney, do you want some time to think about a sick pick, or would you just like to to have a sick pick? Well, have you done Sanity Crossing yet? We haven't. Okay. So I have then 2 sick picks, I guess.

My first would be Animal Crossing. We just purchased it for the Switch. I don't know if it's available for other things. The Switch. Okay.

But there's a way that you can play as a 2 player mode, which we just figured out. I don't know. Is there a term for that? Co op. Co op. Okay.

But it's really fun. You get to have, like, your own little island, and you create you, like, forage for things. You fish.

You create, like, a little tent, and you have, like, your stuff in the tent, and you can travel to other friends' islands.

It's been a really neat and kinda meditative game, and I'm not somebody who's, like, really into gaming. I like Mario Yarn, and and Mario type games, but I really like this one, especially, I think, because we had a couple trips planned, and we aren't able to go on any of those trips. So it sort of makes me feel like we're on an island. We're taking our vacation even though we're in our living room on the couch stuffed with little cars and things, toddler toys.

But it's it's been a really fun game, and I highly recommend it, especially, if you're looking for kind of an escape during these times.

So that's my sick pick. And then I know you had a couple of, people asking for parenting recommendations or books. So some of the books that I really like, if you're interested in parenting books, How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. Oh, my wife's reading that right now. It's so good. Yeah. It's a really great book. I think it's even if you don't have kids, it's a really great way to understand how to communicate effectively, and to not, like, put labels on things and just allow for, empathetic communication. I think a lot of us don't do that because we're uncomfortable with it, and that's a whole another story. But, anyway We should, sorry to interrupt here.

Somebody, one of us, should write a book, How to Talk to Developers.

Developers will listen. So developers will listen. Yeah.

Yeah. That's you, maybe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. You should write that. Developers are not great at communication. No. Communicating.

Right. Yeah. So we all should read that book then.

But, no, it's it's a great book, and there's there's so many, like, little nuggets in there. So if you're looking for a parenting book, I like that one, and then the whole Brainchild by Dan Siegel.

Those are 2 really great books if you're, just looking for parenting advice.

Thank you. That Wes, you came up with the sick pnpm way faster than we've used. So, yeah, congratulations. That was good. So, Wes, do you have a sick pick for us? Yeah.

I'm going to sick pick, an iPad game developer for kids called Toca Boca.

Toca Boca? Oh. Toca Boca. So, like, we got our kids an iPad, and we went down this rabbit hole a couple years ago of realizing almost every iPad game is awful, whether it's the content, whether it's the, like, links for ads that they put under the kid's fingers and then they touch them or whether like like, our kids would get these apps that they, like, try to, like, make you buy something, and then the kids touch it. And they're like, why isn't it working? And they're like, can we buy this? And it's just a dumpster fire kids' game. So I found this 1 iPad developer called Tokoboka, and they have, a bunch of different apps where it's good for, like, really young kids as well where they they can do hairstyling on people and cut their hair and change the color. And there's Coca Cola Kitchen, which allow you to, like you can cook stuff, and, like, there's there's no, like, endgame. There's no points or anything. It's just it's just doing stuff. It's just styling the person's hair or cooking a dinner, and, it's just, like, the kids are it's so calming. I I like playing it myself. It's it's really, really cool. So, if you're looking for iPad apps for your kids while they're home right now, because you need to slam an iPad in their face so they'll keep quiet for 45 minutes so dad can get some work done. Uncle Mickey. Check out. Uncle Mickey.

That's like chef Mike. We've been calling our microwave chef Mike lately.

That's so good.

Oh, chef Mike and uncle Mickey taking the taking the lead on this coronavirus having the kids. So, anyways, Toca Boca, check it out. Toca Kitchen 2 is probably my favorite. That's cool.

My sick pick is going to be a YouTube channel that I was actually watching the other day. I've been I've been subscribed to this channel for a while, but I think some people saw me watching it on an Instagram story and were asking about it. This channel is The Engineering Mindset. It's a YouTube channel that teaches basic electrical and otherwise engineering concepts, And it does so in really, really good diagrams.

So even like the initial, the electrical engineering basics starts off with how electricity works, and it gives you a nice little thing about circuits and batteries.

And they do whole videos that aren't that long. They're like 10 minutes long. Here's how a capacitor works.

Here's here's what current is. Here's what voltage is. And it does so in such a great way that you can get the the full basics of everything. And then once you get beyond the basics, it can teach you all sorts of things about condensers, chillers, evaporators, HVAC systems, all this stuff that I don't know anything about, but it it breaks these topics down that are are are so relatable to what we're doing in terms of, like, logic and engineering in general that, I love this this channel, and it does a great job of of showing you via diagrams and animations and everything. So if you're interested in learning a little bit about engineering in general, this channel JS very popular, 760,000 subscribers. So, very, very good YouTube channel there. Some of the a lot of their videos have, like, 2,000,000 views and stuff. So, good stuff there.

I should I should also say these these iPad apps I recommended, looks like they are available on Android and Kindle as well. Oh, nice.

Cool.

Well, that's it. Do you have any shameless plugs, anything to plug here?

I'm shamelessly plug all of my courses, so I just put all of my courses on 50% off until when? I don't know. When does coronavirus end? I know a lot of you are at home.

A lot of people are being laid off, and need to keep their skills sharp. A lot of people are just looking for something to to learn in this time that they're they're stuck in their house. So, Wes.

Everything is 50% off. I imagine it will be that way for at least a few more weeks.

So, yeah, check it out. Use coupon codes and tax for extra $10 off. That should still work. Yeah. Yeah.

We're gonna be doing the same thing on level up tutorials.

So level up tutorials.com.

We're gonna be doing 50% off the, yearly subscription if you wanna sign up for the year as well as, just about everything on the store. So, again, we don't have the sale up as of the 2nd that we're recording this, but it will be up by the time this podcast is out. So, also, if you've purchased a monthly or yearly subscription

recently, just get at me, and I'll I'll discount you down to the the half off rate depending on like, if it was if you purchased it, like, 2 months ago, then I don't know. But if you purchased it this month, then yeah. Usually what I do JS to say, like, if you bought it in the last couple weeks or whatever and you feel like you got burned, then let me know. Yeah. Your people are pretty good about it. So it's cool. It's like kinda like Black Friday, except the world is falling apart. Yeah. Right. It's actual Black Friday. It's black

2020.

Well, thank you so much, and thank you so much to Courtney, for coming on the show. Doctor Courtney Tolinski here, and, we hope to have you on again someday soon. Yeah. Happy to be here. Thanks for listening. Yeah. Thanks a lot.

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