--- title: "Motivation, Burnout, and Imposter Syndrome, with Kevin Nicholson." date: 2024-03-12T05:30:00-04:00 author: Sean Smith canonical_url: "https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-4/motivation-burnout-and-imposter-syndrome-with-kevin-nicholson/" section: Podcast --- <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-BEGIN\]\]>[Skip to main content](#main-content)![Kevin Nicholson](https://website101podcast.com/uploads/hosts/_200x200_crop_center-center_none/kevin-nicholson.jpeg)Guest Kevin Nicholson UX-focussed Designer & Front End Web Developer specialising in on-brand marketing website production using Craft CMS, combining decades of Graphic Design experience [ ](madebynicholson)[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-nicholson-14305a16/) Season 07 Episode 4 – Mar 12, 2024 42:30 [Show Notes](#show-notes) ## Motivation, Burnout, and Imposter Syndrome, with Kevin Nicholson.  0:00 0:00 1.0x 0.75x1.0x1.25x1.5x2x [](//dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/website101podcast.com/uploads/mp3/season-07/S07-E04-Motivation-Burnout-and-Imposter-Syndrome-with-Kevin-Nicholson.mp3) In this episode we discuss motivation, burnout, and imposter syndrome including our experiences and strategies on how to handle ### Show Notes - Kevin's origin story - How important is doing work that you enjoy doing? - Routine work vs cool projects - Luck is when preparation meets opportunity - Roman philosopher Seneca - Imposter syndrome - Don't beat yourself up, go for a walk, talk to a colleague - The industry changes so rapidly its impossible to keep up - We're all partial stack developers - There's always somebody better than you. The person you should compare yourself to is yourself. - Burnout - Ideas to get over burnout - The ancestor to every action is a thought - Ralph Waldo Emerson - Feast or Famine - Money management - The juggernaut of fear, guilt - Schedule time for yourself (self care) - Set boundaries and limits - Inspiration ### **Timestamps** \[00:00\] Intro \[00:40\] Introduction of guests \[01:31\] Kevin's origin story \[02:23\] Kevin's work as a freelancer \[06:22\] Importance of enjoying the work one does \[13:06\] Imposter syndrome and how to deal with it \[22:17\] Burnout and tactics to deal with it \[30:28\] Feast or Famine cycle and its impact on motivation ### Show Links - [TTC Mapper (Sean's Photography Project)](https://ttcmapper.ca/) - [What to do When Work is Slow (S07E03)](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-3/what-to-do-when-work-is-slow-with-mitchell-kimbrough/) Powered Transcript Accuracy of transcript is dependant on AI technology. **\[00:00\]** **Mike:** It's like a juggernaut, isn't it? A juggernaut of fear. If you keep getting things lined up because you're fearful that you haven't got anything lined up, and all the projects take off at once, then you've got the problem of, well, how am I going to get this done? **\[00:15\]** **Amanda:** Welcome to another episode of the Website 101 Podcast. The podcast for people who want to learn more about building and managing websites. I am one of your three co-hosts. My name Amanda. Hello, listener. Thank you for joining. With me is Sean Smith. Hey, Sean, how are you? Good. Good. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. Thank you. And Mike Mella is with us as well. **\[00:40\]** **Kevin:** Mike, how are you? Hello. Yeah. I'm good. Good to see you guys and talk to you. It's nice to see you both. **\[00:47\]** **Amanda:** This week, we've got a pretty cool topic that I think affects everybody in every industry, but definitely every web developer I have ever spoken to. We're going to talk a little bit about motivation in web development, how to keep up on top of that. And because a lot of times it's like our worst enemy in preventing motivation from happening for a lot of different reasons. And joining us today to talk about this topic is our friend, Kevin Nicholson. Kevin joins us from the UK where he is a designer slash developer of marketing websites. And he's part of our own little personal Slack group or Slack group. Hi Kevin, how are you? **\[01:31\]** **Kevin:** Yeah. Hi. I'm good. Thanks. How's it going? Very good. Thanks for being here today. This is going to be awesome. And we're going to do a bit of, we said earlier, we're going to be talking as sort of like a round table thing because we've all experienced this throughout our careers. And Kevin's **\[01:45\]** **Sean:** going to help us out with that. I've been looking forward to having Kevin and **\[01:49\]** **Mike:** join the podcast for a while. Yeah. I ask so many questions on Slack so **\[01:57\]** **Sean:** payback time. That's all right. The Slack group is really just us helping each other whether it's Kevin or the other people who are in our Slack as well. Kevin's very active and helpful to all of us. I mean we help him but he also **\[02:11\]** **Mike:** helps us. You know, it goes around. Yeah, it comes around. Cool. Kevin, can you give us a very **\[02:18\]** **Amanda:** brief origin story? Like how did you get into web development? How long have you been doing it? **\[02:23\]** **Mike:** Sure. Yeah, so I studied graphic design and many years ago, probably just after the Mac came out, in fact, and got a job at an agency where did a lot of brand work, all types of graphic design, and eventually moved into web development initially flash and later on working with the content management systems and a lot of front end work actually. I was finding that the clients where I worked at, a lot of the clients they had, they're in the high, what do you call that, I suppose, luxury sector industry and their branding had to be bang on when it came executing the styles on a website and for print, but especially a website. And I found the project management a bit exhausting when it's trying to manage developers saying, no, the ledging is not quite right. And then that question, how hard can it be? It's later, I'm still asking that question and counting the grey hairs. So I've sort of had a fair share of some of the CMSs that have been discussed on the show and obviously got my favourites and favourite front end tools like every developer I guess. So that's how I pretty much got into web design and development, which I do today. **\[03:54\]** **Sean:** Cool. So yeah, Kevin's definitely been around. He mentioned Flash, which no longer exists, and that's actually something I know that Mike was working on back in the early days as well. Yeah, I was a big **\[04:07\]** **Kevin:** fan of Flash too when I got started. By the way, I found a Flash site last week. No, a friend of mine said it to me a site that said this site requires Flash, blah, blah, blah, that error that you get because nobody has flash installed anymore. It's rare to see that in the wild. That's crazy. **\[04:26\]** **Sean:** Pretty cool. So they're paying for hosting to not have a site? **\[04:29\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, I know. We should hit those people up. Kevin, you do work as a freelancer basically. You run your own shop and you work with clients directly, right? That's how your business goes. **\[04:41\]** **Mike:** That's right. So my skill set, if you like, is trying to provide a smooth transition transition between the design, the content flow and the development. Obviously, on bigger projects, that probably requires what it does require. Separate teams to implement that. But on smaller sites, it's where my section of the industry, so to speak, is I think I can manage that for the smaller clients who need that sort of a smooth transition. So, yeah, That's kind of where I'm at. **\[05:18\]** **Kevin:** All right. Well, let me dive into the questions. We're going to go into a whole bunch of different stuff about burnout and mental health issues and stuff, but I just wanted to start it off by asking, and I guess for anybody, really, but how important is it that the work you're doing is work that you enjoy doing? And what I mean by that, some people who listen might have a job where they have a boss and and whatever, and they are told to do certain things that maybe it's not a project that they are terribly interested in, but they have to do it to sort of pay the bills. How much do you think that affects motivation as far as wanting to do the work you do? Because I feel like the four of us can in some ways pick and choose a little bit, I guess not really, because it's not like we get people. You know, we're immune to the feast in famine cycle which we will get into later. But anyway, how much is that an important factor being able to do things that you were really, really psyched about, anybody wanna jump in there? **\[06:22\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I mean, it is important because it helps with, well, as the show is about, the motivation, it's easier to get motivated if you're into the subject or the task that you're doing. But of course, as we all know, sometimes you have to sort of do stuff you perhaps not so confident in or don't really like or don't fully understand or you think somebody else can do it better and should you be doing it. But I suppose at the end of the day if you've got people around you who you can sort of call on to get things done when it becomes tricky that's you know there's always good to have somebody to ask from that point of view but yeah overall or it's important because nobody wants to be doing something that they really hate over and over again. I mean, that's not when, you know, you can sort of manifest a different approach in some way or the other. **\[07:24\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I think there's a big difference between doing something because you're enjoying it and doing it so you can pay the bills. **\[07:32\]** **Mike:** Yeah, yeah, yeah. **\[07:34\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, but I think that, see, I usually kind of go back forth. I mean, I like the industry, I like doing web development. So in that regard, I like most of the projects, almost all of the projects that I'm working with, but some of the projects are cooler and some of the projects are more interesting. But those are the projects that are like new technology. It takes more time to research. It takes more time for testing and maybe it's a new client that's really awesome, but it's like you're learning and feeling each other out and a lot of back and forth in meetings, you haven't gotten into that groove yet, and so while those projects may be cooler and better and keep you interested, they can be really tiring. So I've been very thankful that it's the majority of my career. I'll have a big project like that, and then it'll just fall in my lap, a couple of projects that are just really easy to crank out, and it's just easy friend and development. People that I've worked with before, we know how each other operate, let's just get it really done fast and so it's not cool stuff but it's like okay cool it's still web development it's the stuff I'm comfortable doing like let's just knock it out of the park and then usually by the time that ends another like cool big new different project is like landed in my lap and it's like nervous and can I do it and and and giddy up let's go and and yeah so it's I think that if you're if you're open-minded and if you you know accept all of the options I think that they can have a a pretty good balance. It doesn't always have to be a cool project. It doesn't always have to be **\[09:05\]** **Sean:** cutting edge. 100% I agree. The easiest way to pay the bills is to have regular work that it doesn't stretch your skills as it's easy and it's not difficult because you're not trying to do something out of the park. It's stuff that you could just do without thinking. It's kind of routine, right? That's easy to pay the bills but not that we don't all put in 100% effort all the every project, 100%, but it's nice when you get a full project that is stretching your skills, or it's doing something cool, or maybe it is an existing client, and then they've got this cool new feature they want to add, and they're like, well, how do I do that? Or maybe I get to use this cool new JavaScript feature, or this cool new CSS option, that I always wanted to try out in the the wild. So yeah, I'm with Amanda. Balance is important. Yeah. In our industry, it seems like more **\[10:03\]** **Kevin:** often than in other industries, you know, people might have say side projects going on. Like Sean, you just made a really cool side project yourself for your photography. This website, I don't know if you want to put that in the show notes. It's super awesome about the subways around Toronto. TTC mapper.ca. There you go. And it's a thing you did on your own time. And like, I feel like very often I've done projects like that and often people do these little side projects, I wonder if that's as a way for them to sort of exercise their creative drives because it's such a creative field we're in. We're all literally creating things all the time. Like, I don't wonder if you're an electrician. Do you go home and sometimes wire up things? Something the way you want to do it, because you don't usually get to do it where you work. You know, I don't know if that happens. **\[10:53\]** **Sean:** maybe it does, but the electrician making circuit boards in his free time. **\[10:57\]** **Mike:** I kind of envy as sometimes of that approach that you could go into somebody's place, change the socket, you can tell I'm an electrician, and just get paid for that by the hour, and there's no slippage, you know, like you've got to, oh, this technique doesn't work, that technique doesn't work. So in terms of doing this sort of bread and butter work, it would be nice to have that sort of fluent work that you do the hours and you get paid exactly you know rather than oh I've just gone down a rabbit hole like we've you know we all do sometimes yeah yeah and I think it's you know when you do venture out doing other things are a challenge that can put you in good stead I mean I think we were talking about saying and quotes of famous people and there was one by Seneca that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity and I think sometimes when you put in the work and you're ready you've kind of done those, done the hard work, gone down the rabbit holes and another opportunity or something will come up that you think yes I can do this and you call it luck, call it what you want preparation, but um, definitely feed for thought. Yeah. Well, you kind of touched on, uh, **\[12:25\]** **Kevin:** sort of imposter syndrome there. Maybe we should jump into that because that's something that everyone's familiar with these days. I experience it periodically, just like everyone else does, I think, and uh, yeah. So imposter syndrome being, I feel like relative to my peers in this field, I'm not qualified to be doing what I'm doing. What am I doing here? I'm not good enough. That kind of thing. Any thoughts on that? How to deal with it? How to remind yourself that everyone experiences that, you know, anybody? Amanda, let's start with you. I'm going to put you on the spot. Do you ever feel **\[13:06\]** **Amanda:** imposter syndrome ever. No. Got it. Okay. Awesome. No, of course, everybody does. So there was in the autumn, we went to a conference that was happening in Toronto and it was a tech conference and it was like, they were very proud. It was like the first one, the first one back in person after COVID finally ended. You can't see it, dear listener, but I'm putting finally ended in air quotes. And I told bunch of Seneca students about it and it's like, hey, I'm going to be there. And if you're interested and, and Teneca actually got its, you know, tickets for students, it was really great. But over the course of the weekend, there were a lot of heavy topics. There was somebody who was talking from an agency and they had some like, they were talking about some project they did for a car manufacturer and it had, it included like, like, 18 different microsites that all had to be like branded the same way and so they were talking about like components and there was somebody else who was talking the big topic seemed to be server side rendering because like for a while everything was single page applications and let's do everything page changes and loading content and JavaScript on the front end but now it's like server side rendering is the big thing and it's like well why like I don't understand what the big deal is everything that's always been done on servers in the past I don't get it. And then the second day, there was somebody who was, she is big in the coming up with like CSS specifications and standards. And she was talking about like, you know, the different. Jen Simmons? No, I think it was Leo Varue. Yeah, there you go. And she was talking like literally like had to, before she could talk about like how new stands are implemented, She took a step back and explained how a browser will parse through a style sheet to figure out, is it the selector, is it the property, is it the value, and my mind was blown because this is stuff I've never thought of before. It's like I use CSS, I use this tool and thank God there are smarter people out there who are driving the technology, figuring out how this stuff is going to work. By the end of the weekend, I went in and taught the next day and I had had to tell my students, I was like, I'm like, how many of you thought, holy shit, what is going on? I am in over my head and like almost everyone put a hand up and I was like, me too. Like do not think that like there were definitely times during the conference where I looked over. I think I'm sitting beside Mike the one day and I looked over and I was like, is it too late to get into baking? Like just to completely just change my entire career. So it happens absolutely to everybody. **\[15:52\]** **Sean:** Yeah. It is difficult and I think one of the things to help mitigate the feelings is to share with other people that you know and you can trust that they're not going to like mock you for. Our small little slack group is really good about that. I didn't attend the conference that Amanda was talking about, but I remember her coming into the slack room and saying, saying, I'm foster syndrome, it happens to all of us, sometimes I beat myself up and other times I'm like, okay, stop beating yourself up and hire somebody who can do this that you just because you can't do it. It could actually be because you don't know how to do something or it could just because you're having a bad day and you know, go for a walk, talk to somebody who understands what **\[16:39\]** **Amanda:** it's about. I've all had those days where it's like, you can swear that there are grumblings in the machine or sunspots or affecting things. And it's just like, literally nothing is working. It's, and that's usually when, when those feelings of, I've made every wrong choice **\[16:56\]** **Mike:** in my life. Totally. I think it, I mean, I think it's, I suffer a lot. And I try and remind myself that in some ways it can be a good thing. I mean, it's contextual in that often And it's at the level that you're working with that you come under fire from it rather than, you know, if you sort of rewind and go back to when you first sort of wrote basic HTML, it'd be like, wow, that's easy. But it's often kind of glued to the level at what you're working at that precise moment. And I think call it sort of motivation or just a little niggle of anxiety, I mean, if you you're an athlete, a champion athlete, and you'd have had to put in lots of hard work to get to that level. But you can just stay, think, I've done the hard work, I'm going to be a champion for the rest of my life. You've got to keep pushing. And I'm sure that whether it's in post-the syndrome or the needle of, I've got to, you know, up my gain, otherwise somebody else is going to take my title. It's got to apply to all sorts of people. So I think it's a case of realising it's contextual and as Sean said, you know, just maybe going for a walk or just trying to unbreak that bind between you sort of fixated on this almost like an obsessive behavior about it and just do something that you think it's not the, you know, **\[18:33\]** **Sean:** people that end up to hike for the end of the year. Do you want to hear more website 101 Podcasts content? Of course you do. Now you can not only listen to us, but watch us on our YouTube channel. Search YouTube for website 101 Podcasts. **\[18:51\]** **Amanda:** Isn't it crazy how so often we are our own worst enemy? It's all up in your head, and it's always this negative self-talk, and it's always, you And the thing is, if you ever heard a friend saying that thing about themselves out loud, you're always going to be their biggest champion, and why would you say that, and why can't we do that for ourselves more? **\[19:16\]** **Mike:** One of my favorite YouTube tutors, he was really up there, even he was saying, I get it regularly, And you think, yeah, but you've got hundreds of thousands of followers. So I guess it's being able to manage it and stop it so that you start getting the self-hate and just use it as some sort of motivation tool rather than it being a negative impact, which is obviously harder said than done. **\[19:53\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, I think people that especially getting into this industry and whatever should realize that it's such a rapidly changing industry, you just cannot keep up with everything. Like I jokingly sometimes refer to myself as a partial stack developer as opposed to a full stack because there are things I don't know, but the truth is there's always a bigger fish. There's always someone who knows more than you do. So I just don't, I try not to let it get to me anymore that I don't know XYZ technology. I know I'm good at the things I'm good at and damn it, that's good enough, you know what I mean? **\[20:33\]** **Mike:** Yes, sometimes, you know, you need to sort of recognize that and often focusing on what you have achieved and what you can do and when you've come, you know, your journey. If you sort of stop and just ignore the actual problem that's right in your face and just think well look what I have achieved and I can be sort of rewarding or just a reminder that you're not totally useless. **\[21:03\]** **Sean:** Oh 100% you know Mike and Kevin nailed it there's always somebody better than you but the person you need to compare yourself to is yourself and if you take a look at your old projects and you'll look at the code that you were doing there. Even if you weren't commenting, which all of us don't comment enough, I guarantee it. You'll look at what you've done and what you can do now and what you what took you so long to do in the past, but now you can do without referencing the documentation or if you do need to reference it, you know that oh okay, I just need to do this, use a switch statement here or an arrow function or whatever it is. You know how to do it, But six months ago, a year ago, two years ago, it was the hardest thing for you to do. **\[21:52\]** **Kevin:** And now it's nothing. Yeah. Yeah. **\[21:55\]** **Amanda:** So I want to move away from Imposter Syndrome for a little bit. And I want to talk about burnout because we have definitely all been there and felt that. Like do you just coast and just wait until you get over it or does anybody have any tips and tricks to like, you know, get your or get your act back together. **\[22:17\]** **Sean:** I famously talked about being burnt out at the beginning of COVID. I have no excuse now, but I am still struggling with the motivation after I got over the burnout. It's been like over a year, and my motivation is not where it was before. So yeah, I don't know how to get my mojo back. **\[22:39\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, it's tough. It's like, it's something that goes along the feast and famine of actually getting work. Part of that is also the being, I'm not good enough and then the other side of that might be, I'm working so hard, I can't do this anymore kind of thing, it kind of fluctuates back and forth between those, right? **\[22:57\]** **Mike:** Yeah, I mean, I think exercise can be good. I mean, I heard a radio program of the day and they're saying that it's possibly the fact that it doesn't improve mental ability but you know just a change of seed and to get your heart going and I say this but I really should do something, I still haven't got over Christmas yet but I definitely think that that can help to over a jog or whatever it is that you know you do that you can get some sort of relaxation and but also sort of push your body. **\[23:37\]** **Amanda:** I was just going to say of having that like work-life balance. Yeah. You know when I was in my late 20s early 30s and I was single and I was you know starting to do the freelance stuff... ...like there would be nights where I would download a movie very much illegally and I would watch it on my TV but I would like sit there and be working with my laptop literally on my lap while I was watching a movie... ...a movie because I didn't have any other nobody like nobody was around, I was just living by myself so it was like you know what else am I gonna do with my time besides continuing working but... ...you do that for so long and then it's just like it's become as a slog it's like so it's I just don't want to do it anymore so I feel like you know if you've got the social circle if you've got people around if you've got other hobbies other things to like take up your time to like give you a little bit of that break. Hopefully it would prevent burnout from happening. I think having hobbies... **\[24:35\]** **Sean:** or activities that keep you busy outside of work also helps so that going to work doesn't feel like a job. It can feel like it's my career. I'm still enjoying it and I have this balance **\[24:47\]** **Mike:** outside that lets me do other things. I mean I think often your mental approach to these things can help... I've read a few self-help books or motivational books, whatever you want to call them and there's differing views. For example, one author who I thought was a really good doctor Wayne Dyer was... ...I'm sure I heard him say, the ancestor to every action is a thought And so you sort of, you know, if you were buying furniture for your house, you know, you want to go and get good stuff, not rubbishy stuff, and you said, well why then, you know, when we're filling our heads with thoughts, the often ways of fixing it and getting the rubbishy thoughts, and you know, you just wouldn't do that if it was... ...your sitting room and you're chucking in load of rubbish furniture, you want it to be good. So you know, treating your mind like a sitting room or whatever it is, so to speak. **\[25:53\]** **Amanda:** I like that. **\[25:55\]** **Kevin:** So recently we had Mitchell Kimbrough on From Soul Space talking about, you know, what to do when work is slow. So check out that episode. But any thoughts about the feast and famine cycle that we've been talking about throughout the show. So you sometimes got a lot of work and then suddenly you don't have a lot of work. like, how does motivation play into all that, you know, what, do you have any tactics, I guess? Does anyone have any tactics as far as how to deal with that? Mitchell gave us a lot of great ideas that we're going to implement pretty soon, but we **\[26:31\]** **Amanda:** plan on implementing. Yeah. **\[26:33\]** **Kevin:** Any day now, I'm going to get to that, yeah. **\[26:38\]** **Amanda:** I think that what's helped me the most in the past has just been planning for it... You know, you know it's coming. You know that eventually it's going to hit you. Know, eventually work is going to dry up a little bit... ...So I mean, well, it's very tempting when you do have all of the work, which means that you do have all the money, it is very tempting to be like, hey, finally, I can buy the new this. I can subscribe to that service. Finally, I can like do all of these things that I've been planning... ...But it's always, always in the back of my mind, I've got that fear of it's gonna come. So I every time every time client money comes in I'm so anal-retentive. I put aside this percentage for taxes and I put aside this... **\[27:25\]** **Kevin:** percentage for vacation pay. Yeah nice. And just just to just to make sure that **\[27:30\]** **Amanda:** you know in the future and yeah there have been a few times where it's like I needed to dip into the vacation pay account even though I was a non- **\[27:39\]** **Sean:** vacation. I just wasn't doing anything. Yeah, I also do the tax account, and immediately after I get it, it goes into a separate bank account and it sits there until I need to make my quarterly taxed installment payments. But I don't do the vacation one. It's probably a good idea. Before I do that, I need to build up my emergency fund, which was depleted. So I guess the vacation pay for for you is kind of like an emergency fund. **\[28:10\]** **Amanda:** Or you've used it like one. I have used it like one. But it's like in the beginning, it's so hard in the beginning, just trying to get over that initial, I've got 10 bucks at the end of the month... So it's like, I can go to Chipotle a very long time ago, Chipotle only cost $10. Or I can like, I guess I can put it aside into this account... ...But the thing is, it's like once you start doing that, you get into the habit of it, it gives you that little bit of peace of mind, which gives you a little bit of the safety net, which gives you a little bit of the, it's not quite so panicked when when things are in more of the famine... ...Which I think makes it maybe a little bit easier to be a little more adventurous with some of the projects, and maybe some of the personal projects, and you know, I've got time for it. Nothing, it's, I've got, I've got all of the finances covered. Let's, let's do something for me. Let's do something kind of fun... **\[29:08\]** **Sean:** which, you know, could hopefully lead back into being more motivating. Yeah, I think another way to deal with Feast or Famine is to set up some sort of passive income where you get regular money from clients for not a lot of work... And that could be something as simple as hosting and clients... ...although there's a lot of risk involved with that because if it goes down in the middle of the night and now you're... ...But, I mean, there's things like that. It can also be maintenance agreements, or if you've got the time and the energy, you could set up some sort of SaaS software as a service thing and launch that and then get subscription money from people. If you've got the inclination and the skills to do that... **\[29:52\]** **Kevin:** Yeah. And I think that this feast and famine sort of begets the burnout as well, because if you're doing well and you've got some work happening now, but you're afraid that three months down the road you won't, it might contribute to you just like bust in your ass trying to get stuff done because you're like, oh, I can't afford to kind of like turn this down, or whatever, even though I don't particularly have the energy to do it or the time because I'm worried that once from now I'm gonna need that money kind of thing, right? That can happen in our industry, especially if you're self-employed like we are. **\[30:28\]** **Mike:** 100%. Yeah, it's definitely like a juggernaut, isn't it a juggernaut of fear that if you think, I haven't got to think lined up. And equally, if you keep getting things lined up because you're fearful that you haven't got anything lined up... ...and all the projects take off at once, then you've got the problem of, well, how am I going to get this done? So it's a real juggling act because I'm fairly sort of new to being running my own ship, so to speak. So I'm still putting the feelers out... ...but yeah, I mean one of the things I find difficult Amanda saying about doing side projects when you know things are good is I feel a bit guilty about you know not doing some work when perhaps I could... ...you know, take the afternoon off or do something else. And I've heard a lot that that is one of the key things of being self-employed is the flexibility of time, rather than the, as we're just speaking about the, the corn of, um, where's the next paycheck coming from? **\[31:37\]** **Sean:** Yeah, I think you just, right at the end there, you hit something that's really important that I'll help with not the Feaster family, but kind of going back to burnout is you are self-employed, schedule, self time... ...time for yourself. So for me, I'd never work past three o'clock on Fridays. Never three o'clock on Friday. I'm done. I'm outside. I'm watching TV. Whatever. I Rarely worked past five or six in the evening only if it's a true emergency... I don't let myself work even when I'm busy. I was like all right. I've got enough. If I was working for the man I'd be walking out of the office at six o'clock and I'd be done, right? So I'm the man. I'm walking away from myself... I'm done at six o'clock or five o'clock. Whatever I wanted to be. It's really really important and Mitchell touched on this on our last episode where it's like you need you need to do self-care and for me that's what it is... ...setting limits and later this week I am going to need to be available later in the week but it's scheduled with the client for a specific reason. Yeah. And it's not the norm. And it's not normal... **\[32:53\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, same with me. **\[32:54\]** **Sean:** I was like, I'm done, I don't respond to emails. Occasionally I do, but I hit the time delay so it goes out the next morning. Yes. I don't let clients know that I'm working in the evening. They don't need to know that I am not always available and neither should any of you. **\[33:09\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, precedent, precedent setting is very important. **\[33:12\]** **Sean:** Setting the limits, it's really, really important. **\[33:15\]** **Kevin:** and I set limits for my clients. I won't answer my phone after five o'clock. I think it's really, there's a problem in our industry that I feel like I haven't heard this so much lately, But it used to be a big thing that like we were people like us were pressured by our peers to try to keep learning and keep growing your skillset outside of work hours... which I think is important. Like learning some new coding technology or whatever. But I think for a while there people were kind of like, oh, if you're not taking time, you know, you're free time after work to grow and learn more than you're not doing everything right... I'm really much very much against that and I feel like this ending your day at five and spending time with your family is important. **\[33:56\]** **Sean:** Perfectly fine. Yeah, probably good. I think I think that learning culture thing is something that a lot of 20 people in their 20s without Kids in a spouse Something they they can do and Amanda touched on it. She's like I live alone as like what else am I gonna do? **\[34:11\]** **Amanda:** I'm gonna watch a movie in code at the same time. Yeah, you don't do that anymore. No, no Man, I think it's tired But remember when COVID and when the lockdown first started, I don't think it happened to us very much because we already had the client's new window contact, but my partner who worked in an office and he would wake up to five or six new emails in his inbox where it's like people were sending them at all hours of the night because people who were used to being around others all the time and suddenly they weren't and they just, they themselves didn't know when to turn it off and when to shut it down. And I remember a lot of people who worked in offices talking about how it was becoming this new culture that people were like replying to emails at like all hours of the night. And it was just like, no. **\[35:05\]** **Sean:** Yeah. Schedule send, if you're gonna reply to the, you gotta do the schedule send. So it goes out at 9.30 in the morning or something. **\[35:13\]** **Kevin:** Okay, this is awesome. We're going to wrap up pretty soon, I think, but Kevin, you're a hell of a designer. I know that. I'm thinking of your design work. And I want to... Stellar, Stellar. Yeah, and I want to ask about inspiration. So I think that's part of being motivated is getting inspiration for anything. It doesn't have to be design work, of course, because there's inspiration involved in development as well. **\[35:35\]** **Amanda:** I love viewing the source and looking at someone else's HTML code. Oh, it makes me feel **\[35:41\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, well, sometimes you're learning a new technique or whatever to be very inspiring. **\[35:47\]** **Amanda:** Yeah, I think that it's Kevin, tell us about some of your design inspirations. **\[35:51\]** **Mike:** I mean, I was lucky really when I studied graphic design during the 90s. There was some quite disruptive design as emerging. And it was kind of that instant gratification in everyone. had a where I studied my degree, whether open floor. So you could see everyone's work and there was definitely some sort of rivalry and you'll try to emulate the latest style at the time. It's sort of grungy type and so from that point of view, inspiration was you know, massive and also as I started my career very much led by reading some of the things like creative review in the UK and graphics international just to see what the latest sort of stuff and also how people have problem solved in terms of graphic design when you thought, wow, that's a proper Eureka moment. And then obviously going, I mean, this is before UX was a thing, but sort of fast-forward 15 years, and looking at content flow and seeing how somebody's engineered a conversation on a page and just think, wow, that's just, you know, I mean, my wife probably thinks this is boring as hell, But to me, to see something done elegantly and it hits the brief is efficiently is a thing of beauty. And I just want to not copy it but I'm inspired by it to try and do my own version. That's not to say that sometimes when I've used some of you guys templates and I look at it and think, flip and hat, how have they done this? And then, obviously, our old friend, Impostas in terms of raises his ugly head again. So I guess it's just a case of just enjoying being blown away for what it is rather than, I can't do that, yeah, I shouldn't be doing this. **\[38:04\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, I find that, because I consider myself a bit of a designer as well, but sometimes I see the work of other designers and I'm like, oh, is it just that I have my own style that's different or is that guy better than me objectively speaking, you know, and sometimes I do have that issue is like, I don't really know what's what the answer is here. That can be tough. Yeah. But yeah. **\[38:29\]** **Amanda:** So not not not designed rightly related because I am not a designer by any means, but I guess more on the functionality side, like when I'm just like, you know, going all over the inner webs and looking at all of the hundreds of different sites that I've probably looked that in the last week, I always try to remember the things that are annoying. I don't like how that worked. And then if I'm going to be working on a project and the client asks for something like that, I'm going to try to talk them out of it, you know. And at that point, I can speak to them as an end user. It's like, end users are going to find it annoying because of this. Maybe let's try **\[39:03\]** **Sean:** this other way to see how that's going to work instead. I also do that and I occasionally read articles about UX and recommendations, and so I can reference that when I bring it up. I want to go back to Mike and Kevin's bit about design. I'm a developer that dapples in design. I took a couple of design courses online, and I like it, but I'm not a designer. So, I did that personal project. I don't know, I asked Mike and like, three or four other people, like, did I do okay? How is it? I think it's great. But what part of it sucks because I know I feel like I not that great, but I got lots of positive feedback. I'm sure there's things that could be improved, but again, you know, that's in foster syndrome. You got to go out and you got to do it and then get some feedback from people you trust. I don't I still don't think I'm an amazing designer, but I feel a little bit better about what I did. So yeah, and I think that I'd be the same with **\[40:07\]** **Mike:** them with development. I think I'm good enough for what I need to do, but I'm not going to be what maybe in time, but at the moment I'm way off your skill levels, but I guess I don't need that sort of level to achieve, you know, to execute my design into a working website at the moment. So, you know, it's on the flip slide, it's me, designer Devon, obviously, Sean, Dev designer. You don't hear that term so much. It's partial stack. **\[40:42\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, we're all partial stack developers. Except for Amanda, she's full stacker. **\[40:46\]** **Sean:** I think we should set the title for this episode. We're all partial stack developers. I'm going to be using that all the time now. That's such a great thing. **\[40:55\]** **Kevin:** Yeah. All right, should we wrap this up? I think so. **\[40:59\]** **Amanda:** Kevin, thank you so much for coming and talking with us today. **\[41:02\]** **Kevin:** Yeah, it was great. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's been great. Yeah, this was excellent. Thank you very much. And thank you, listener, for listening. Tell your friends, give us a positive review. If you can, wherever you get podcasts, check us out on YouTube every first and third Wednesday at 11.30 Eastern time. We do a live show and talk to you next time. **\[41:22\]** **Amanda:** Later. Bye. The website 101 podcast is hosted by me, Amanda Loots. You can also find me online at AmandaLoots.com. **\[41:35\]** **Kevin:** And by me, Mike Mella, find me online at belikewater.ca, or on socials at Mike Mella. **\[41:41\]** **Sean:** I'm Sean Smith, your co-host. You can find me online at my website, caffeinecreation.ca, and link down at caffeinecreations. **\[41:50\]** **Kevin:** Okay, here we go, three, two, one, all right, hit it Amanda. **\[42:10\]** **Amanda:** Shut up, I was just above two. **\[42:12\]** **Sean:** Don't f\*\*\* it up, too. Amanda is going to be our lead host today. The hostess was the most. **\[42:24\]** **Amanda:** Everybody shot up so I can start. Close Transcript Have a question for Sean, Mike, and Amanda? [Send us an email](/contact). [![Listen on Google Play Music](/assets/images/google_podcasts_badge@2x.png)](https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly93ZWJzaXRlMTAxcG9kY2FzdC5jb20vZmVlZC5yc3M%3D)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/itunes-badge.png)](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/website-101-podcast/id1449510012)[![itunes badge](/assets/images/spotify-logo.png)](https://open.spotify.com/show/3rmSM1R9t6q1U8DmYWJRSO?si=NrYPMgDaRV6Dd56PjEaPow)### Season 07 - 1 [ When to Say No](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-1/when-to-say-no/) - 2 [ How can I communicate better with clients?](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-2/how-can-i-communicate-better-with-clients/) - 3 [ What to do when work is slow - with Mitchell Kimbrough](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-3/what-to-do-when-work-is-slow-with-mitchell-kimbrough/) - 4 [ Motivation, Burnout, and Imposter Syndrome, with Kevin Nicholson.](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-4/motivation-burnout-and-imposter-syndrome-with-kevin-nicholson/) - 5 [ How to spin up a website quickly using a boilerplate](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-5/how-to-spin-up-a-website-quickly-using-a-boilerplate/) - 6 [ Back in my day...](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-6/back-in-my-day/) - 7 [ How to submit a support request with Ben Croker](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-7/how-to-submit-a-good-support-request-with-ben-croker/) - 8 [ Online Learning and Keeping up with Technology with Ryan Irelan](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-8/online-learning-and-keeping-up-with-technology-with-ryan-irelan/) - 9 [ Unlock your ADHD superpowers with Chris Ferdinandi](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-9/unlock-your-adhd-superpowers-with-chris-ferdinandi/) - 10 [ Rebroadcast: 11 Things to avoid doing on your website](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-10/rebroadcast-11-things-to-avoid-doing-on-your-website/) - 11 [ Raw and Unedited](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-11/raw-and-unedited/) - Bonus[ The Joy of Self-Taught Coding](https://website101podcast.com/episodes/season-07/episode-/the-joy-of-self-taught-coding/) ### All Seasons - [Season 01](https://website101podcast.com/season/01/) - [Season 02](https://website101podcast.com/season/02/) - [Season 03](https://website101podcast.com/season/03/) - [Season 04](https://website101podcast.com/season/04/) - [Season 05](https://website101podcast.com/season/05/) - [Season 06](https://website101podcast.com/season/06/) - [Season 07](https://website101podcast.com/season/07/) - [Season 08](https://website101podcast.com/season/08/) - [Season 09](https://website101podcast.com/season/09/) <!\[CDATA\[YII-BLOCK-BODY-END\]\]>