Slightly Caffeinated

Chris Gmyr (00:00)
Hey, welcome back to the slightly caffeinated podcast. I'm Chris Gmyr

TJ Miller (00:03)
I'm TJ Miller.

Chris Gmyr (00:04)
Hey TJ, so what's up in your world this week?

TJ Miller (00:07)
man, this week has been, it's been kind of hectic to be honest. you know, we got the holidays coming up, taking a little time off, got stuff going on with the family and just, you know, trying to like wrap up work before time off, you know, getting some like projects into states that aren't going to be a pain to like get back into when I get, you know, after taking some time off between like Christmas and the new year, trying to like leave stuff off in a good place.

trying to keep on jamming and pushing Prism along. So hopefully during taking some time off, I'll be able to pull some things forward on that. But spent a little time the other night roadmapping where I want Prism to go and just brain dumping all of that. And so that's a little overwhelming to look at. It's come a long way, but there's still a lot I want to do with it.

And then like all sorts of like extracurricular stuff, like I want to at some point pivot a little bit to like, you know, community building and getting a discord together. so that's just like extra stuff on top of all the, like the code and technical things I want to do. But I think is super important for Prism as a project to like have that community to be requesting features, you know, adding stuff, looking for like what providers we should just.

like support and running like, I've kind of got like a core group of people that I've been like running stuff by. like having an internals channel that I can just, you know, ideate in and, you know, talk about, you know, different architecture and things like the, the, the refactor we talked about, the last episode. you know, just having like a central spot for all that stuff would be, would be great, but at the same time that takes time away from technical stuff. So.

you know, and just any like last minute holiday stuff, which I'm severely ADHD and massive procrastinator. So like, I'm definitely like running around chasing my tail and trying to get like everything solidified. How about you, man?

Chris Gmyr (01:51)
Yeah, totally.

Yeah, very similar. So last week and actually last day before going off for the holiday, took about two weeks off from work, which will be nice. But yeah, trying to wrap up all things from work, got a handful of things to close out before I sign off later today. And yeah, just going right into holiday prep.

and travel and we got like all of our shopping and a lot of that planning done and just getting ready to go down to Florida for about a week to meet up with my wife's family down there. So working on all the packing and the organizing and food and we're going to do an overnight halfway down there to make the trip a little bit easier. So getting ready for, you know.

all the pieces of the trip and being out of town for about a week and a half with travel time. So getting the dog ready and off to the kennel because he can't come down to the Airbnb that we got and stuff like that. So just a lot of things up in the air between like today and tomorrow and shoving off Saturday morning. Yeah, looking forward to it. It'd be nice to have a good stint of time being off. I don't have to do

Hopefully anything with work. Hopefully there won't be any, on call or any incidents, going on, but luckily I am not on call for any of the time, unless I get pulled into something. But yeah, just rolling down, for the rest of year and just looking forward to some downtime.

TJ Miller (03:40)
Man, it'd be nice to kind of escape the cold, get down to Florida for a little bit. I'm already sick of the cold. I'm looking for some warmer stuff and it's not even January. Like we've got February coming up, which is the worst. Might have to try to find myself a couple day trip to make or something, you know, somewhere in February. Get out of the cold and go warm up.

Chris Gmyr (03:48)
Yeah.

Yeah, there you go.

Yep, totally, it's a long couple more months that we got.

TJ Miller (04:08)
Yeah. Yep. we've had like, I don't know about you, but we've had like next to no snow here, which is such, such a drag. Like I think like for me, if we're going to do winter, like let's, let's, let's do winter, man. Like let's have, if we're going to have cold weather, gray skies, let's have a bunch of snow, like bury me in it. Like let's, let's have the whole experience instead of this like freezing cold, gray, muddy.

Like, it keeps raining. like, why, why can't it just be like three degrees colder than actually snow, you know?

Chris Gmyr (04:36)
Yeah.

Yeah, the muddy, wet, cold, but not cold enough for snow. Like that's just gross. remember a bunch of that back up north. luckily like the last couple of years, like we haven't had any snow at all, like maybe a couple of flurries, but it never sticks. Like it sometimes gets pretty cold here. but at least that's sunny most of the time. So that's kind of nice. You just like bundle up. You can still take a walk. Like it still feels good. You still get a little sun on you and

You it's not too bad, but yeah, all the, the muddy gross, wet stuff. It's just not, not fun. I feel you there. So hopefully y'all can escape at some point, end of January, February, something like that school break.

TJ Miller (05:22)
Yep. Yeah. It doesn't help that like my entire Instagram feed, whenever I go on there and like, just like doom scroll through reels, like almost all of it is like people snowboarding and just like my algo is making me feel like really, really bad about it being muddy, you know? Like, man, yeah. Love, love to go do some snowboarding. You know, this is the first year that I even considered going to our like finger quote slopes that we have around here.

Chris Gmyr (05:37)
Yeah. Yeah.

TJ Miller (05:49)
glorified garbage hills, but you know, this is the first year in many years that I'm like, you know what, I'll, I'll, I'll pay to go and do that. Like I just, I'm itching to get back out on the snowboard, but I don't know if it's happening this year at all.

Chris Gmyr (06:04)
Yeah, maybe you could invent mudboarding or something.

TJ Miller (06:07)
mudboarding, let's do it. Take

the trucks off my skateboard and just go find a muddy hill and slide down it.

Chris Gmyr (06:14)
There you go. Yep.

TJ Miller (06:16)
So I think it'd be fun for us to kind of talk about a little bit, like you'd mentioned some, I had mentioned a little bit about like Christmas plans. I think it'd be fun to talk about maybe some of our like traditional food that we have around Christmas time. Like I know we kind of traditionally make the same thing every year for the holiday. And then I think it'd be fun to touch on some of our like personal professional goals for the next year too and talk about what we're heading into. I've got a...

Chris Gmyr (06:43)
Yeah, totally.

TJ Miller (06:46)
cat stuck in the laundry room so yeah maybe you can kick us off and I'm gonna go set them free.

Chris Gmyr (06:51)
Yeah. like I said, we're going down to Florida for about a week and then traveling and staying overnight in Savannah, Georgia, both ways. So be about like a week and a half or so of total travel time meeting up, about an hour north of Orlando, with some of my wife's family and like her sisters are coming down, and an uncle from New York and their kids coming down. and then she has some other

family in the area that are all going to kind of meet in the same general area. We're not staying with everyone, so we got our own place off to the side so we can still do a regular, hopefully, bedtime and morning routine with the kids and all that. And then just hang out with everyone during the day. The beach is really close by, so just do a bunch of fun things with the kids. Our kids are the youngest.

TJ Miller (07:30)
That's so important.

Chris Gmyr (07:40)
Like it goes up to like out of college. So we got a big breath of ages and interests and schedules to contend with. yeah, I think it'll be, it'll be fun. And yeah, there's, seems like there's lots of things to do there. Lots of kids activities and you know, of course just go into the beach and hopefully it'll be warm enough that we can just go build some sand castles. If the kids want to jump in the water for a little bit, you know, they can do that.

Yeah, hopefully it'll be pretty chill trip besides a little bit of travel on the car since we're driving down. So yeah, her family is not big on planning. The plan was just to meet up there for the start date and that end date. So a lot of things are still up in the air.

TJ Miller (08:22)
Hahaha

Chris Gmyr (08:31)
especially for meals and schedules and stuff like that that I mentioned. But at least for Christmas, we are going to be doing like a big charcuterie board. My wife really likes making and designing those. So I went out and got like a bunch of like meats and cheeses and nuts and we'll get some fruit down there. So we'll bring down like her big board that's like three and a half feet long, because it'll be like a ton of people and we'll just help make that.

TJ Miller (08:52)
Jeez.

Chris Gmyr (08:57)
And I think we're going to do some sort of barbecue or potluck type thing where everyone just brings something for the meal and go from there. And yeah, that's about the meal planning that we have so far. So when it's with my family, like we've done in past years, usually we do a ham or something and then do an Italian

TJ Miller (09:05)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (09:20)
feast like bunch of meatballs and lasagna and stuffed shells and all the desserts and cookies and stuff like that that you could ever want. But it seems like it'll be a lot more mellow this year as far as food, which is good. So yeah, no real plans for food besides just the potluck and the charcuterie and stuff like that that we're bringing down.

TJ Miller (09:25)
Yes.

It sounds good, man. I'm always down for like adult lunchables like that. Like charcuterie is just like, it's always good. And I think everyone sleeps on stuffed shells. Side note, like it's like maybe like my favorite like little Italian meal is stuffed shells. like growing up, that was my, like, that was always my, like my birthday dinner. I was like, yeah, we're doing stuffed shells for my birthday. Like I'm calling it, we're doing it.

Chris Gmyr (09:58)
Yeah, yeah, they're so good.

Yeah.

TJ Miller (10:10)
Yeah, that's good stuff, man. That sounds like fun. I like having loose structure, but like no firm plans, like going into trips like that. Cause like, don't, I don't know. That's, prefer to like, just like riff on however I'm feeling or everybody else is feeling whatever like, whatever anybody's interested in. So that sounds like a really nice time, dude.

Chris Gmyr (10:28)
Yeah, I think because we'll have a bunch of time in the car on the way down too. So we're planning on like discussing and like researching some other ideas of like, here's the things that we might want to do. So if like no one has plans on, you know, Monday or whatever, it's like, okay, let's let's jump into this activity and just send out a text. Hey, we're going to be at this activity from this time to that time. Whoever wants to join us. That's cool. So, hey, we're going to go to putt-putt at this location. Whoever wants to join for an hour.

you know, come on out and then whoever wants to join like that's fine. And then we can just roll with that for the week.

TJ Miller (10:59)
Yeah, man, dudes.

That's great, man. Yeah. mean, having some ideas or like a list of stuff to be able to pull out in a vacuum is like super, super good planning. Like, I think that's great.

Chris Gmyr (11:16)
Yeah,

totally. So yeah, how about you?

TJ Miller (11:18)
It's going to be pretty low key this year. Normally we like get together with some extended family, but over the last year, like my parents moved out of state, my aunt and uncle moved out of state. They're not super close with the rest of my family, so really don't have much to do there. But because my aunt and my mom left, my grandfather is stuck on his own and he's like 80 something.

So my sister and I are going to like get together with him on Christmas Eve. I'm going to go pick him up, drive him down by us. It's like, he's not that far away, but he's just, he's old and driving at night and potentially inclement weather is not a thing. So I'm to go pick him up, bring him back down here by our house to my sister's place. And we're going to do like, they love hosting people. then they're also like, they're hosting a big, new year's party with all their friends. So.

us coming over there on Christmas Eve is partly to pressure them into getting their house ready for their new year's party. So it's, it'll be like super chill. And then Christmas day is just going to be hanging out around the house with, me and my son and wife and all the animals and just having a nice low key day, getting to play with all the new toys and like we,

My son doesn't know it yet, but we got a 3D printer for, for, is like a combined gift for him and myself. So I think we're going to be spending all day getting that set up and get like some, some print kicked off. He is obsessed with getting a, a rocktopus printed out. So it's like a Dwayne the rock Johnson head with octopus tentacles. And he's just, he's been talking about it for months. Like, Hey, whenever we like.

get a 3D printer. Like I gotta print a rock to bus. So yeah, that'll be fun. And I think, yeah, so I think that's going to be like most of the days like getting that configured and set up and printing and it'll be pretty chill. And then for like meal wise, like for the cheese, as far as I can remember, it's like a tradition pulled over from my wife's side of the family, but she makes this

Chris Gmyr (13:03)
be a good first project.

TJ Miller (13:26)
Hash brown casserole. so good. So like, wake up open gifts and then we get that started and just kind of like munch on that all day long and it's to die for. Like she got all the supplies for it. we got all the supplies for it like last weekend. And I'm like, well, can we like, maybe just get two sets of supplies and have some for dinner? Because like this is just, can I want some now?

Chris Gmyr (13:55)
We got to test the recipe and make sure it's still good before we give it to other people, right?

TJ Miller (13:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Cause yeah, I'm dying for it. is. It is the best. And then, yeah, we don't have like any like grand plans for, for dinner. think like last year, maybe the year before we did like a Thanksgiving part two and did like another like smaller Turkey and I don't think we're gonna do that this year. We might though.

We'll see. think this weekend we're going to go out and just kind of like see what's on sale and plan out something and kind of riff on it. But it'll be, it'll be a pretty low key day, which is exactly how I like my holidays. Like super chill, not a lot of pressure to be like be places and do things like just kind of spend like quality time with the family. So that's, that's what we got on the docket.

Chris Gmyr (14:44)
Yeah, that is nice. And I think the printer will be super fun once you guys get that up and running. yeah, lots of cool projects that you can do with that.

TJ Miller (14:52)
He's a little, he's a little STEM kid. a couple of weeks ago, he got a bug up his butt about like learning JavaScript again. This is like a second time trying to get started on it. He made it way further than he did the last time. The last time he started with variables and then bailed. This time he got through loops and I think loops were starting to like mess with his head a little bit. And so he kind of jumped out of it, but I think he's going to be.

Like if I start showing him how to start doing some like modeling, he's going to start making all sorts of stuff. Fun like side note along with that, you know what like Science Olympiad is, right? Like the school like science competitions. So he wanted to do it this year. And when we showed up at orientation for it, they're like, all right, so if you're here and your student is going to participate,

someone from you, like your family or you're like, somebody needs to coach. And so I got wrapped into coaching and I only put myself down for one event. Like, yeah, I guess I'll coach the coding competition. And, found out last night that, I'm coaching the coding competition and like Ellis is on my team. So we've got, I've got to start figuring out like.

scheduling like time for to get all the students together and start studying I got to put together a little like curriculum and everything and break it all down but it's just like drag-and-drop block coding so you know I think it'll be I'm I was really like dragging my feet about coaching but like now that I'm actually facing it I think it's gonna be pretty fun like

If I'm running around teaching like adults coding stuff, like I think it'll be a blast and I should be fully capable of teaching kids how to drag and drop some blocks around, you know, I have no idea what the competition is going to be, but, it's I'm getting more excited about it. The more real it's getting.

Chris Gmyr (16:43)
Yeah, that sounds fun. And some of the drag and drop code editors are pretty fun and cool too. Like I played around with the Minecraft one a little bit to do certain things. Yeah, and you can do so many things with it. So I think they'll have a good time with it.

TJ Miller (17:01)
Yeah. Yeah. It's a bunch of like, I, I dunno, I think it's a bunch of like fourth, fifth and sixth graders. I know, geez, and I know the team is big enough that we do have like one alternate on the team too. So I think it's four, four kids on the team. like not unmanageable either. you know, better than like there have been years in the past where they had enough for like two full teams. And I think that definitely would have been.

like overwhelming for me, but group of four kids is, I think, manageable. I mean, I've got five dogs and four cats. I can probably wrangle four kids, you know?

Chris Gmyr (17:40)
Yeah, yeah.

isn't too bad. When it gets up to like 8, 10, 12, or more, then you'll probably want some backup. But four should be manageable, for sure. Because you could always pair them up. So you only have two pairs to manage at any one time, too, and also for them to work together. So it doesn't have to be all individual work either. So yeah.

TJ Miller (17:51)
Yeah.

Yeah. And I'm

hoping like the work my son's put into like learning some JavaScript. I think, like hopefully that empowers him to like also help me. Like now that he's got like an understanding of like how to do like code programming that like he, like I guess I look at it like that's maybe like a little bit higher level up than like the drag and drop coding. Or at least he's got like some foundations. So hopefully I can coax him into like also helping me teach and,

kind of be like a little helper in there. think that'd be nice and fun. Totally feasible.

Chris Gmyr (18:34)
Yeah,

yeah, totally. Yeah, it could be bonding experience for you guys too.

TJ Miller (18:37)
So.

Yeah, I think it'd be good. was kind of, he was really into like another event too. but he was going to end up being on both teams, but the, at the competition they're in, they're, they're, they're at the same time, like the two events are at the same time. So they had to put them in one or the other. I was kind of hoping for, I think it's going to be like a really nice experience for the two of us to do together.

But I was also kind of hoping that he'd like be able to get some experience being on a team. Cause he's not really done a lot of team things. Like being on a team with somebody else as the coach. Cause that's, that is a different dynamic than like your, your dad, you know, being the coach on the team. and just kind of like help form some like independence for him around that and being able to navigate those kinds of situations. But, I'm also really looking forward to.

like being able to have that kind of like bonding experience between the two of us, you know, going in and doing the competition together and everything. So it'll be fun.

Chris Gmyr (19:39)
Yeah, yeah, totally.

TJ Miller (19:40)
So man, I'd love to talk a little bit about like personal professional goals for like the next year. And I'm, I'm cool kicking that off. I think, I think for me next year, like I'd, you know, starting this year at Geocodeo, like I'm super stoked about it. I'm finally feeling like I'm starting to like solidify mental models around like what we do, how we do it and like the different, you know,

Here's a ticket, like I know where to go and start working on it and like, just kind of plug into our current architecture. I'm like starting to get more comfortable and confident with that, but I'd really like to solidify that next year. Like be able to, you know, really have a strong handle on it. You know, I've been able so far to work like pretty independently, but I'd like to, you know, have that confidence to be able to jump in like anywhere and have a firm understanding of where it's at and be able to contribute, you know.

at that kind of level. Because that stuff honestly just takes time. It takes time steeping in it, takes time just working on projects that touch different areas of the code, of the architecture. So that's like professional-wise, that's a big one for me is just kind of like coming, hopefully kind of come into my own, be able to make some strong plays there. So that's like big

Chris Gmyr (20:59)
Mm-hmm.

TJ Miller (21:04)
big like job professional goals.

Chris Gmyr (21:06)
Yeah.

Do they have anything documentation-wise or architecture map-wise there? Or is it just in people's heads or some documentation, but not as fleshed out? I wonder if there's definitive activities and things that you can produce to not only help your better understanding of their system.

and also can produce that for the rest of the team and whoever might onboard in the future as you hire more people.

TJ Miller (21:38)
Yeah, there's a pretty solid mix of both. know, Mattias did a really good job of like doing a technical onboard initially. Like he hit, he did a good job of like not overwhelming me, but really like walking through lots of the pieces of the architecture and kind of calling out where things are maybe a little dicey or like kind of some goals here and there. There is a fair amount of documentation around too. And then as I've been going along, like I've definitely been trying to like,

enhance the documentation or I'm big on task files, which are like a modern take on make files. I'm big on using task files. like for setup tasks, if I'm like reading through the like repos, read me of like, do this, this, then this to get it set up. Like I'm trying to automate a lot of that. So you can come in and just run like task setup and like it sets up the project. And then I kind of like, add documentation where, where I can, cause that's also kind of helps me.

get a deeper understanding too of like, well, I could just walk through the surface level, but if I'm going to be documenting it, like, let me get into it a little bit deeper and like, you know, write some good docs around it. So that's been like a pretty good process.

Chris Gmyr (22:46)
I really like those task files. You did a bunch of that at CoreLG when you were there. And those have been super helpful and so much easier than trying to copy and paste six different commands all in one. And if something fails, then it's a mess. So yeah, encapsulating that in the task files and commands with that has been great. So yeah, I probably should.

TJ Miller (23:00)
Yeah.

Chris Gmyr (23:12)
use those a lot more in, I don't know, side projects or any new projects in the future as well, because it's just super handy.

TJ Miller (23:18)
Yeah, I I even use it to update my system in Homebrew and everything. I'll hop in there and run Task Update System, and it handles all the stuff. So I sprinkle that in all over the place. It's really useful. And personal goals, I've got two that really pop out at me. I really want to push Prism really far. I've got some big plans for it. I've got some secret plans I'm cooking on. And I like to...

You hopefully see a lot of that stuff come to fruition. I've got, you know, a couple of talks submitted to the PHP tech conference. So hopefully it'll be speaking there again this year. I've got a couple that I want to submit to Lericon might even submit to Lericon AU for 2025. you know, if there's another like Cascadia might, might look at that. So definitely looking to like do some talks and like shop around and go do some, teaching. I've got.

I've, I've always kind of had loose plans to do a video course on like Prism, like a paid for a video course. So hopefully that's something I can make happen. Like Q1, Q2 next year. and then, I got to get in shape again. Like I'm waxing Wayne with this, like years I'll be in like shape and then, you know, like six months out of the year I get in like decent shape. but like I've, I've packed on like.

few extra pounds and I'd love to drop that. I not just that, but like, just want to like feel, feel better. And I know you've like been kind of pursuing that too. And, kind of taking a page out of your book and like hit up my doctor. I'm to go like, just do a real big like panel of all the, like all the tests again, just kind of get a baseline and figure out what we need to improve. So, appreciate you like sharing your journey with that. Cause I'm definitely like.

pulling pages out of it and kind of following the playbook.

Chris Gmyr (24:59)
Yeah, totally. Well, happy to help and share what I've learned along the way. I know it's going to be different for everyone out there, but it's just diving in at a starting point and flushing it out along the way. And just a lot of experimentation, a lot of waiting, because it's not a very fast process. But it's definitely worth it. So yeah, happy to help any way that I can.

TJ Miller (25:15)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely lean on you a little bit for that. How about you, man? What you got kind of keyed up for 2025?

Chris Gmyr (25:31)
Yeah, for professional goals, think just continuing to chunk on architecture, planning, tech leadership roles, things like that. There's so much to learn, so much to do, so much to improve on. So definitely diving into that more so next year. It's kind of been like an ongoing goal anyways, but

Just this year seems like a bunch of other projects and tasks got in the way of that. So slighting some time on the side for all that next year. So possibly have some different opportunities to build that into work and always trying to improve being a technical leader on the team too. So growing other people on the team.

improving one-on-ones and processes and all that stuff across the board. So I have to solidify that a little bit more because hand-wavy goals are not super great. So I'll dial that in and keep on thinking on it over the holiday break and into the new year. So definitely come back to solidified.

set of goals for that. And I think personally, like you touched on, still want to continue the health journey. I have a lot of the nutrition and changes that I made over that last year dialed in. A few tweaks and changes. I got some updated panels more recently. So I to do a few little tweaks here and there. But everything is looking good.

And this year I want to more dial into the exercise and going to the gym, being more consistent with that, because I really focused on more of the input side of health this year. So next year is going to be more of the output, working out, muscle building, consistency with going to the gym, things like that. So as long as I don't get

like sick or hurt or whatever for too long, that's more or less the goal for next year. So yeah, diving into that a lot more, trying to research different workout systems, programs, exercises that would suit me, how to do those things like the correct or.

TJ Miller (27:30)
Yeah, that's awesome,

Chris Gmyr (27:44)
better way to not get injuries because that's a really good way to get off your plan is to hurt something and then you can't go to the gym for, I don't know, a week or a couple of weeks or even like a month or two if it's really bad. So trying to avoid all of the potential downfalls with starting up a new program like that. And I've, I've lifted before, but the consistency has never really been there. Like, you know, like you, like I've gone for, you know, six months.

plus or minus two or three times a week. And then something happens. We travel, get hurt, get sick, something like that. And then it's like, well, you don't go for a couple of weeks. And then it's like three months before you get back there. And then you lost some of the momentum and gains and things like that. So it's kind of starting over again. So I'd like to stay more consistent with the activity level into the next year. So that's going to be a big goal.

One thing that I thought would help with this is I recently heard about the book, the 12 week year. Have you heard of the book at all? It's called the 12 week year. And basically it's talking about how you create a year out of 12 months. So basically a quarter, because if you do big lofty annual goals,

TJ Miller (28:46)
No.

Chris Gmyr (29:01)
it's very easy to, know, on January 1st or 2nd, it's like, well, maybe I don't have to start today because I have an entire year to do that. And then you get to the end of December, and then you get to the end of December and it's like, crap, like I got all this stuff to do and you like, hurry, hurry, hurry and try and get it done or you just like throw your hands up and get super frustrated, right? So it's basically shrinking the quote year into 12 weeks and then

TJ Miller (29:09)
Stop calling me out, bro.

Chris Gmyr (29:26)
You can break that down even further. So basically like every 12 week cycle or quarter, you have that like end of the year push to, just those more constant check-ins because it's only 12 weeks. It's not 52 weeks. So the book is really great. It has a lot of, technical things that you can do in some activities on the side that you can work on. And it's a combination of creating your.

long-term like future vision. So like, I don't know, five years, 10 years, things like that. You generally just want to work towards like, want to be a healthier person, more active and do X, Y, and Z at work. You know, that's more of the lofty long-term goal. And then you would break it down into maybe like a three-year timeline. And then you eventually go back to what is the most important thing or like one or two things, one personal, one professional.

that I can do in 12 weeks. And then you just focus on that. You break it down on a weekly basis. You break it down on a daily basis and always kind of pushing for that goal. And it's seemingly a lot more manageable to do that instead of like an annual basis. So something that I've been kind of chewing on in the back of my head. But again, over the break, I would like to kind of get things down on paper and say like, hey, this is my longer term vision.

for all these areas. And this is like the one or two things that I'm going to pick for this next 12 week sprint and see how it works out. So I guess some experimentation next year to trying to do a handful of these like 12 week years, going through the book again and just kind of taking action on all that stuff instead of just listening to it or reading it and not doing it.

TJ Miller (31:09)
Yeah.

Yeah. Like when I found myself at the end of like doing a bunch of roadmapping for Prism, cause I, was like a brain dump roadmap of just like, here's everything that I've had kicking around in my head for it. And me like kind of put it all in order and take some of the most like important pieces and maybe put some like time estimates behind them. Like how long I think it's going to take. I found that super useful and it just like was really

I don't know, it's just like super helpful, like mentally and emotionally, like having it all in one spot and kind of getting it out of my head. So I think that's like, I've to do something similar with like breaking those goals down. I've never done well with like putting goals too far in the future. Like I'm too much of a procrastinator and I get like too, too caught up in the weeds and like focused on like what I'm doing on like a day-to-day basis that I I lose track of everything.

everything bigger than that. that's, I think that's going to be a big thing to do over the break too is actually like put pen to paper on all this stuff and, and really map it out. And, you know, I think 12 weeks is like, probably the farthest out that I can like be practical about, you know, that's really good advice. Maybe something I'll try do, do some like 12 week goals and then maybe not worry too much beyond that and just.

focus on 12 weeks at a time and then, you know, at the end of the 12 weeks, figure out what the next 12 weeks brings and kind of go from there. I think that's nice.

Chris Gmyr (32:32)
Yeah, and it's a good way to not be burnt out. Because if you're like, hey, I want to do these five things in Prism, but they're all pretty big, it's a lot easier to get burnt out or distracted or flip-flop on some of those tasks. It's like, just dive into one and commit to that for however many weeks or even the full 12 weeks. And doing that across the board with personal, professional, pick

one from each of those buckets, something like that. I think that's going to help with all that burnout and just, I don't know, get feelings around setting goals or actually like doing them and accomplishing them, you know, too. So, you know, experiment this year, but I would recommend check out the book or audible or something like that. The audio book is pretty decent, too.

TJ Miller (33:09)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, no, that's a really good point because I'm definitely dealing with some burnout right now, know, starting a new job. They've been amazing about it, but for me, I've put a lot of pressure on myself about it. And then also with like Prism, I've put a lot of pressure on myself about that too. And so I think that I'm dealing with burnout of my own doing, just like pushing really hard and putting a lot of pressure on myself in a lot of spots.

Chris Gmyr (33:37)
Yeah.

TJ Miller (33:41)
I think breaking down those goals and having chunks to focus on kind of help fight that a bit. So that's also kind of part of break is resetting a bit and hopefully being able to push on Prism a bit, but also take some time away. It also takes some dedicated time away from staring at the computer and working on it to combat some burnout and hit the New Year strong.

Chris Gmyr (34:01)
Yeah.

Yeah, totally. Well, that sounds like a good plan.

TJ Miller (34:05)
Well,

yeah, man, on that note, you want to wrap up?

Chris Gmyr (34:09)
Yeah, let's wrap up. So thanks for listening to the Slightly Caffeinated podcast. Show notes and all the links. Social channels are down below and also at slightlycaffeinated.fm. Thank you for listening and we'll catch you in a few weeks because of the holiday. So hope everyone has a great holiday and New Year and we'll see you all soon.

TJ Miller (34:30)
Yeah, happy holidays. See you everyone.