In today's episode, I interview a returning guest, Kalid Azad! Kalid is the creator of BetterExplained.com. Today's episode is sponsored by Headspace. Headspace offers you guided meditation that you can take with you, and does so in a beautifully made native app experience. Headspace is also hiring! Head over to https://Headspace.com/join-us to learn more about the openings.
In today's episode, I interview a returning guest, Kalid Azad! Kalid is the creator of BetterExplained.
Kalid's first interview
@BetterExplained on Twitter
Today's episode is sponsored by Headspace. Headspace offers you guided meditation that you can take with you, and does so in a beautifully made native app experience. Headspace is also hiring! Head over to https://Headspace.com/join-us to learn more about the openings.
Hey, everyone, and welcome to Developer Team. My name is Jonathan Cottrell, and in today's episode, I'll be interviewing Khaled Azad. Khaled has been on the show before. I'm really excited to have him back on. He is the creator of BetterExplained.com, and we interviewed him about a year ago, a little bit less than a year ago, and he recently rolled over 10 years on Better Explained, and hugely popular site, and also incredibly helpful. We're going to talk about some of the things that he has had epiphanies about. We talked about some of them on the last episode. We might end up actually talking about some of the same ones again, but some of his more recent epiphanies, but more importantly, we're going to discuss the 10-year history of Better Explained and some of the lessons that Khaled has learned along the way in creating content that is fun. So let's jump straight into the interview. Now, let's go ahead and jump straight into the interview. That's what we're going to talk about in today's episode. Of course, as usual with these interviews, we split them up into two parts. That's because we still try to keep the length of the episodes on Developer T as low as possible. Obviously, with interviews, they're longer than the other episodes, but we split it up into two parts for that reason. Make sure you subscribe so you don't miss out on the second part of the interview. Now, let's go ahead and jump straight into the interview. Let's go ahead and jump straight into the interview with Khaled. Let's see. Can you hear me okay? I can. It sounds great. Oh, perfect. And you too. Good, good. It's been a little bit since I've hooked up all the mic stuff, so it's still working. Good. Yeah, I totally understand. Cool. So I'm really excited about the interview today. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Oh, yeah. No, thank you. I was going to say, I really, I mean, actually, it's funny, even our previous interview, I would just in the car sometimes. If it's in my player, like my podcast player, I'll turn it on. It's just, it was so much fun. And there's just something about it where, because I, myself, I forget a lot of things that I figured out. Like, actually, I have to write things down because it's so easy for me to forget. Oh, like that was something I figured out. And then, you know, it just leaves my mind. So I come back to it and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's like, you know, that was kind of a fun way to approach something or something. So it's sort of like, for me too, it was informative just to remember. It sounds like the... Podcasts have been going really well. I mean, you've been cranking them out and, you know, that's something I've been impressed. Man, I think last time too, we started recording. Basically, I'm going to talk your ear off. So whenever... No, go ahead. Yeah. So, I mean, no, I've just, that's one thing for myself that one of the things I'd like to become better at is being a little bit more consistent or having a schedule. I'm sort of a little bit, I think maybe a little bit of a diva in some cases where I try to get myself inspired or in the mood sometimes to create and anything. I think, I feel like you have a more kind of disciplined, like in a good way, just, okay, you know, we're just going to every week have a recording or I'm not sure how often you're doing these, but it's enough that you basically have a pretty big pipeline. And I think taking the whether or not you're motivated question out of it, it seems like you're kind of, it's happening no matter what. And, you know, it just sort of happens. And I feel to myself, I still have a little bit of a sense that I need to be kind of ready. I sort of speak. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, who knows if you're feeling ready one day or not, but I feel like you're just like, okay, like we have an interview lined up. Let's just do it. So it's awesome. Well, you know, normally I have like a couple of minutes where I talk to interviewees, I guess, interviewees that I have on the show. You know, it's really interesting that you mentioned that because I think it's actually very relevant to our discussion that we're going to have about the 10 years and the lessons that you've learned along the way. The podcast is going well. I have a tenuous relationship, kind of a frustrating relationship with this thing called motivation or inspiration. And it's a really hard thing to try to put into a box, right? Like when the idea strikes, whether it's at dinnertime, you know, with my wife, or if it's at three o'clock in the morning, if I don't capture it in some way or something like that, then I end up. I end up losing it. And so what I've tried to do is create some kind of semblance of a regular schedule and a space to be motivated or a space to be inspired. I actually talked about it on the last episode. So one of the things that I do actually is I will, I'll work out for like 20 or 30 minutes, really short workout, and then I'll take a shower. And as strange as it sounds, like 90% of my ideas for these monologue type episodes that I do end up coming from. The shower. It's kind of a weird thing. That's awesome. Actually, that's, I don't, I think I've heard it, or this is kind of my own little kind of gut check too, is a lot of people, sometimes they ask me what, like how to find their path. I mean, not that I'm an expert in this, but they say, oh, you know, how can I discover my passion? It seems like you, you know, you figured out what you like. And the shower test is a great one where when your mind has nothing to do and you're in a comfortable situation and there's no distraction. So a shower is perfect for that. You know, where does your mind naturally gravitate towards? And I think that's where, you know, ideas come up and, you know, half finished thoughts. And for myself too, little intuitions or an essay I want to work on, they seem to come up in the shower as well. And I think it's a great place to just, you know, in the absence of all these distractions that we're used to, just to see what's there. Because your mind rarely is it blank. It's usually there's something going on, but often that something is driven by external events. So when it's just your mind on its own, what, you know, what pops up. And so I think that's an awesome test because I, I use that sometimes if I'm working on a post and it's really interesting to me, that'll be what comes up. And other times it'll be, oh, you know, I might want to do something with the site. So I think it's a nice way to kind of figure out what I guess subconsciously you're, you're thinking about, and it kind of emerges a little bit in the, in the quiet of the shower. So that's great. That's a really interesting insight. I think that this actually outlines something that we don't often really connect. And that is that the, the health of your, of your mind, right? Your, your mental. Health is going to have an effect on, on this. When you, when you're in the shower and it's quiet or, you know, whatever, where, whatever your space is, I'm not going to say you have to take a shower for that to be the only thing. Maybe you go for a drive, uh, out in the countryside. I don't know, uh, wherever you find your space. Um, a lot of people who have, and I've dealt with it before. So I'm going to speak from my very limited and like kind of smaller. Exactly. Example, but I've had, I've dealt with anxiety before. Right. So, um, and when it gets quiet and then when there's nothing to do, you know, are you able to be inspired or are you dealing with, uh, with thoughts of anxiety or, uh, and there's a lot of reasons for us to pay attention to these things that go beyond just, um, whether or not we can be inspired, obviously. But it certainly has an effect on, on the creator mindset. And. Uh, you know, that's, that's just something to be aware of. If you're listening to this podcast and, um, maybe you've never dealt with mental health issues or maybe you are dealing with mental health issues right now. Uh, this is not really my area of expertise. Um, so I try to tread lightly in areas where I don't have a lot of authority, but, you know, certainly don't take it for granted that your job or your creativity, that those things can be separated or somehow contained away from your mental health. Right. It is all certainly, uh, driven by that one big organ in, inside of your head, right? Like it's a really interesting thing. Exactly. And I, oh man, see when I'm talking with you, I just get all these analogies in my brain. And so something in a similar way, uh, just now it struck me that so our, our output or our creativity or productivity, we normally think of it as maybe a function of one parameter. So you pass in something like willpower or, or, or wanting something. But I think it's actually, there's a kind of a hidden global variable that this function is referencing, which is your kind of emotional state. And so you don't really control that variable directly. So you can say, okay, I'm going to, you know, I want to make a recording or write an essay or, or work in a program and I'm just going to put in my motivation level. So that's, you know, X is being put in the parameter, but that function of whether you actually do it is reading from a global variable, which is your emotional state, which you don't really control directly. And so you can, for the same X, for the same amount of motivation. Yeah. Sometimes you'll do something, sometimes you won't. And there's kind of this other factor, which you don't directly control, which is, oh, you know, are you, do you have energy? Are you hungry, tired, sleepy? Are you emotionally, um, you know, maybe upset because of something, or maybe you're frustrated or there could be 50 different reasons that something doesn't happen. And unfortunately we only control that kind of X parameter, which is maybe my conscious willpower. And we don't realize there's so many other things that can get involved. And so we might beat ourselves up. We say, Hey. And that's actually a life lesson that I learned is to be a lot more gentle with myself and say, Hey, wait a minute. If I'm putting in the same mental determination, but it doesn't seem to be happening. I mean, it's funny. It's this paradox where if you're logical and, you know, a lot of programmers, we pride ourselves in being very logical, but if you're logical, you should realize that there's places where logic doesn't work because clearly for the same intention, you don't have the same output. So therefore there's something else. There's some hidden variable, which is not contained in what you're putting in. That's determining the output. So you have to say, okay, what is that? Your mental state, emotional state. And so over time I learned to be gentle with myself and say, okay, let's, let's try to suss out. Maybe that there's something else going on. And it's hard to directly, like you can't will yourself into, into happiness or, or out of, you know, if you're feeling anxious, you can't really will yourself out of that, but you can at least recognize it. And then there might be things you can do from there. So that was a big kind of aha moment for me was realizing there's kind of that hidden global variable. Yeah. That's such a cool, such a cool. Metaphor. Like we can understand this as programmers, that the idea of having a clean program that you can recognize and control the inputs and outputs. And the, I guess the human brain is best described as a extremely poorly written piece of code in one way in that there's so many side effects that, you know, any given function may be modifying the state of everything in your brain. And in fact, there's probably. Some pretty good evidence to say that that's true, that literally every experience you have changes the way that you perceive every new experience. Right. Um, of course you could, you could say that it is actually the best written software, uh, that our brain actually works exactly how it should. And that our perception of that is actually the broken part. But, um, in either case, you know, it is a really interesting thing to say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to give myself a little bit more credit than I should. Okay. I'm going to give myself a little bit more credit than I should. Because, you know, it's, it's easy for us to reduce things as much as possible. In fact, our brains are super good at that, right? We try to reduce the, uh, the things that we have to think about. We try to reduce things to their simplest form so that we can understand them. Um, we try as, as many times as we can to make something, um, to make something binary, right? Like we, we try to say, okay, it either is this way or it isn't this way. If I do this thing, then I will be successful. Uh, if I don't do this thing, then I won't be successful. And usually more often than not, things are not that way. And it's a, it's kind of a weird part of our brain, maybe a survival instinct. Um, or maybe it's just our brains being lazy and trying to save calories, but it's something in our brains that is saying, okay, you know, I'm going to simplify this, even though it's not, that's not a picture of reality. I'm going to try to approximate reality and then round up or round down. Uh, however I, I, I see fit. Exactly. And I think I've heard, I mean, again, this is all, it's sort of pop psychology or biology, but you know, our brains aren't really like happiness isn't necessarily, isn't really necessary for, for survival. Like if you're, if you're sad or depressed or upset or anxious, but it makes you do something, then, Hey, that's a really good way to get you like fear is a great motivator. So you feel horrible, but you know, fear is a great way to get you to run away from a tiger. So like, maybe that's just the way. That it turned out is that. So harness your fear is what you're saying. Harness your fear, or it's more that I guess, yeah, it's that your brain. Or understand it at least, right? Understand it. Yeah, exactly. And realize that it might, it might just be a signal that historically has been very useful in terms of survival, but it's not particularly useful. It's not enjoyable necessarily. Right. Right. And so you can sort of separate that. And actually one, one approach I've taken too is like you said, like the, like the, the brain in her mind. I mean, again, as programmers, we're, you know, it's fun to have a system. And you want to reverse engineer it and figure out how it works. But I think, you know, the, the, the human mind consciousness and the brain is these are so abstract and difficult. My, my kind of high level approach is to sort of work backwards from what's happened in the past. So for example, it's hard for me to know, to explicitly state my values. Let's say like, if you just ask me right now, you know, what are the most important things in your life? I mean, I can think for three seconds, but that's kind of my brain trying to construct. Scenarios and saying, oh, okay. It could be like relationships and, oh, learning. And like, you know, I can just off the top of my mind, think of a few things, but is that really what my values are? Or am I just, you know, creating kind of a little bit of a story. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So one thing I've done is basically over time when I feel alive. So my notion of alive is, you know, you have that aha moment, you know, you feel energized. You, you're in the, you know, kind of flow state. You, you've, you know, you're basically just these happy moments in your life. Whenever they happen. I just try to write down what I was doing or what happened. So it might be, Hey, yeah, I had a really great interview or maybe I got like a nice note from somebody that something was helpful. Or maybe I figured out a problem that I was working on or, and you know, there could be dozens of different events that are happening. And so I've been keeping a text file. I call it the feel good dot text file basically. And it's just kind of a straight, you know, just notepad text file. And whenever I have an entry or something happens that really makes me feel alive and energized to write it down. And so actually in the blog post, I took that file and you can look through it manually, but it, but just, I ran it through kind of a word cloud diagram. So I said, okay, let's just add a purely, and this is kind of the programmer part coming out. Okay. Just from purely kind of analytical perspective, like what words or themes seem to be showing up for me. I ran it and it was basically, I have a word cloud and it's essentially curiosity, learning, helping people getting in the zone. So being in that flow state is, is itself super enjoyable. And then sort of having fun and kind of a playful sense of. You know, playing with ideas and being kind of a little bit of a reverent and so on. Those things really get me alive or they make me alive. And so I was able to kind of like extract out the emotions or the things that created good emotions. And I didn't, I couldn't, I don't know if it's necessarily a conscious. You know, thought process. It's really just, just write down what happened and then you kind of reverse engineer out. Oh, these things were happening every time I was happy. Yeah. I have this on my list of things to talk to you about actually. So I'm really glad that you brought it up and not me because it's one of my favorite ideas that I've heard from you. And, and I also have heard a similar idea from the great Tim Ferriss. I'm going to invoke his name. I know in the podcasting world, there's, there's probably a fairy somewhere that's carrying him a little note to remind him that he still is at the top of the business list on, on the podcast. You know, top 10 or whatever. But he talks about the, the jar. Awesome. And I think he actually stole it from somebody else too. Um, or borrowed it, but he talks about the jar of awesome, which is a very similar concept. Whenever somebody experiences something really awesome that day, write it down on a piece of paper and drop it in this jar. Right. And, and the whole goal here is there's a couple of things that, um, that both of you have mentioned is the review portion. It's not the process of actually collecting it. It's going back and learning. It's almost like collecting. Yeah. Data. And then you're going back and learning about yourself based on reality rather than based on your, like you're saying a constructed story, right? Um, it's very similar to a quote that I heard recently, and this is a really good, it's like a little gym, an extra little nugget here for you business owners that are listening to developer tea. But I heard a, a quote and I can't remember who it was from, but they said your, your culture is not what you say, but what you say. At the very least, you may have taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the plunge and taken the pl hours. Let's say, you know, some project fails and you have a work explosion and then somebody has to stay until 7 p.m. one night, right? Okay. Now, in this scenario, how often does that same company that states that one of their biggest values is family values, right? They state that going home at five o'clock every day is an important part of their balance metrics or whatever. And then they celebrate this one person who decided to stay late. Now, it's a really interesting thing because certainly we want to celebrate the efforts, the above and beyond efforts of workers, right? That's a really important thing. But how many times are you celebrating when you actually accomplish balance? Are you actually giving this message clearly to the people that you work with when you don't celebrate the thing? that you say you value? It's a good question, right? I'm not certain that it's 100% the case that you should be celebrating every day at five o'clock when people leave. I don't know that that's, you know, any better necessarily. But I do think it's an interesting study to determine, okay, you know, the things that make me feel good or the things that are emotionally evoking for me. Am I actually recognizing those things when I say these are the things that I value? Exactly. I think that's a good analogy too, because you're right. If a certain, for example, you know, pulling an all-nighter or cranking or, you know, having kind of a, like a, like a, you know, a death march to finish a project and that's rewarded. I mean, it is sending a pretty strong signal that that is really what's important versus the other things. And I think, yeah, for yourself personally, your own happiness, right? Like if you feel alive when something happens, then that is a pretty strong signal that that's actually what matters. And so, I think it's, and it's really easy to, the thing I like about this too, is that it's not, it's, yeah, it's the celebration or looking at your own happiness levels over time. It takes a little bit of the guesswork out of it. Like you don't have to do anything in particular. You don't have to, you're not telling somebody celebrate here. It's just pay attention to when you celebrate. So when it naturally arises, you're sort of extracting out kind of the circumstances versus, you know, it's, it's all these things. Like as soon as you get your brain involved, there's some studies that say, you know, you're not going to be able to celebrate here. You're not they ask people about life satisfaction and, you know, people give the one to 10 rating, but if they put a dollar on the ground on the way to the study, and then the person picks it up and say, Oh, I got the dollar. And now they ask him about life satisfaction. You know, it's like a point or two higher, like a $1 and it's such a temporary thing, but we're so easily swayed by these things. So you have to sort of look over time and maybe look at what really made you fulfilled and not necessarily intellectualize it too much. Today's episode is sponsored by Headspace. If you haven't heard of Headspace, Headspace is an application that helps make meditation simple. Hopefully you have heard of Headspace. Hopefully you're listening to Developer Tea enough that you've heard the last couple of episodes. We've talked about Headspace a few times. As a developer, investing in your mental health is one of the most important things you can do. We've already talked about that on today's episode, and we're going to talk about it on plenty of other episodes because it's not a small subject. It's not a simple one, but meditation has been shown to be good for your mental health. This is pretty much across the board. Very few people can get away with saying that they wouldn't benefit from meditation. Meditation is a great way to improve your mental clarity, your focus, and your creativity. The best way I can describe it is it's like practicing focus. We've talked about practicing focus on this show before, but that's what meditation is like. It's like practicing focus. Now, there are plenty of ways. You could meditate, but Headspace makes it simple. They really do. They guide you through this very pleasant application, very well designed, and it's much simpler to approach than just going on YouTube and trying to find guided meditation. Go and check it out, headspace.com. Of course, you can find it in the app stores, but headspace.com to learn more about the company. They have over 10 million downloads worldwide, by the way, and they're building a world-class engineering team with offices in San Francisco. And in Los Angeles. So if you're interested in joining Headspace as a company, as a developer, then go and check it out, headspace.com slash join-us or spec.fm slash Headspace will take you directly to that link. But again, Headspace is hiring for people who are interested both in mental health, as well as becoming a developer at a world-class development team with over 10 million downloads worldwide. Thank you again to Headspace for sponsoring today's episode. Developer Tea. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. with better explained but um when it comes to putting out content we have that same encoding in our brains that anything less than approval is actually doing something bad in the world right like this somehow we've made somebody's day worse because of the the article we posted or the podcast we recorded and usually more often than not i would say um it's a better way to evaluate your stuff by how much good it has created and even 20 is still some level of value right like i think we still view that if we have a 20 approval rating then we're actually hurting the world but that's not true the other 80 they're likely just to ignore us right like they're likely just to move on with their day and and you know it's not a big deal and we we don't really focus on the fact that most of what we're doing is going to be creating some level of value and it's our jobs to increase that level of value not to focus on how high of an approval or like how close to an a plus we get with this with this kind of thing because we don't have a scholarship to fail on we don't have that level of of negative response when we have a negative review exactly and i think there's this kind of emotional um element to or yeah especially you know in the in the school system and all these things there's sort of this um worthiness or unworthiness that we're associating with it and i think for me that one of the tricks was to separate that or or to to say that you know like a test or a grade or something it's not a question of worth or unworth it's just skillful or non-skillful so it's okay to say hey i'm skilled at this and i'm not skilled at that okay that's fine like not being i'm not skilled at knitting i'm not skilled at cooking there's a bazillion things i'm not skilled at knitting i'm not skilled at cooking i'm not skilled at cooking i'm not skilled at Atijin Atijin And now, you know, we're afraid to fail. We're afraid to explore because if I, you know, if I fail, it means I'm not worthy. I mean, I'm not good enough for something. So seeing that connection for me at least was pretty important because once you separate it a little bit, you can start to treat it just like it's like a skilled. I'm trying to think of a good analogy, but something, yeah, something like knitting. Like nobody, very few people probably are upset that they don't knit that well, but you know, you know, like, oh, like it's like, okay, but not doing well in school. Oh my gosh. Like, ah, like this is my life's going to be horrible. And of course there's more outcomes attached to the school thing, but in terms of wanting to improve or trying to improve, there's sort of like, like a gentleness that you can take that, that you would approach yourself with. Hey, I want to improve at knitting. Okay. Let's try this. And, um, you know, maybe you practice, but you're not charged up about it. But with, uh, something like, yeah, math, especially there's a lot of emotional energy around there. So when people are failing at math or they're not doing well, they don't see this as a skill thing. They see it as I'm stupid or it's an identity thing. It's an identity thing. Exactly. And, uh, I think one of my realizations is that, I mean, pretty much any skill can be, can be seen as this kind of just, it's just a skill. It's just something to learn. Um, but unfortunately there's a lot of emotional baggage there. So for math, I'm trying to approach it a little bit where it's a skill. And let me show you how easy it could be if you approach it the right way. It doesn't mean that it's, uh, and actually easy or maybe simple. I, it's straightforward. If approached the right way, just like a marathon is straightforward. It's, it's, it's not difficult to understand the concept of it. I mean, executing it can be hard, but you at least get the, like the gist of it. And so for a lot of math, um, to at least understand what's going on and actually doing it can be laborious, but sometimes just understanding it is not too bad. And so even that level, a lot of people would feel like they can't, um, they can't. Actually, I mean, I think programming is similar where, you know, a lot of people probably fear the, you know, the technical side of things and some things are very intricate and laborious, but a lot of the high level things like just, I think everybody, most people in society could become really good at Excel, let's say. And that's like very simple programming. You have kind of cells and fields and there's if statements. And I think most people in society could be pretty proficient at Excel. Um, if, if we really saw that as a skill to be, to be good at. Yeah. That's a pretty, Yeah. You know, it's a pretty, um, useful level of programming for most people, I'd say. Sure. Yeah, I agree. I think you hit on something that's, that's really interesting. And man, we've just, this is, this has been such a cool stream of consciousness conversation with you. Um, something really interesting. That is the identity piece. I think, you know, in society in large, we have these moments and, and, you know, again, encoded maybe by school or, uh, but by something. Yeah. Yeah. have these moments where we put something out into the world or we do something and we're basically waiting for our grade like we we're waiting for the reaction like i send out a tweet and i'm evaluating my ability to write a tweet and therefore you know some other aspects of my identity or personality or likability uh based on the number of hearts i get when really you know or likes i don't know what what the noun is but um really it's it's you know there's going back to that side effect thing there's so many other things that could go into why i only got one like on that tweet like for example you know i sent it at the wrong time of day or you know everybody's at work and so uh when i sent that tweet at three o'clock in the afternoon nobody even saw it like but i think the the fundamental problem there is that we aren't taking a minute to say wait a second you i'm waiting i'm letting everyone else tell me what my identity like i'm i'm searching for this thing i'm trying to uncover the thing that's most valuable and the only way that i'm doing it is is through some really uh poorly formed user research right like um you know based on whatever people are responding with i'm i'm just taking that and applying it to my self-esteem or i'm applying it to my uh to my own self-perception and i think that's a really broken uh aspect of the digital age and something that we we have to actively be aware of so that we don't put our self-esteem into a tweet or for you and i i don't put my self-esteem into how people respond to this into this interview exactly and you know it's easy to this is one of those i've i've personally become better at it over time and again i think just being online and sharing things for a long time is a really important part of it and i think that's a really important part of it and i think you you you try every approach and eventually the approach of not taking it personally i think sticks or at least helps the most so you know i tried everything else and that's the one that actually finally worked um but that's it i mean it's a it's a race you can never win or it's like it's like a i'm trying to think again my brain goes to analogies but you're you're trying to balance you know a broom on its handle and you're and you're just constantly in this you know oh you know go over here go over here oh the broom is moving this way and you're just chasing this um you know you're just constantly in this you know oh you know go over here go over here oh you know you're just constantly in this you know you're just constantly in this you know you're a need for approval or something and unfortunately it never goes away like you don't you're never validated to the level where it lasts for the rest of your life right there's no there's no like number of hearts or likes that could ever say okay that's it i'm i'm done i i've reached the finish line yeah i've reached finish like i'm done with likes i've i don't i never i don't need another like to be happy no like inevitably say well i got this many i need more and so uh i started to realize that this is sort of an unwinnable situation that you can't as long as you think that somebody else can give you that validation it's it's you know uh because see the flip of it is that i i'm i like these little paradoxes is that as soon as you let's say you get that validation let's say there's some number in your head which is you know like a million likes or something and you do a tweet and it gets a million likes well okay now your next one is it going to reach that like there's always a next thing that yeah may or may not be as good as the previous so you like you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't you can't even getting what you want there's always another want or keeping what you have let's say it's amount of money let's say you need to make you know 100 million dollars okay well once you have that now you're going to be afraid of losing it what if the economy tanks yeah it's all downhill from here right it's all downhill right yeah you're at the top of the mountain the only place is down so now you have a different fear and you haven't uh you haven't really solved the issue so i think for me the the kind of i guess the the solution was yeah to kind of try to think about the process and not the outcome because ultimately the outcome man that is so good yeah it's really hard and and it's not like i i'm you know it's not like i figured this out day one it was just over time and again i'd say i've removed maybe 90 of the things that bothered me about about these kind of emotional issues so there's still things that do bother me but i'd say the vast majority of ones that used to like a bad review or you know like i have books on amazon if someone doesn't like it okay no problem like i used to be i used to be more upset about that or or saying oh what did i do wrong and now it's okay it's it's not a fit for that person it's fine i mean you want to you don't want to dismiss their feedback if somebody has concerns sure like you want to consider them but you're not putting that extra emotional weight behind it where i'm a bad person or i'm not worthy it's just okay here's some issues that perhaps i can address you know if it makes sense for me yeah this is something that's really important for developers because uh more than most groups i would say developers in their in their professional lives uh they experience that imposter syndrome right and it you know that's such a that's such a trigger word now and i almost hesitate to use it because it's so commonly discussed in these circles but it's a real thing and it's something that i still get messages about pretty much weekly about feeling like i just don't think i have enough knowledge to do this thing or uh you know and there's there's some level of of identity crisis as a result and you know my hope is that the people who listen to this podcast can can gain a little bit of encouragement from people like colin and i um we both started out you know at the same place that you started out and i i know that that's also another common way of describing this like you know everybody starts out not being able to walk and eventually you have these master athletes and all that uh and and i understand that everybody's situation is different but you know it really is a a uh a perception thing most of the time there's something that is you know blocking your perception on what you're able to do thank you so much for listening to today's episode of developer t my interview with khaled azad i hope you were as inspired by today's episode as i was khaled is a great thinker and as simple as it may seem the the enlightenment that you can get from seeing someone else's way of perceiving the world and seeing people like you and i and i hope that you've had a great time and i hope that you've had a great time and i hope that you've had a great time and i hope that you've had a great way of building metaphors and analogies and explaining things in a new and a better way uh this this is inspiring and it helps it helps us think better right so thank you so much for listening to today's episode thank you again to today's awesome sponsor headspace if you haven't tried out meditation because you think it's it's odd or it feels weird i challenge you to try it out even if it's just for the trial period which is totally free by the way head over to headspace.com Of course, if you are looking for a job and you would like to work for a company that has mental health as their top priority, their primary focus, then go and check out the offerings, the job offerings at Headspace. It's headspace.com slash join dash us. Of course, that link can be found in the show notes at spec.fm. We've also created a quick link for you to use instead. Spec.fm slash headspace. If that one is a little bit easier for you to remember, spec.fm slash headspace. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. Don't forget to listen to the next episode. We'll continue our interview with Khaled. And if you don't want to miss out on future episodes, make sure you subscribe in whatever podcasting app you use. I like Overcast. I like Pocket Casts. Hopefully you have found one that you like as well. So go and subscribe in whatever podcasting app you use. If you don't want to miss out on future episodes. Thank you. Thank you again. And until next time, enjoy your tea.