Cross Train (part 2) : Developer Tea

https://spec.fm/podcasts/developer-tea/51785
(Step-5b of the Developer Career Roadmap)

Cross training in your life beyond work.

They have hobbies that they participate in, that they say are incredibly important to their identity or to their happiness.

Find a hobby or an interest that you can develop skill at. This ideally should be something that requires some level of personal investment, mental and physical energy and that you enjoy doing.

Cross training is about developing balance, its about developing perspective, giving yourself a more well rounded way of looking at not only your work but your life in general.

The list of benefits of having something beyond your work is far too long.

Find something that you love to do and invest your time and energy into it outside of work.

There may be times in your career when you are genuinely invested and excited about learning a new programming language or things like that. That's kind of a sabbatical to learn that language by investing a bunch of extra time into it, couple of weeks or couple of months.

What I want to warn you against is not having any other interests so that when you do experience burn-out, you have nothing to relieve that burn-out. That's what I want to warn you against and hopefully help you avoid. 

Develop a hobby, develop multiple hobbies and interests outside of your normal kind of routine of all the things that you do at your job. This is hugely valuable.

Take some time and consider what your external interests are.

Ultimately it is your responsibility to do the things that you want to do in your life. Taking the opportunity to spend time pursuing your interests is something that only you can do.

1. Movement
(Yoga / Dance / Walk)

2. Connection
(Meet family members / friends)

3. Reading