And so Lifestyle Engineering is about taking the idea that we
have within us a power to create a different reality, to design
something different and to execute on it, which is
engineering at its core, right? Taking an idea, putting it on
paper, designing that solution, coming up with the best possible
strategy and then executing, producing it right, distributing
it to the world. Well, let's do that in our own
lives. And it's amazing what's possible
when you get in the driver's seat, you become that engineer
of your lifestyle. And that's what we want to do,
is actually start asking new questions, taking new actions
and reaching that next level in our career and in our life.
Hey everyone, my name is Henry Surya Virawan and you're
listening to the Technically Juno podcast, the show where
I'll be bringing you the greatest technical leaders.
Practitioners and thought leaders in the industry to
discuss about their journey, ideas and practices that we all
can learn and apply to build a highly performing technical team
and to make an impact in your personal work.
So let's dive into our journal. Welcome back to the Technical
Journal Podcast, the podcast where you can learn about
technical leadership and excellence.
On my conversations with great toll leaders in the tech
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becoming a patron at Techlyjunial dot Dev Patron.
My guest for today's episode is Zachary White.
Zach is a Career coach for Engineering Leadership.
And the host of the Happy Engineer podcast.
In this episode, Zach shared how engineers can become happier in
their work and life through the Lifestyle Engineering approach.
He discussed what Lifestyle Engineering entails, such as
debunking the myth of work, life balance, getting out of comfort
zone, mastering your mindset, building our own blueprint, and
doing less. Zach also opened up and shared
his personal story of getting burnt out.
And gave great insights on how we can manage burnout before it
happens. Towards the end, Zach explained
the importance of coaching for engineering leaders in order to
help reach their full potential. I hope you enjoy listening to
this episode and find some useful tips to become happier
and avoid burnout. And if you do, please help share
this episode with your colleagues, your friends and
communities and leave a 5 star rating and review on Apple
Podcasts and Spotify. It will help me a lot in getting
more people discover and listen to this podcast and I really
appreciate it. So let's go to my conversation
with Zach after quick words from our sponsor.
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Hello Zach, welcome to the Technijuno podcast show.
It's really great to have you here.
I'm looking forward to discuss a lot about making engineers happy
in their jobs and in their lives.
So welcome to the show. Hey, it's such a pleasure to be
here, Henry. Thanks for having me.
And if we're not happy doing our engineering, then what are we
doing it for? So I'm excited for the chat.
Let's dig in. Great question indeed.
So one thing that I saw in your profile in your website, you
brand yourself as the world's best lifestyle engineer.
But before we go there, I'm sure you have some story in the past.
I'd like to know and understand a lot more about your career
journey. Maybe if you can highlight
turning points or maybe some major highlights in your career
as well. Absolutely.
I started my career in mechanical engineering.
I graduated from Purdue back in 2008.
Boiler Up had an amazing experience at Purdue and joined
Whirlpool Corporation in what was and still is Their top
talent leadership development program is called World, the
Whirlpool Engineering Rotational Leadership Development Program
and I'm really honored by that opportunity.
Had the chance to do 6 month job rotations for the first two
years of my career. Lots of exposure around the
organization, great networking, great assignments, learned a ton
in that time and then we're pull paid for me to get my Master's
in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan.
Continue developing and understanding global
manufacturing and some of the business acumen behind
engineering departments and what we need to know from an
economics perspective. And then just kept hustling.
Got into my career and did a variety of interesting roles
from test engineering in the lab design engineering roles,
designing components for ovens for cooking products and laundry
products and lots of different things that I did.
And of course one of my favorite jobs was being a tech lead,
what's now called a system integrator.
At Whirlpool. They've changed the job title,
but in many ways that was the job that I felt I performed the
best. I mean, I really excelled in the
role of tech lead and then moved into management and had some
different roles in the management levels.
And then my last job before I left Whirlpool was actually in
brand and product marketing, which was a bit of a growth
experience to move out into that space for KitchenAid products.
But Henry, to answer the question of turning points or
things that really stand out, we could talk projects and roles
all day, but the actual thing that shaped my career experience
was about six years after college, I experienced a deep
burnout. I came home from a work trip
expecting to walk in the door to my wife and walked into an empty
house. There was a note on the kitchen
table said, hey, this isn't working.
I don't think we can stay married.
I want to get a divorce, and for me that just put me into an
absolute downward spiral in some of the darkest times of my life
and ended up not only divorced, but depressed and embarrassed.
Just wondering, Henry, how did my life end up here?
You know, I thought everything was going so well and nobody at
work knew what I was going through.
I kept it a complete secret for a long, long time and just did
everything I could to stay above water.
And it was recovering from that time of grief and the darkness
of that place that I fell to, where I made the discoveries
about how to approach my life and my lifestyle, my career, in
a whole different way. And after that time is when I
experienced my biggest success, my biggest rewards, the biggest
growth in my income, now happily married.
And life's completely different on this side of that failure
than on the other side. And that's what became what you
alluded to earlier, we now call lifestyle engineering.
Thank you so much for sharing your personal story.
I'm sure that was a tough time when you went through that.
And maybe some engineers here are also going through the same
kind of situations. So hopefully they can learn
something from this episode later on.
So you mentioned lifestyle engineering.
I'm sure this is not just another major of engineering
kind of course, right? So tell us a little bit more
about what is lifestyle Engineering right.
So I got my ME degree from Purdue and the University of
Michigan but my lifestyle engineering degree came from the
school of Hard Knocks at the street school, right?
And maybe first it helps to say what is lifestyle engineering
not and a lot of people and they hear lifestyle, they start to
think about the four hour work week or the sort of digital
nomad life and being a world traveler and backpacking across
Europe or whatever, right. These cliche things that come
in. And while it certainly could be
that, that's not what my clients or I focus on when we talk about
lifestyle engineering. So think about it this way.
At its most core level, we want to get out of living our life by
default and start living our life by design.
And so much of what happens to the average engineering leader
at all levels and from all over the world, people I've met and
talked to and coached, We just fall into these patterns and our
subconscious mind takes over. And we have these habits and we
have the conditioning that creates the reality that we
experience every day. And we start to believe things
that aren't true about what's possible for our lives.
And you know, it's not that it's even bad.
I suffered a deep burnout. But the real danger is that life
can be pretty good, but it's not the life that you want.
It's not the life that you would choose.
And so lifestyle engineering is about taking the idea that we
have within us a power to create a different reality, to design
something different and to execute on it, Which is
engineering at its core, right? Taking an idea, something in our
head, putting it on paper, designing that solution, coming
up with the best possible strategy.
And then executing, producing it right, distributing it to the
world. Well, let's do that in our own
lives. And it's amazing what's
possible. When you get in the driver's
seat, you become that engineer of your lifestyle.
And that's what we want to do, is actually start asking new
questions, taking new actions and reaching that next level in
our career and in our life. I really love your description,
right? We always live by default.
I mean most of the people, not just engineers I would say.
But we should live by design, right?
And the engineering part here is basically designing the kind of
a life, the kind of lifestyle that you want and maybe the kind
of job that you want to do as well.
And I think one lessons that we learned from the pandemic as
well, many people went through the same situation, right?
They start questioning. What is Life is all about?
Do I love my job, You know, going through this pandemic?
So I think thanks for bringing that up.
I really like the description by the way, and which also leads
you to create your own podcast called the Happy Engineer
Podcast. So tell us a little bit more,
what is Happy Engineer Podcast? What it's all about?
What can people learn from the guests that you bring or maybe
some of your solo episodes? Well, we joked about being a
happy engineer at the beginning of this conversation, Henry, and
by no means am I someone who would say life is only about
happiness and if you're not happy 24/7, something's wrong.
The whole spectrum of emotions is important, but what I have
found is there are far too many. In fact, if my numbers that I've
seen are accurate, it looks like the majority of engineers who
I've connected to and who I talked to, they don't find
happiness and passion and joy and enthusiasm for their work
anymore. We've gotten disconnected from
the very thing that drew us into the career in the 1st place, and
it's easy to see why. You know, you get your first job
and after a little while it's like, oh, there's all this
bureaucracy and the red tape and all this paperwork and the
emails and the meetings and the stuff.
That's not the fun part that we really love and we don't get
taught how to navigate our careers, how to say no in the
right way, how to set boundaries, how to create a
career that we love. And next thing you know, you're
just doing something that you ended up in instead of doing
that thing that you're deeply passionate about.
And so the Happy Engineer Podcast is a place where we have
conversations around this challenge of lifestyle
engineering. How do we create success at
work? Get the promotions, get on the
best projects, land the job at that dream company?
You've always wanted to make those things happen without
making the sacrifices or the tradeoffs that often lead to the
burnout or the dissatisfaction in our lives.
So for me, that was divorce. For other people, it might be a
health issue or something with your family in a different way.
Or maybe it's just a disconnection from your love of
engineering so far that you just want to get out of the industry
entirely, Which is to me one of the saddest things that you
have, the skill, you have the know how if somebody would pay
you the same salary to deliver pizza, you would do that in a
heartbeat, right? It's like, well, that's a
tragedy and it says something about the industry and what's
happening. So that's what we talked about
on the Happy Engineer podcast. And wherever you're listening to
Tech Lead Journal, just jump over and subscribe And TuneIn,
because I think, you know, this conversation coupled with that
one is a really powerful way to help accelerate your goals.
Right. We'll make sure to put that in
the show notes, definitely. But one thing I also go through
from my experience as well, sometimes it's not just the
intrinsic unhappiness that we have.
Sometimes it's also the environment, maybe the place
where you work at, the cultural thing, the leadership, the
targets and goals and engineers are well known to sometimes, you
know, work overtime, right? So they are always cranking
code, fixing bugs, any kind of incidents.
So all this definitely adds a lot more burden into the kind of
like happiness every engineer is experiencing, right?
So I think make sure people you can follow Zach's podcast as
well to learn more some tips and tricks on how to become happier
as an engineer. So let's dive deeper into the
Lifestyle Engineering itself. When I look at some materials
that you share with me, there are a few key points in the
Lifestyle Engineering. Maybe let's go through one by
one if you don't mind. So the first one is you said
that we should forget work life balance.
This is maybe something strange for some people because some
actually pursue work life balance.
But you say that we should forget about work life balance.
Tell us more about it. When you say work life balance,
what's the picture that pops into your mind?
It's that picture of the on one side of the scale is work and on
the other side is life. And for me that model is flawed,
that mental model of the scale that pops in when we think about
work, life balance, like what is the goal, Henry?
Is it to have them be the same? Is it like life is supposed to
be heavier than work? Is it the opposite?
Or we're just always trying to. Well, but wait a minute.
Isn't work part of your life? So, OK, well, maybe it's work
and home. All right, cool.
So work and home. Let's change it.
Well, still, are we trying to keep them balanced?
Like if I work 8 hours, I should be at home 8 hours.
Well, it's not about time. So what is it about?
And the whole game of trying to create this mystical thing
called balance among these two entities, It doesn't serve us.
And here's what tends to happen. Oh, I worked too hard last week.
I put in 80 hours. So this week I'm going to take a
vacation. OK, cool.
Well guess what? When you're done with your
vacation, you have to go back to work.
So what are you going to do next week?
Are you going to work 80 hours again and just volley back and
forth? We can't do that.
So OK, never mind. Let's do the perfect 40 hour
week. Well guess what, Henry?
You and I both know in engineering you don't get to
choose a perfect forty hour week every single week.
Some weeks are tougher than others.
So for me, the model is broken. Now the heart behind it is good.
I don't mean to insult anybody who says we need better work
life balance. I understand what people mean,
but we need to be careful using that phrase because what it'll
lead to is a strategy that is flawed, works not going well.
So what? I need to live more?
Well, then you end up with this situation where people try to
party on the weekends a little harder to make up for not liking
their job, and that will never lead you to a deep fulfillment
and happiness in your life. It just won't.
What it does lead to is a sense of dread on Sunday afternoon
that you have to go back to work tomorrow, and anybody who can
relate to that. This is the kind of thing it
leads to. So instead, we need to focus on
a sense of harmony and balance across your whole life.
You need to recognize that balance is an active term, not a
destination that you land on and stay there.
You're always in fluid motion of creating balance across your
entire being, and one week you're going to be out of
balance because you worked a lot. 1 week you're going to be
out of balance because you're on vacation, you didn't work at
all. One week you'll be out of
balance because you're sick and you need to focus on your
health. One week you're going to be out
of balance because fill in the blank and it's a sense of
permission that there is no single perfect way to be every
single week for the rest of your life.
But you need to know for yourself what creates the
overall health and balance in my life.
That I need to always have energy, to always be in a place
where I can honor my values and move toward my vision.
So that's why I say forget work life balance, because it's born
from a broken model and we need a new approach, a more advanced
strategy, if you will. I know some people try to find
the perfect formula for work life balance as well.
They read blogs, read books, the four hours work week.
I think that's pretty popular as well.
So I think all these models definitely get people into
thinking that there is a sense of work life balance.
I personally also learn one model from my friend.
There is probably less balance in the everyday today life, but
they are seasonal balance right? So maybe you will cut this few
months and then later on you probably slow down a little bit.
So there are different models. What I'm trying to say is some
people actually might have different strategy and I think
instead of work life balance you set in your sharing is that it
is a whole life balance, right? It's a whole life.
How do you design the kind of balance that you want?
So thank you for sharing this broken model and hopefully
people get to learn something new.
The next one that you said is actually to get out of comfort
zone. I think this is quite typical in
many kind of a self help personal development stuff.
But tell us more, why is it important for engineers to get
out of comfort zone and what kind of comfort zone that you
are referring to? There is no growth inside the
comfort zone. So let's start with that premise
and if you don't believe that, then we need to ask some
questions around how are we defining comfort zone and what's
been your life experience. But what I'll tell you with 100%
confidence is that if your life revolves around just doing the
easy comfortable thing, you are not growing or exercising your
full potential as an engineering leader, as an individual in
relationships in any area, and maybe as an example or metaphor
to help us connect the dots, It's very easy to see this in
working out going to the gym, you know, let's say today you're
more than capable of doing 10 reps of the bench press at £100.
Just pick an easy example. Well, if all you ever do when
you go to the gym is 10 reps at 100 pounds and that's it.
That's comfortable, that's easy, That's known.
You can do it. It's well within your ability.
Will you ever get stronger? And I mean, of course not.
The answer is no, you will not strengthen the muscle if you
don't take it to a new limit. You know, do enough reps that
you get to fatigue or add more weight, do something to put more
stress onto your body so that you will strengthen the muscles
and be capable of lifting more. And it's the same in
engineering. If you're staying inside your
comfort zone, whether that's a technology that's known or a
level of leadership in the organization that feels safe to
you, that feels easy to accomplish, you're not stepping
up and tackling bigger challenges or saying yes to that
special assignment or taking a risk in the meeting asking that
question when you feel like you know.
Someone might perceive me as being ignorant or someone might
think I'm stupid if I ask this, but I need to ask the question.
Those moments of getting out of your comfort zone is where the
muscles are built. You know the muscles of your
mind, the muscles of your emotional intelligence, all the
things that it takes. So this, as a guiding principle
is for me non negotiable if you're never getting out of the
comfort zone. Then you're not growing.
And if you're not growing, odds are you're probably not happy.
Because growth and progress is one of the things that
consistently correlates to people saying I feel fulfilled,
I feel satisfied, I feel happy. And so just ask yourself, when
was the last time I really intentionally stepped out of my
comfort zone? Not was thrust there by my boss
or someone else outside by control.
But I chose to take a step into discomfort, into a challenge
bigger than I ever had before. And if you can't remember the
last time, then let's get started.
We got work to do. All right.
So, yeah, I think I love what you said, right.
There's no growth if you are always in your comfort zone,
right. I think the analogy of working
out is definitely very appropriate.
And in fact, you can only grow your muscles if you tear it,
right? So there must be some kind of a
healing process, with some recovery, of course.
And then you can grow the muscles.
So I think thanks for bringing that analogy up.
I like what you said, comfort zone, right?
Because some people may just go through their life, their work,
just day-to-day, not stepping up, maybe for some reasons,
right? But I think the comfort zone
here is also not referring to a danger zone, right, where you
step up to something that is really, really out of your depth
or out of your leak, right. So maybe in your personal
coaching experience, what kind of comfort zone stepping up the
people? Tend to do for engineers.
Maybe if you can share for some people here who are still
thinking what kind of next level that I should try because some
people may be confused like what's the next for them.
Well I'll give a couple common areas that I see people hold
back. One is around communication
skills. Many engineers need to focus on
developing communication skills in multiple forms.
One is your written communication, mastery of text
and e-mail based communications or writing white papers or
publishing articles, these kinds of things.
And then of course spoken verbal communication, both one-on-one
to be able to have courageous conversations, especially up the
career ladder, up the org chart. So when you're having that
conversation with a more senior leader, do you have confidence
and capability there? And then also with direct
reports, are you having those bold coaching conversations and
holding people accountable and really again doing a great job
leading in Oneonones and then in groups or how's your presenting
skills? How do you do from the front of
the room, How do you do in front of 10 people?
How do you do in front of 100 people?
How would you do on stage in front of 1000 people?
And it's at that point most engineers, their palms start to
sweat. They get a little nervous and
think, wow, please don't put me on stage.
That sounds terrifying. Well, this one set of skills
around communication. If your goal is to have a high
degree of influence, a high income, to make it to the top of
the career ladder, well, you're going to need to master some of
these skills. And so in order to do that, you
have to be willing to put yourself out of your comfort
zone. Go join Toastmasters, go
practice giving speeches, do the things that it takes.
Put yourself into the environment where you might
fail. You might feel like that went
really terribly. You might get feedback that's
difficult to hear because you're still learning, but anything
worth doing is worth doing poorly because you don't get to
mastery by jumping straight there.
And we know this as engineers, the first line of code you wrote
was not your best line of code, OK?
It's the same in these other areas, so that's one example.
And then another one might be applying for promotions.
People feel like, well, I don't have the qualifications yet or I
don't have enough years of experience yet.
I'm nervous that if I took that job, I might not succeed.
And you know, this is an area where, Henry, there isn't a
single right answer. But I'll just tell you, on the
whole, most engineering leaders who I've coached wait longer
than is necessary to really pursue their growth in terms of
role and scope because they're afraid of failing if they move
up too quickly. And sure, it's possible to move
too quickly. And the Peter Principle, we hear
about it and you get into a role where you fail.
But guess what? Even if that happens to you, you
can take a step back. You can start crushing it at the
level where you are capable, keep learning and growing and go
again. It's no different than the
communication side. Those are just a couple of
common areas I see it. We could list many more.
But I think the important thing is to ask yourself where am I
holding myself back? Is it in pursuit of new
technologies because I'm afraid I won't understand it or be
capable. Is it in some of these
leadership acumen areas where I need to build?
Or maybe it's in business knowledge?
I'm great at engineering, but I don't understand the business
well. Whatever that thing is, go ask
yourself what's the first step? Where can I begin and start
moving forward, because if we don't begin, we know where that
leads. If nothing changes, that nothing
changes. So let's get started.
Find that area for yourself, get the help you need, and get
going. Thank you for giving some
examples, so I hope people here get inspired.
So for me the key lessons that I went through as well.
So it's not that you find the next perfect option, right?
Maybe your first try is something that you knew that you
wanted, but after you gave it a try, maybe it doesn't work or it
doesn't. Give you some happiness, right?
You can move on and try another one.
So the key here is again, not to make it a perfect kind of a
formula, right? You can explore and give it a
try. Experiment, learn through
failures. And if you went through failures
and you like it, I think that's where you hit the nice spot,
right? You can pursue even further.
So thanks for sharing this comfort zone and you know some
of the areas that engineers can step up their game.
So let's go to the third one, which is about mustering our
mindset. I've learned from some of my
guests, including Jeff Perry, which you know as well, right
Mindset is really important. So maybe tell us more in the
context of happy engineer, what kind of mindset here that we
should think about. Mindset is so important.
And for a lot of engineers, because we're so analytical,
we're so good in our intelligence.
We don't think of mindset as being a big gap.
But that actually then creates the very blind spot that derails
our careers and our lives in so many ways because we are so
smart and I don't mean that facetiously.
Like, literally any engineer who has a degree in any discipline
of engineering is incredibly smart.
So when we talk about mindset, I'm not talking about your IQ,
okay. But here's the thing you need to
know. Your mindset in this moment is
what's pouring the foundation for your future.
And if you don't strengthen and deepen the mindset that you
currently hold, then you're limiting how high you can go.
So what is mindset? What are we talking about?
Well, think about all of the beliefs that you hold, many of
which are in your unconscious mind.
You don't even think about these things consciously.
They're just there. That's set of beliefs, don't
you, to imagine. It's like the walls of the box
that you're currently living inside of and it's not an
insult, but it's just the truth for all of us.
Your current mindset is limiting what's possible for you right
now and it's probably best seen through an example.
So let's say what I believe about myself, this actually came
up today with a client. So an amazing gentleman.
He's very successful, he's had roles at Amazon, he's brilliant
in machine learning and AI, incredible engineer.
If you saw his resume, you'd think, wow, incredibly
successful. But today in our coaching
session with our group, he said I want to know how to overcome
self sabotage. Because I continuously struggle
with self sabotage and it's something that is a huge problem
for me and I've always and I continue to sabotage my success.
Okay. Well, on the surface when you
hear that, you think, huh, that's interesting.
So he's got some work to do around this idea of self
sabotage, but let's look at the words carefully.
He's claiming an identity that I struggle with self sabotage.
That's a belief. That's a mindset.
Well, until that mindset changes, it doesn't matter if I
give him a strategy or a tactic. If what he believes is that I
struggle with self sabotage, then he will continue to
struggle with self sabotage for the rest of his life because the
mindset is going to create the limit.
So the first thing we want to do is go in and say, hey wait a
minute, is that true? And does that have to be true of
you for the rest of your life? Or is it possible that you used
to struggle with self sabotage, but that's starting.
Today you are improving in your confidence and you are no longer
sabotaging your success anymore. In fact, you're getting better
every single day. It's like, that's a whole new
identity, that's a whole new belief system.
And as you start to buy into that belief, it opens the door
for new actions. And as we take new actions, we
start to get new results, and those new results reinforce a
new mindset. We start to get this upward
spiral of results in our life. So mindset is the foundation,
literally of all the coaching I do with engineering leaders.
It's at the foundation of it all and it's very difficult to
master on your own. I highly, highly encourage
anyone hearing this. If mindset is an area that you
want to explore, go work with a great coach because it's so hard
to assess your own mindset because it is literally the cage
that you're inside. And how are you going to read
the label on the outside of the bottle that you're stuck inside?
You can't, right? You can't.
These are blind spots and it's called a blind spot for a
reason. For today, we'll just leave it
at that. It's so foundational.
It's so important and if you need help in this area, get it
and it will transform your life. Thank you for sharing that
particular case with your clients.
I think some engineers might also have their own patterns,
right? They thought that they are not
good in something. And I think that's probably
sometimes the first thing is about limiting beliefs, what you
say, right, The limiting mindset.
So anytime we want to level up ourselves, I think that's the
first thing we should also think about because unconsciously we
may bring this from childhood past trauma experience, right?
And we always believe that that is ourselves, which is kind of
like limiting ourselves. But I think the 1st is the
self-awareness built that kind of awareness and maybe got help
from people right like coaches you mentioned because we
sometimes are blind to this kind of limiting belief and
unconscious belief that we have. So I think for people mindset is
really important. I personally also still not
perfect right? Still trying to figure out what
kind of limiting mindsets that I have.
Having someone to support you and guide you is probably one
good thing that we can pursue. Let's go to the next one, which
is building our own blueprint, right.
This is maybe some kind of the engineering part here.
So tell us more what kind of blueprint that you are referring
to? Is there any kind of framework
that you advocate to people? Absolutely.
And of course, being an engineer, it helps to coach in a
way that aligns with my engineering mind.
And of course, that's why engineering clients enjoy this
process, because we think in systems, we think in design
terminology. We think in these ideas that we
live all day at work. And so the Lifestyle Engineering
Blueprint is the methodology. It is the system that we use to
go create the results that we want.
So the blueprint consists of that foundation of our mindset.
You can just picture a little house, right?
The foundation of the house is your mindset.
And then what's built on top of that are 4 pillars.
You can think of these four cornerstones of the house, and
that's your purpose, your priority, your productivity and
the people around you. And then the roof of that house,
What ties it all together is what I call your playbook.
So you could think of mindset as this foundational piece we need
to strengthen. And if we don't, it's going to
limit us in our growth period. The four pillars represent maybe
the strategies or the skill sets, the tools that we need,
and literally every single barrier that you'll face in your
career lands in one of these four pillars.
It's either a purpose problem, a priority problem, a productivity
problem, or a people problem. There's not a problem you'll
ever face in your career that doesn't land in one or more of
these four pillars. But, and this is a huge but,
Henry, strategies, tactics and tools, you could almost
categorize this as the knowledge of what to do and how to do.
It is worthless without action. If you know what to do and never
do it, duh, you're not going to get results.
So the playbook, the roof, what ties us all together is all
about action. It's making sure that you're
stepping into the arena of your life every day, getting out of
the comfort zone like we talked about already and you're taking
action. And when you put all that
together, that's where we create this incredible acceleration of
the career and life of your dreams.
Because you have the right thinking, you have the right
strategies, and you're taking action every day.
I think that's really true for some people, I myself included,
right? So sometimes we try to learn so
many hacks, so many tricks, strategies, right?
But we just keep learning in the pursuit of finding the best one,
probably. And sometimes the reminder here
is just take action, right? Create a playbook, create an
experiment, take action. Because you will never learn.
If you don't give it a try, you can read hundreds of books, but
in the end it will never come up to something right?
So thanks for sharing this. And that was me, Henry.
I read all the books, man. I was hungry for knowledge my
whole career, and I made mistake after mistake after mistake
because I didn't apply what I knew and so I'm guilty.
I'm not saying this because I'm perfect.
I did exactly what you just said.
And so Amen, brother. You're exactly right.
Right. And I like the five piece thing.
Let me repeat one more time the purpose.
The priority, the productivity, the people and the last one is
come up with a playbook, right. So I think for people you can
use this blueprint. So maybe think for each of those
P what is exactly that you want to pursue for that P, right.
And then maybe you create some kind of playbook and take
actions from that on. So I think that's really
interesting blueprint. And the last one here in the
lifestyle engineering, which I think some people would also
allude to productivity hacks, which is do less, tell us more
why doing less means. Happier engineer.
Diluted focus creates diluted results.
If you are the kind of person, like most engineers, who loves
to just say yes and tackle more and keep expanding.
And things are adding, adding, adding, adding.
And we're never subtracting. We're never focusing your
limited, precious assets of time and energy.
These are the only two resources in your life that are truly
limited. You can get more money, you can
build more relationships. You can always get more of every
other resource. It doesn't make it easy to get,
but it's always there. The two that are not ever going
to expand beyond a limit are your time and your energy.
And so when you're doing more and more and more, you're taking
those resources that we use to create results and you're
diluting them across so many things that nothing actually
builds the momentum to succeed. And the picture that I I think
sets the stage for this really clearly is take an airplane and
when you want to take off, when you want to get off the runway,
you go full throttle. Well, if you put two airplanes
side by side on the runway and they're both at half throttle,
guess what happens? They both crash at the end of
the runway, OK. So we live our lives in this
fashion where we're trying to keep all these things going, but
you've got 10 things getting 10% of your energy and then none of
them ever get off the ground. So lifestyle engineering, part
of how we create these differentiated results is by
concentrating energy into the most important priorities to the
point of these five P's to make sure that they get off the
ground. Once it's at cruising altitude,
yeah, you can bring the throttle down.
It's not that you have to be full throttle on everything all
the time, but doing less is about focusing on what matters
most, giving that the vast majority of your energy until
you get the result that you need.
Then we can back off and do the next thing.
This is hard to do less, and then be obsessive about getting
that thing going because it's fun to do a lot and everybody in
your life wants you to do a lot. There's always more people
asking you for your time and energy, so it requires saying
no. It requires setting boundaries,
but I promise you you'll get faster results on the things
that matter most if you'll have the courage to do less.
And especially in technology, right?
This is something that is tricky.
We have so many new technologies, new advancements,
you know, disruptions here and there, right?
Maybe today's AI, which is a craze in everywhere, maybe next
is VR, right? Previously is blockchain and
things like that. But I think you need to stay
focused on some things, right? If everything is important that
you want to pursue, nothing is important for sure.
There's the great quote about that, and I think to come up
with the focus is also something that is a struggle for some
people because you know, in the era of Internet, social media,
news and also maybe a lot of entertainments, right?
So we really cannot be spending our time and energy equally to
all these things. So you need to really keep
focus. And again, like it's not gonna
be like 100% always successful, right?
You set a focus on some things that you really, really gonna
like, right. Sometimes you find that it is
not the area that you wanna focus on.
You can then move on. I think that's right.
The key here again, coming back to your blueprint, what are your
five piece? And then follow along from
there. So thank you so much for this.
Do less reminder for people who tend to do a lot more, right.
Maybe think step back a little bit and try to prioritize what
are the most important things. So in the beginning you
mentioned about the burnout that you went through.
So if you don't mind, maybe if we can discuss a little bit more
about that particular experience, because many people,
I would say not just engineers, feel burnout in their life or
their work. So in the 1st place, maybe let's
qualify what is burnout for some people who are confused what
burnout is because it keeps getting mentioned in many, many
resources. But what's your definition of
burnout? And what are actually some of
the real causes of burnout? Yeah, it's a really important
question because you're right, the term burnout is thrown
around a lot, a lot more now than it used to be.
And it will show up in different ways for different people.
But if I go to the most important principle around
burnout that I have found, that's consistent with every
client I've ever had, who says, you know, I'm burned out?
And if I look at my own experience of burnout, burnout
is not just that moment when you hit rock bottom, when the tank
is empty. You know, even just the phrase
burnout, we think about fuel in a tank, right?
There's just maybe it's an airplane, whatever it is.
Well, when the tank is empty, yes, you're burned out.
But that's not the only thing that matters.
Burnout actually begins in your life the moment that you start
burning fuel faster than you're filling the tank.
When you're running an energy deficit, right, when you're
running a happiness deficit, when you're running a
relationship deficit, when you're running a career deficit
day in and day out, even if it's small, you're on the road to
burnout. And it's only a matter of time
before it manifests in one of these ways that we talk about
publicly. You know, so and so had a health
issue. They literally are in the
hospital because of an anxiety attack or a stress related heart
condition or ulcers or you know, for me it was ending in divorce.
For other people, it might be your performance suffers because
you're working so many hours that now you're delivering bad
work and suddenly you get a bad performance review and that
throws you into a fear loop that now you can't do your best work
at all and you get fired. These are the stories that make
the LinkedIn headlines, but we need to back it up and recognize
that began for that person well before the health issue.
Well, before getting let go for performance related issues, it
starts when your tank is being emptied faster than you're
filling it. And so if you want to avoid
burnout, if you want to make sure that never happens to you,
that we need to pay attention every day, every week, every
quarter, every year, how am I doing on filling that tank for
myself and you? And that can be a lot of
different things. It's not just hours at work,
it's looking at your whole life back to our conversation from
whole life balance earlier. But that's what I think of when
I think of burnout is to say, all right, how are you doing on
managing your energy across your whole life?
And are you burning fuel faster than you're filling the tank?
I think that's completely true, right?
I personally went through a burnout experience as well and
it started way before you crash maybe.
Let's put that analogy. So it always started far before
and it's just a frustration that keeps building up, building up
and it's deficit like you mentioned, right.
So if you never take notice and put something, some actions to
fill in the tank, I think that's going to Spire down easily and
faster than you may think of. And I think one thing that I
experienced once you went through this burnout, right.
It's really, really hard to get back up that quickly.
So I think that is something that we also have to understand,
right. So don't let yourself fall
beyond the burnout threshold because when it happened, it's
really, really hard to recover and you may need to take time to
actually recover. So I like also another thing
that you mentioned in your sharing about burnout, right?
You said burnout is accelerated by what we are doing, but
burnout is caused by what we are not doing.
So tell us more little bit about this because I find it really,
really insightful. Yes, well, the most obvious
example is people will talk about working long hours.
Burning the candle on both ends is a phrase We'll use this idea
of time. But the fact is you can work a
lot of hours and not burn out. How is that possible?
If anybody can do it, then we have to look more carefully
about, well, OK, is it really about time and how much we're
doing? And what I've found is I've
worked with now hundreds of engineering leaders who've gone
through these challenges and part of why burnout is such a
sneaky thing. Like you and I both said, it
started way before we actually crashed and burned.
So why didn't we notice? Why didn't we catch it years
before it actually happened? I can look back now and say,
gosh, you know, that pattern in my life started two or three
years before I actually got divorced and hit rock bottom.
Why did I miss it? And the reason we miss it is
because we only look at those things that we are doing.
Am I working too many hours? Am I hanging out with people who
are toxic? Do I have a bad environment at
work that I need to try to deal with?
We look at what's present, but the primary cause of burnout is
what's missing. And that's why it's so easy to
fall victim to this. It's what's missing.
So what do I mean? Let me give you a couple
examples. When stress gets dialed up on
your project at work as a tech lead, what are some of the first
things that happen in your life? Well, you stop hanging out with
your friends as much because you're working long hours.
Maybe you don't sleep as many hours every night because you're
staying up an extra hour or two to check your e-mail.
Or finish that PowerPoint that needs to be ready for the
presentation tomorrow. Or write those lines of code
that you had a solution. You were that close, but you
didn't quite get it before you left the office.
You're gonna log back in at 10:00 PM.
And you thought it would be one hour, but then it's midnight,
and then it's 1:00 AM, and then it's 2:00 AM and you're still
working. And then you don't sleep well
because you are on the computer and your body's not ready for
sleep. Oh, and by the way, now you're
traveling more for work, and you're not eating healthy foods,
right? So you're not paying attention
to your nutrition. And just little by little, we
stopped doing all of the things that keep us happy, healthy and
balanced. And so then we start looking at
what we are doing. We're trying to find out, like,
which one of these things that I'm doing is making me feel the
way I'm feeling and causing this burnout.
But the truth is, it's not any one of those that's the problem.
It's what's missing from your life that you were doing that
was keeping you in that energy surplus.
And so if you want to assess where am I at first, it's asking
that question, how am I doing in my energy and my whole life?
Is it a daily deficit or daily surplus?
And then instead of just asking, well what's on my calendar that
might be making me feel a certain way, ask yourself what
do I know I should be doing but I'm not?
What are those things that keep me healthy that I'm not doing?
What are those things that help me stay in positive
relationships that I've stopped doing?
What are those things that fill my cup, fill my tank, that I'm
no longer giving myself time for in self-care?
Focus on bringing those things back into your life as soon as
possible, because if you don't, you're going to end up in this
downward spiral and what most people experiences.
There's a point of no return where even if you realize I'm
burning out now, you're going to hit rock bottom because you
can't pull up that fast and it's usually too late.
And that's a hard place to be. Very great reminder.
So I think you are right. Looking back also it's something
that I completely not doing right.
So for example, is it exercise? Enough rest, hobbies, right?
What you used to love doing? Maybe you stop doing because you
put effort in something else. Relationships also, like friends
meeting friends, spending quality time.
So I think all this is something that definitely you stopped
doing or you missed doing but you didn't realize it.
So maybe you can use some kind of, I don't know, reflection
from time to time right? To look back and ask this
question, Is there something that I should be doing but I'm
not doing so? I really love that question as
well for a reflection. So now you are you said you are
coaching a lot of engineering leaders, right?
I think in some parts of the world I would say coaching,
finding coach for engineering managers or engineering leaders
or even tech leads right are not quite common.
So tell us more why every engineering leaders or as
someone who go through an upper level of engineering they need
coaches. So maybe tell us what's the
reason behind that? Well, first of all, coaches for
engineers are uncommon no matter where you live.
It's the truth. Maybe it's worse some places
than others, but it is definitely uncommon.
And also, let's be clear when I say engineering leaders, it's
not about a certain title or level in the organization.
Many of my clients are right out of college and in their first
individual contributor job, but they recognize that they want to
be leaders even if they plan to stay Ic's.
So it's not about how big is your team or being a manager or
a director. It's about a mindset of a desire
for growth and influence. And if that's you, then you're a
leader. Everyone can be a leader.
It's not about title or station in life.
So that said, why is it uncommon?
I think again, because engineers are so driven by intelligence.
Our ego, and I include myself in this, leads us to believe that
we can just keep learning, keep studying and solve these
problems on our own. We don't need a coach.
And for that, I'll just tell you, every engineering leader at
all levels I've worked with, after they work with a coach,
they change their perspective about that okay.
So the best players have the best coaches, period, in every
industry, in every sector of life, whether it's sports or in
engineering and career. So that's the first piece.
Now why do we all need one? The fact is, if OK, Michael
Jordan needed a coach. If Michael Phelps needed a
coach, if Olympians need coaches, why would we not?
And it's not about your skill alone.
Did Michael Phelps's coach swim a faster freestyle than Michael
Phelps? No.
He was faster. He was better in the pool, but
he still had a whole team of coaches.
Why? It's because if you want to
perform at your best, you won't do that in isolation.
Isolation is the enemy of excellence.
Your edge, your best, your full potential demands you putting
yourself into an environment where someone else can challenge
you to actually hold yourself to a higher standard, to reach that
edge, to provide new insights. And let's face it, a coach who's
worked with hundreds of other leaders is going to be able to
bring hundreds of lifetimes of experiences into that
conversation with you. And you can only live one
lifetime. So tap into those resources.
Get that help. And it is a catalyst to
transformation. It is such a fun process.
I think you'll really love it. So be an engineer.
Run the test, right. Don't draw a conclusion without
running the test. You know, I won't try to prove
to you today that coaching is the right thing.
I just want to appeal to your engineering spirit.
If you want to grow and succeed in your life, then run the test.
Go get a coach and see for yourself with the experiences.
Like, unfortunately, Henry. Yeah, there's bad coaches out
there, all right, It's going to happen.
Anywhere you go, there's going to be great and there's going to
be not as great. So be intentional.
Really look for that evidence of their ability to help deliver
results. Don't just hire the first person
you meet, but I think again, if you're open minded to it and you
leave your ego at the door, there's so much potential for
you to accelerate all the results you want in your career.
Yeah, if we look into, you know, sports or other kind of jobs or
roles, right, they do have coaches, even executive has
coaches. Right.
So because. Yeah.
And because it is not just one thing that we are good at, it's
the many other things that maybe we are not good at that we need
to improve, right. So just like what you said, the
coach of Michael Phelps doesn't swim faster than him, but maybe
there are other areas, maybe nutrition, mindset going through
tough problems, right. So all these will challenge the
person to go to higher standards and coaches maybe tapping from
their previous experience and knowledge.
May be able to help you as well. So I think again maybe mindset
coming back to the mindset is one other areas that coaches
will be able to peel off from your limiting beliefs so that
you can go to the next standard that you can.
So I think for people here, engineering leaders, not just
the title leaders, right. If you want to master yourself,
improve yourself, maybe it's worth to explore finding coach
right. So I think it will be
transformational. So as we go through the last
section of the podcast, Zach, it's been a really great
conversation, very insightful. I'm sure many people here also
learn a lot, but I have one last question that I would like to
ask, which I normally ask to all my guests, which I call the
three technical leadership wisdom.
So you can think of it just like advice you want to give to us,
maybe from your coaching experience, maybe from your
burnout experience, or maybe from other experiences.
So if you can summarize what are your 3 technical leadership
wisdom, Henry, I'm so tempted to go back to my engineering days
and pull some of those practical tactical things that helped me
succeed in my career. But I think it's prudent to stay
in the coaching world because that's where I live and I want
to help people in that space and continue pulling the threads we
pulled today. So the three things I would
share #1 all leadership begins with self leadership.
So if you want to climb higher, then you need to dig deeper.
You know the tallest skyscrapers have the deepest foundations.
One failure mode technical leads and engineering fall into as as
you move up. You start to focus more on
leading others and then leading departments, leading strategy,
leading the enterprise. And suddenly you get to a point
where you have not been focusing on personal growth and leading
yourself and now you have a weak foundation.
So remember, all leadership begins with self leadership and
continue to invest in yourself to develop and grow.
That's number one. Number two, ask better
questions. Really practice and take the
time to find resources to learn how to ask better questions in
your own life, on your projects, when you're leading meetings,
when you're in one on ones, being able to ask powerful
questions, knowing what kinds of questions lead to better
outcomes, and just continuously leveling up that skill set.
Really think about asking questions as a skill that needs
practice and needs developed. When was the last time you went
out and looked for a list of powerful questions and just read
through it and asked yourself which ones of these might be
useful for me to bring into my life or into the workplace this
week? Take it seriously.
We all just sort of take for granted that we're good at
asking questions. Well, says who?
This is a skill that you can continue to develop.
So ask better questions. That would be #2 and then #3.
I'll actually go back to something we already talked
about in this podcast. But if you want to accelerate
results, get out of your comfort zone.
So that's wisdom number three. Yeah, I mean, I just can't say
it enough. You won't get to where you want
to go by kicking back and staying comfortable.
So make that a practice in your life.
Ask yourself, how can I step out of the comfort zone this week?
What's something I'm afraid of that I could take a smart
calculated risk on this week? Or, if I don't know what to do,
who can I ask for help in that area?
But get out of your comfort zone, because not only will it
accelerate your growth, but I promise you it will trigger that
deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment inside you that
might feel like it's been muted by all the pressure of life.
When you start getting into that space of discomfort and fear and
exhilaration, it really makes you feel alive.
It's really fun. So do it.
I think you won't ever regret living that way, right?
So those would be my top three, Henry.
Thank you for reminding again about comfort zone.
Now also it reminds me of something right?
So one fun thing is that as we went through life so when we are
kid right, our comfort zone level is actually very low.
We always try new stuffs, experiment, feel and did it with
fun, right? But as we go through our age,
normally for most people, we tend not to get out of comfort
zone. Our comfort zone becomes higher
and higher, right. So I think that's a powerful
question for me when I learn about that, right.
So as you go through life, think of what areas actually you are
holding back. So I think that's a very, very
good reflection. So Zach, thank you so much for
all this sharing. I'm sure it's really, really
useful for all engineers. I hope they become happier just
by listening to this episode, although it takes a lot more
effort beyond that. But for people who want to learn
more, get more resources or contact you, is there a place
where they can reach you out online?
Absolutely. Well, Henry, thank you again for
having me. And I just can't say enough
about the work you're doing and the the value that's created
through this podcast and your passion for engineering and
technical leadership. But if anyone wants to go deeper
on the blueprint on Coaching for Engineers, any of the topics
that came up today, we mentioned the Happy Engineer podcast.
If you go over to the podcast in the show, notes are all the ways
to connect with me. I won't list them all here, but
one of the things I definitely encourage everyone to do if this
conversation resonates for you is to take advantage of the
opportunity as a gift to you for listening through this whole
podcast to get a free coaching session with me and my team.
And so to do that, jump over to the Happy engineerpodcast.com.
There's a contact form in the upper right.
You can send us a note. Say you found out about me
through Tech Lead Journal podcast and we'll make sure to
get you that opportunity if it's a fit for us to support you for
a 75 minute free coaching session.
If you're in the US, you can actually text the word Lifestyle
to the short code 55444. That's another way to get
directly to our calendar. It's just that one word
Lifestyle to 55444. If you're outside the US, you'll
have to submit through the form because the text doesn't work
internationally, but would be an absolute pleasure to provide
that free support for you and help you build that game.
Plan that playbook for where you need to focus in doing less and
getting to the results you want. Thank you for giving the
opportunity for people to get some free coaching, at least to
experience right what coaching is all about and what kind of
opportunity they can get through coaching.
So for people who just listen, make sure you give it a try.
So Zach here has kindly given us the opportunity to experience
his coaching. So thank you so much for that.
All right. So I think that's the wrap of
our conversation. Again, thank you so much for
sharing, Zach. I'm really, really happy that
engineers here can become more happy as well.
Henry, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Thanks for having me. Thank you for listening to this
episode and for staying right until the end.
If you highly enjoyed it, I would appreciate if you share it
with your friends and colleagues who you think would also benefit
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