The art of saying yes: How I do so many things

The most frequent question I get is “How do you do so many things?“.

I do a lot of things outside of working full-time, and I have been asked this question enough that I thought it was time that I actually described why I do so many things and let you all in on the amazing secrets I use to do those all those things.

Why do I do so many things?

First, though, let’s start with why I do a lot of things.

Because I want more opportunities

I made a conscious decision to start doing more things because I thought it might help me do even better at my job and would allow me to have more opportunities in the future of my career. I am highly motivated by making more money, and that means that I need to be a more competitive engineer in this crazy job market, so doing extra things to set me apart is helpful!

I do think that doing lots of extra things has helped me in my overall performance at work. Not only have I learned more, but my annual reviews have been extra stellar since I started doing more things! And better reviews generally means a better bonus, or more money.

I also think it has helped me get chosen for certain opportunities, like speaking at conferences. A lot of conferences prefer that you have some public presence already. It helps make your speaking more of a draw for the conference and provides some social proof that you actually know what it is you’re talking about. Having a body of other content that I’ve created and a bit of a platform to stand on to say “Hi, I know a lot about this topic, here are examples of me talking about it on the internet” gives that extra bit of evidence to show that I’m worth investing in.

It’s also very helpful to have a body of things that you do and a network to reach out to before you need it when looking for a job. So, while I might not be looking to make a career switch right now, I know that I will eventually, and investing the time now to make sure I’m ready when that time comes is worth it!

Because I love learning

I also really, truly love learning. Like, if I had a choice of any career, it would be to be a full-time student forever. I genuinely loved being in school and would love to keep going to school forever. I watch documentaries to learn about things, for fun!

That’s part of why I enjoy being a software engineer is how rewarded you are for learning more about it. At my core, I’m really just a try-hard nerd that is highly motivated by things like money and knowledge.

Because I miss human interaction since I work remotely

Finally, the last reason that I do lots of things is because I’m filling a void from not seeing people day-to-day when I work remotely. Working remotely is required at this point in my life. I have three children under the age of five, and I need the flexibility of working remotely to make that possible while also working full time. But, I’m also a bit of an extrovert and love talking about things like what I’m reading and learning and thinking about.

I don’t get that interaction day-to-day when I work remotely like I did when I was working in person. I often end up stuck on an idea (like the subject of this blog post!) and need an outlet to get all of the thoughts out. So I end up posting about it online, or illustrating it, or writing a blog post, or if I’m really obsessed with it, pitch conference talks about it! That helps to fill that need of talking it all out without actually talking my coworkers’ ears off about it in a zoom call.

That said, I love to actually talk about software engineering online or in person. If you ever want to chat, join this Discord group and tag me, or send me a post or DM on any of the platforms I’m on.

What are these things?

What exactly are these extra things that I’m talking about?

It’s very silly of me to assume that you, dear reader, know what extra things I do. I mean, hopefully you found this blog post because of some other things that I do, like The Balanced Engineer Newsletter, or the Overcommitted podcast, or maybe through some of my socials like Bluesky or LinkedIn or YouTube or TikTok.

But if you have no idea who I am and are wondering what these things are, I’ll tell you about them!

Content that teaches software engineers

I’ve found in my career that I really love leveling up other software engineers. I love to learn and most other engineers do, too. Sharing knowledge is my love language.

Illustrations

One of my favorite things that I do is create illustrations. You can see a whole list of them here. They’re low effort ways of me trying to take an idea and explain it in visual form. I’m a visual learner, and sometimes it’s easier for me to explain something with graphics instead of text.

The Balanced Engineer Newsletter

This newsletter was an experiment I decided to try this year that I absolutely love. It started out as an excuse to write every week, but I found that a weekly cadence for writing just doesn’t work for me, so instead I’ve turned it into a way for me to share my favorite things I’ve read/watched/listened to in the last week. Each week I share three links that all relate to being a more balanced engineer (i.e., not just the technical stuff).

Blog posts

I’m not super consistent at writing blog posts, but sometimes I write blog posts on this website (like this post!), and sometimes I even write for the GitHub Blog! Here are a few GitHub Blog posts I wrote in the last year:

• How GitHub engineers learn new codebases
• Documentation done right: A developer’s guide
• How the GitHub billing team uses the coding agent in GitHub Copilot to continuously burn down technical debt

The Overcommitted Podcast

This is another experiment this year that I have fallen in love with. Three other engineers and I started at GitHub around the same time, and met regularly to talk about what we were learning and doing. This year, we decided to start doing our learning in public by creating a podcast! It has been incredibly rewarding and is one of my favorite hours of each week.

Speaking

One of the other things that I’ve been doing more of is speaking. This has been both for private groups and for public-facing engagements, like webinars and conferences! I will have done five conferences this year! These talks are such a great way for me to take an idea and really polish it in a much more special way than a single blog post or podcast topic.

Building community at work

I don’t just have a problem saying “No” to things in my personal life, I also do a lot of extra things at work! What that looks like is being part of the Speaker Bureau and the VP of Education for our work Toastmasters group, running the Engineering Mentorship Program by pairing together engineers to learn from each other on a bimonthly cadence, being a leadership team member of the Community of Belonging the Parentocats (parents at GitHub), and helping to run the Tech Book Club. I’m a big fan of book clubs, and if you’d like to get a taste of what our work book club is like, the Overcommitted engineers recently took our book club public as we work through our first book: Looks Good To Me!

Oh yeah, and a full time job

In addition to these things, I work a full time job as a senior software engineer on the Billing team at GitHub. And I think I’m pretty good at it! Objectively, I typically end up getting decent annual reviews, and overall good feedback from folks I work with. I think I’m a good engineer, probably in part because I spend so much of my time learning and doing things outside of work to make me a better engineer.

How do I do all these things?

Okay, now to the real reason you clicked on this blog post. Here are the ways I have set my life up to allow for doing all of these extra things on a regular basis.

I only do the things that I love

It’s important to make sure that the things you do are things that you actually love doing. If it doesn’t spark joy, you’re going to dread doing it and then it’s definitely no longer worth it. That means letting go of things that don’t get you excited. It’s okay to start doing a thing and realize that that thing sucks and to stop doing it!

When I first started my newsletter I was very excited about the writing I would be doing every week. I thought it would be a great opportunity to develop more thoughts about topics I was passionate about. And it was, at first! But it quickly became a huge burden and something that I dreaded doing each week. So I pivoted! Now my newsletter has a much lighter-weight formula that is helping me do another thing that I love doing: Finding the content that other folks are creating and sharing the things that I really connect with!

I’m also very quick to give up on things that I realize I don’t enjoy. I’ve ended far more hobbies than I’ve ever started. I have many, many half-baked blog posts.

My advice here is:

• Do the things that you enjoy doing.
• Learn the things that you want to learn.
• Talk to people about the things that you want to talk about.

Your passion for what you are doing will show up in whatever it is you’re creating, and it will be so much better for it.

I started small

I didn’t start out with this massive list of things. I started out with just a personal site and a blog that I occasionally posted on.

One day, I decided to start posting more consistently.

A few months later, I decided to start a newsletter (and I spent probably six months planning it, which was way more time than I needed).

Then, my friends and I decided to start a podcast together.

Slowly all of these things added up to a lot on my plate. But I’m actually loving every single thing that I spend my time doing (and I’m quick to give it up when that’s not the case). It’s best to start with one idea that you have of a thing that you might enjoy, and to build from there, instead of trying to do all of the things at once!

I thrive on momentum

After starting a thing, the most important next step is to keep doing that thing. Here is where momentum is important! When I start a new thing I try to assign some cadence to it, like a release cycle on a weekly or monthly basis.

That means that when I want to start a new thing, like the podcast, I say “Hey, I’m going to start a podcast and release it every week”. And then actually follow through and do that thing!

Getting started and establishing the habits around it is usually the hard part. Once the momentum is built, it’s much easier to keep doing that thing. For our podcast, my co-hosts and I have a regular standing meeting to record our podcast and weekly habits built around getting it edited and shared on the internet. Those weekly habits and regular meeting keep our momentum going!

One tip to build and organize those habits is using ClickUp to organize all of the things that I’m up to, which I previously wrote about here!

I write down everything

The other big game changer for doing more things was when I started to write down everything. That means all thoughts, ideas, whims… Anything that comes to mind where I think “hmm I’d like to know more about that!”, I’ll write it down!

I wrote about my Obsidian setup last year and it’s still roughly accurate. I nearly always have Obsidian available to me while working or a notepad to write ideas down on, so that when I’m driving in the car or cooking dinner and have an idea that I really like, I make sure not to lose it!

I use most of my free time to do these things

The final thing that is critical here is that I’m using basically all of my free time to actually make this happen. And with three tiny kids and a full-time job, there’s generally not a ton of that. That means the hours between my kids’ bedtime and when I go to bed (or 7:30PM-10PM most nights).

I do a lot of multi-tasking. My evenings are generally spent reading while running on a treadmill, or listening to an audiobook while crocheting, or typing away at my computer on whatever project I’m most interested in. Some evenings, like Sundays, are crunch time, where I know I need to have my newsletter and the podcast episode for the week ready to go. Other evenings I’ll work on whatever thing I’m most excited about, whether that be reading a book for a book club, scrolling through the recent releases on my RSS feed, or writing about a thing that I’m currently excited about.

The “only doing things that I love” part really helps here. If I didn’t enjoy doing any of these extra things then I would absolutely not be spending all of my free time on doing those things.

I also don’t do much of anything else, other than what I’ve listed. I don’t keep up with most of the latest shows. I try to avoid getting stuck in loops of endless scrolling (I love the dopamine hit, but hate the time wasted!). I used to play a lot of video games but don’t have the patience for them in this season of my life. I don’t have any idea what trends are current. If you try to talk to me about things outside of the realm of what’s relevant to software engineering, I’m probably not going to have any idea what that is. And honestly I’m pretty happy with that!

My partner and I occasionally go out for dates or get into a show together, but for the most part by the end of the day we both really enjoy doing our own thing.

I know one day I’ll probably get tired of hyper-focusing on software engineering, and then I’ll probably step back from doing so many things. But, for now, I’m enjoying it, so I’m sticking with it!

Does everyone have to do lots of extra things?

Before you rush off to take on a bunch of new side projects, let me address the elephant in the room. You might be looking at this list of extra things I’m up to and thinking “wow, that is a lot of things! Should I be doing all of those things?”

The short answer is: No.

But that’s probably not very satisfying, so I’ll say more.

No, you really don’t have to do anything extra to excel as a software engineer, or for any other career for that matter.

You can absolutely still have a fantastic career without doing anything outside of doing your day-to-day job, and that probably opens up more time for things like hobbies, which are super cool and likely also make you better at your job by encouraging you to think in different ways! You can still have a lot of great opportunities by doing 0 extra things outside of work. But if you’re interested in goals like:

• Getting picked to speak at conferences
• Getting proposals for book deals funded
• Creating courses and content that people actually want to pay for
• Making it more likely for your resume to be picked at companies you apply to

Then doing things in public might just help!

So that’s how I do so many things: by only doing what I love, starting small, building momentum, writing down everything, and yes—using most of my free time. The secret isn’t really that secret at all.

What things do you like to do? Is there something that you’d like to start doing? Add a comment on Bluesky and tell me about it! I’d love to share the work that you’re doing in my newsletter!