Overcoming Burnout in Engineering & Tech | Strategies to Thrive in Your Career and Wellbeing

If you're a software developer who's struggling with burnout, you're gonna wanna stay tuned for this episode because I'm interviewing Richard Donovan.

He's a former software developer, but today he's a mindset coach and a personal trainer, and he specializes in helping developers with mental health and overall wellbeing, and balancing the two so that they can be successful in their careers.

Doug Howard: Richard, I want to thank you for joining me. I think what you're doing is so great. Do you wanna just introduce yourself to everyone who's not familiar with what you do?

Richard's Background as Software Developer, Leader, and Mental Health Coach

Richard Donovan: Thanks for having me on. As you say, basically my background is software development. Over 20 years working at all levels, so mid tech lead, manager, software architect, and now mindset coach and personal trainer. Basically for software developers because over my career, a couple of things, one, the physical side of things helped me so much. And the mindset side of things, earlier on, I struggled with so much, and later on they became so important to the value that I was bringing to businesses. I realized it was actually so much more about me and my mindset and how I communicated, rather than the lines of code that I was typing.

Doug Howard: You've basically had the linear progression of career path that everyone has. You go from individual contributor to manager to architect, and then fitness coach, health coach, wellbeing coach, mental health coach, that, that's pretty much the linear path in engineering. No I'm teasing.

Tell us a little bit more I'm dying to know, I'm sure our audience is dying to know first, how do you help people? I guess I'm really curious to know like how, 'cause there's a lot of buzzwords there that people hear all the time, burnout and things like this.

So how do you help people?

Richard Donovan: How I help people, really it's helping people to recognize the importance of how they think and how that links to, one, how they feel, two, how they behave, and three, ultimately the outcomes that they get as a software developer, but also as a person. And we'll probably get into this a little bit more, but being a really good software developer is only part of the role. Like coding is a small part of the role, but to perform, you also need to just look after yourself, have really good relationships at home, as well as in the workplace. So there's a lot more to that.

Ultimately, one of the most fundamental things and the most empowering things are t hat we have so much control of what we do, even though we think we don't. But actually it's all up here. It's all in how we think about things. We, we effectively form the reality around us with how we think about things. And that's what I try and help people with as far as reasoning around how much time they put into their work and expectations and comparing with others. It's a minefield, but we can go down a rabbit hole with the way we think and it can really work against us. Or we can actually rein that in and go a different way.

Doug Howard: I think you're touching on this idea of perception versus reality, right? And just how you perceive things and how it shapes your thoughts. Is that kinda what you're getting at with part of this?

Perception vs Reality and How it Shapes Your Thoughts

Richard Donovan: You've said like perception versus reality, but I suppose what's interesting is that our perception becomes our reality.

Doug Howard: Yeah.

Richard Donovan: And so I often think of, if someone's going about their daily business and they think that they're being followed everywhere they go, and that's the perception that they have. So every place that they visit, they're looking around, who's watching. That can just be a thought and yet it translates into their reality. Everywhere they go, they're looking for someone, watching them and watching them.

Doug Howard: Yeah.

Richard Donovan: And literally that's just their thought. That's their reality. I can go to every single place with that person, and my reality's completely different because I don't think like that.

Doug Howard: So you're saying, your perception shapes your reality in a sense.

Richard Donovan: Absolutely.

Doug Howard: It's not a versus it's, yeah that's so interesting. And as you're saying that, I'm thinking of times when, back in my old life where I worked in corporate, I had, not so healthy relationships with other cross-functional leaders.

And I remember, I would hear them as attacking me or something in a meeting. I would hear them as like saying and objectively later on, I'd look at it like I don't think he meant it like that, but in the moment I felt like he was gaslighting me or, throwing me under the bus or accusing my team of doing something, bad and then I get defensive. And I think what you're saying, that's an example of that.

Richard Donovan: It's absolutely an example of that. We have this idea very naturally to make things about ourselves and to, as you said, there, take things really personally. And ultimately, although it feels quite natural it's also a choice, once we start to build that awareness.

And I think that's one of the, one of the biggest things that will help people to actually start to feel at ease is to work on actively not taking things personally and realizing, to be honest, you are not as important as you think you are to other people.

Doug Howard: I do leadership coaching for engineers, and I talk about that a different way.

I don't get in as deep as you do with these concepts, but I talk about it like with imposter syndrome a little bit. It's you're not the main character of their movie, the other person. They're not thinking about everything you do from your perspective.

We think, oh, they're considering our perspective in this situation and they're considering the, our view on these things when someone disagrees with us. But it's no, they're really just not considering you. They're not thinking about these things and you're not the star of their show.

Is that kind of what you're talking about here?

Richard Donovan: Absolutely. And a big part of it actually is recognizing that we have a frame of reference with regards to the world. Any given situation, any given context, we'll have our own frame of reference. And I think one of the big things that many of us get wrong, myself included at times, is that we project that onto other people. So we think everyone's got our frame of reference. And so what we soon realize is that actually everyone's got their own frame of reference.

And when we don't realize that, we basically become quite judgmental of other people when they're saying things outside of ours. When we recognize that we have this frame of reference and other people have a different frame of reference, that helps us to then be a lot more open-minded and a lot more non-judgmental in our relationships and in our communication.

Why Engineers and Developers Can Be Skeptical about Mindset Work

Doug Howard: So as you're saying this, I'm just picturing our audience right now, and I'll pick on our audience, I'm an engineer, you're an engineer. We can be very skeptical and almost not be open-minded to some of these concepts. I'll call it like it is. So I'll just ask, how did you start thinking about these things? How did you start changing your frame of mind on this back when you were a developer and whatnot? I can't imagine you just always thought this way. I would imagine something kinda had to waken you up a little bit to start looking at things this way.

Am I right?

Richard Donovan: Yes it's interesting actually. So there's a couple of things at play. I've always been interested in mindset and how we think, and I've always felt like I've been a little bit different to many of the people that I've been surrounded with. I've always been very determined and even when I was at school and I went to a really poor school, so you weren't expected to get very good results there. And I remember even in year nine at 13 years old, I think I got moved from like I mid to a mid to top class to a really mid to lower class. And for me it was a strange, it was a strange situation. I, I was ill during the term for two weeks and I missed a bunch of stuff. And so then they relegated me, if you like, and I literally spent the entire term knowing everything. I didn't learn a single thing.

And so I'd sit there in class and the teacher would be like, oh, what's this? And I'd be like, Yeah. And the teacher basically had to say, can you not do that? Like other people are learning here. And I'm like, okay, what am I supposed to do? Like I'm just gonna sit here and do nothing. And I basically did that for a term and then they bumped me back up again.

But again, just thinking about the school, even the high performers within the school would be low performers nationally, and would still get basically really poor grades. Nothing was expected of you.

And I remember even then just thinking to myself, do you know what? This school isn't gonna dictate the grades that I get. I'm gonna do that. If I put in the work, if I put in the effort, they can't dictate my grades. That's got to be down to me. And that's one of the fundamental things that I've carried with me always.

Again, it feeds into the fact that I'm a self-taught developer as well. I don't have a degree. And when I got my first break, I took the technical books home on a night. I left home to get my first job to a place. I had no friends, to be honest. My brother lived there and that was all. When I realized what software development was and I decided it was something I wanted to do, I took those books home and I read them and I built things in the evening. And I did that most nights. And I just did it and did it until six months later the company said, oh yeah, junior developer, let's go. There is a mindset side to that, but at the time it wasn't like, oh, mindset. Like this is this thing that I'm really good at and I can do it and I can use it.

So there's always been something there. But as you see, if on my journey as a developer, someone came in and said, Hey, I'm a mindset coach and you can think like this and you can get all these results. To be honest, I'd be one of those skeptical devs. I'd be like alright, so you're a mindset coach, but what do you actually know about what I do? What do you know about what I go through?

And so again, for me, going into the industry trying to talk to developers, that's the big thing that I have. I'm like I am you, I have been you, or whatever that is. But as far as like getting to the point of me taking it seriously it's really interesting that, there were a couple of points, and it was probably maybe as far as 10 years ago where I had a few conversations with a few people, and it really is one of those things where it was almost like a seed had been planted and slowly but surely my interests varied away from the code.

And I started to look at like personal development and the brain and psychology and things like that. And then gravitated to other people who were in the mindset business and were interested in performance. And you hear things like, the biggest difference between those people who are more successful and those people who aren't is the way they think. The biggest difference in those people who are happy and sad is the way they think, and That's just so empowering because it means that kind of in line with my original thinking, the power's with me, it's not out there. So they're not dictating. I'm dictating and I just find that super, super powerful and empowering.

Imposter Syndrome Paradox for Self-Taugh Engineers and Developers

Doug Howard: As you're saying that a million thoughts are coming through my mind. First, I'm thinking a lot of developers can relate to what your story is, self-taught and just figuring these things out on your own or so many developers doing that today where that, I'm meeting with that they didn't go to school but they realized they wanted to get into this industry and they just figured it out on their own. They bootstrapped it. But I would imagine there's a lot of confidence issues, with people that come that route. It's almost feeling like you're not worthy. I'm just speculating here, almost feeling like you don't belong or feeling like you're not worth that first job. And I would imagine mindset becomes a problem for those people.

Do you agree with that? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Richard Donovan: No, I do agree in that I hear that a lot. I never really felt it, which is interesting. What I did see from that kind of journey, particularly in my earlier days, trying to jump from job to job. There was a bit of a barrier around adverts saying, you must have a degree. You must have a degree. That still happens these days, but I think it happens way less. But it was much bigger. It was much bigger back then. And it would just be the case setting. You wouldn't even get an interview. You wouldn't even have the conversation. So you could be an absolute genius and it wouldn't make any difference 'cause they'd never know. ' Cause they'd almost just be like, no, you go in that pile, you are done.

But as far as like people I, I speak to now it is a big thing and it's one of those things, you touched on it earlier, that it contributes to things like imposter syndrome and one, one of the main thoughts around that is I don't belong here and there.

I suppose what's interesting about that is when you think you don't belong, it sounds like that would be the same for everyone. But actually there's context around that. And that context can be very different for different people. And one of those contexts can just be, Hey these guys have all got degrees and whatever and I don't have that. They're so much better than I am. Yeah. The how can I belong here? The classic feeling is I feel like a fraud. You can see it, you can see it if you just look at it on the on the surface.

Doug Howard: I want to talk about that. 'cause we hear these words, imposter syndrome, mindset. Can you give me like a tangible example of how something like mindset would hurt a software developer in their career, or can you think of examples from your journey? I just wanna help the audience kinda understand like what this really means.

Richard Donovan: I think the biggest things are around the beliefs that we hold and quite often, one, where they come from, and two, the fact that we don't always realize we have them. We don't realize what they are.

I guess what I'm referring to there is that many of our beliefs will have come from potentially childhood, but also just another part of life. And they might not fit the context that we are now living. They might not even fit the type of person who we now want to be.

Without acknowledging or inspecting or questioning some of these beliefs and actually looking for them, they're just effectively our autopilot. And their our instincts. And effectively, that is our bias, isn't it in any given situation? That's your beliefs jumping in and going, this is what we believe in this situation.

We know that they're so powerful because the second someone questions that we become more defensive and it's like they're attacking us personally again. And so when we start to unpick some of these things and we realize what beliefs are, and one of the ways that we form beliefs is through repetition. And that repetition can be things we hear from social media, from other people. It can be things we see, things we experience, and we need to remember that our experience is like this in the grand scheme of the world. So just because we've experienced something a certain way, it doesn't mean that everyone else is gonna experience it that way. It doesn't mean that is how it is, right.

So we just need to recognize that we form some of these beliefs. But when we question them, and we can do that, we can question, is this belief helpful to me or is it unhelpful to me? And then the power is literally that we choose what we believe, and it goes back to the perception. We choose what we believe, which means we can also choose not to believe something.

How Introverts can Get More Comfortable with Communication

Doug Howard: There's a lot of power just hearing that. If I may, I just want to ask, how do you do that? How do you choose what to believe?

Richard Donovan: It comes from awareness, right? It goes back to what I was saying at the start. If you are not aware and you're just, my thoughts and my thoughts I don't control my thoughts. That's what a lot of people think. They think they don't have control over what's going on. Essentially, once you become aware, once you start to look, and I mean we might touch on leadership later, but one of the biggest things about leadership, I think is knowing yourself. You can't, it's very difficult to go off and help other people if you don't have self-awareness and you don't have a grasp of who you are and what you are about and what your triggers are and things like that.

Doug Howard: You can't lead other people unless you know how to lead yourself.

Richard Donovan: Absolutely. And so just having an awareness about these beliefs and having that self-reflective nature, which is again, a massive quality for any kind of leader. When you self-reflect, you will start to tease out beliefs in particular contexts.

A very simple exercise, you can write a sentence. I'm the sort of person who dot, dot. And then you can finish that sentence in as many ways as you can think of about yourself. They can be good, they can be bad. And at the end of it, actually what you've got is a load of things that you believe about yourself.

So for example, so earlier in my career and for a lot of my career, I was extremely introverted, super uncomfortable speaking up in meetings, meeting new people. This is ridiculous but sometimes when the team had a new team member and someone would come around to introduce them, hi, this is such and such, I'd see it coming a mile away, and I'd sneak off to the toilet. Until they'd gone because I was so uncomfortable with that smallest of interactions. So uncomfortable.

Doug Howard: I have to say, when I was a manager and I would introduce the new person, there was people on the team that I've, I caught doing it, they're gonna go take a water cooler break. That's so funny you say that. I've seen it before. You're not the only one who did that.

Richard Donovan: Yeah. Yeah. And being so introverted that, that's one of the things around my belief. So I had a real problem with speaking to strangers even more so that was obviously even worse. And so I realized that I had this belief that other people didn't want me to speak to them.

And this kind of goes back to a frame of reference. So I had a period of my life where my own belief was I didn't want people to speak to me. So if a stranger was like trying to talk to me, I'm like, why? Why are you talking to me? You don't know who I am. Like, just let me be. I'm just being me. I'm not doing anything. I don't want you to talk to me. Why are you trying to talk to me? And so then what I did was project that onto everyone else.

Part of my transition from being a developer to what I do now was a realization that I had to fundamentally change who I was. I couldn't do that as this introverted personality. I had to start to change the way I thought. It's a real gradual effort. But I did this by one recognizing that I was thinking that people didn't want to speak to me or didn't want me to speak to them. That in itself was just a massive barrier to me talking to other people because it jumped straight into my head. They don't want you to talk to them. Why are you gonna do that?

So that was an example of a belief, if you like, not necessarily about myself, but a belief in general that was shaping my actions. And I had to flip that, I had to reframe it. And I simply reframed that to, people are happy for you to speak to them or, people want communication, people want to interact. And I turned that into an affirmation that I repeated over and over, often in the morning, often before bed. Often during the day. And so I'd set off to work and I set myself a little task and I had to say hi to a stranger one, one a day. One a day. And I did that for a week or so. And then I was doing three a day and I got a little bit more comfortable with it. And I'm repeating this thing, people are into this interaction. And interestingly, every time I did it, guess what happened? They smiled, they said hi. No one said, why are you talking to me? But funnily enough.

And so I literally, I expanded on that. After a few weeks I asked one stranger a question, like how you doing? And then I asked three people. And the biggest thing was to strike up a conversation in the lift at work. 'Cause no one likes a conversation in the lift or so I told myself, and every single time this happened, the other person was just like oh yeah. And away they go. And you can even, you could even almost see, they possibly felt a little bit uncomfortable before that and suddenly they didn't. And they're smiling and they're chatting and you think, actually it wasn't quite the intention, but I've probably just made them feel a little bit at ease and, that's gonna be a better start to their day. And so I carried that on and carried that on and carried that on.

But, the seed of that was the reframe of a belief. And if I didn't reframe that thought that other people didn't want me to talk to them or didn't want to be disturbed I would never have taken that forward.

Doug Howard: What I love about this is you're very, it sounds like you were very tactical with it and you didn't swing for the this is an American expression, but swing for the fences, swing for a home run right away.

What's one thing that I can do, that I can control? And I guess I'm hearing the theme here. It's focusing on the things you can control. You can't control other people's reactions, but you can control what you're doing. Am I getting this? I wanna make sure I'm understanding this too.

Richard Donovan: Yeah, absolutely.

It's one of those things with a lot of things, one of the biggest obstacles people have is that they create this big thing that they have to achieve. And more often than not, that can stop people. Yeah. We all have, and I've and I have absolutely done it as well, and we create this bar and it's so high that we don't bother starting.

And this for me was just like what is one thing, what is a small thing? This thing that will take me in the right direction? And, I've certainly found anyway that once you start, you build a bit of momentum and before you know it, you snowball.

Some of those days I'll set myself a target of one person to say hi to, and I might have said it to five because I said it to number one and they were like, oh hi. And I'm like, oh, that went well. Oh I'll do that again. Oh, I'll do that again. I'll do that again. And so it's, it is really just, get over that hurdle. Just make a start. See how it goes. And to be honest, that came from one of, one of the books that has probably had a really big impact on me, and that is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It really big on lowering that bar, starting super small and then just going from there.

Doug Howard: I'm gonna take this as a sign that I have to read that book because you're like the fifth person this week to tell me I need to read this book. And I haven't. And I'm all about these types of books, so I don't know why I am waiting. So I'm going to do that. Now that you told me to do that, or you didn't really tell me, but you're indirectly advising everyone to listen or to read it.

Richard Donovan: I'll tell you now. You definitely need to.

The Relationship Between Physical Health and Mental Health

Doug Howard: I'll follow your orders. We haven't really talked about the physical health side of this, and I guess I'm seeing kind of correlations.

I'm a former collegiate athlete. Not anymore in those days are done, I'm seeing like the muscle memory aspect to it. The idea of, okay, if you're gonna try to increase your squat, you don't just load up the bar right away. First you get your body used to going to the gym, then you get your body used to doing 10 reps, and then you add five more pounds in a week or two. And it, it's very gradual and it's consistent. And it's small incremental movements. And I'm seeing a correlation to what you're describing with the mindset work. Is that right?

Richard Donovan: Yeah, it's it's it's exactly right. And again, it fits with my personality to a certain degree. I've gone all in on things like swimming, golf, squash, running, the gym and I don't do those things lightly. When I got into swimming, I probably spent six weeks watching swimming videos before I even got into the pool.

I could swim, like I could get from one side of the pool to the other. Someone once asked to watch me do that and said, that's not swimming. And so I took that as a challenge. I bought a video, an instructional video. I watched it, and then, over the next several months in the pool doing drills up and down drills.

I sorted myself out a really decent technique for a front crawl. I did the same with golf. I took up golf because when I first swung a club, it was so awful, and I thought, wow, this must be so difficult to be good. I thought that's a good enough reason for me to actually try and be good at this thing.

So again, started reading, started going to the driving range, went for golf lessons. I've had golf coaches, I've had squash coaches, I've got running coaches, football coaches. I get into that stuff and it's that learner mentality. It's that continuously learning.

And that's why as far as software development's concerned, that for me, there's so many parallels between all of these things. And I just bring them all together. And it's almost the same approach. And I suppose the term we use in the gym is progressive overload, and it's as you described, okay. I'm here. If I can just add that tiny bit. Okay, let's do that for a bit. And, oh, and now I'm here. Oh, if we can just do that and now I'm here. And it's the same, it's the same concept. You can apply it to, your own personal development. You can apply it to your own attributes. You can apply it to your coding abilities. Your design abilities. Your architecting abilities. Your leadership abilities. Any given sport. Your fitness, your wellbeing, all of those things. It's a similar approach as, as far as I see it.

Richard's Journey from Lead Developer to Mindset Coach for Engineers

Doug Howard: So this sounds great, but I want to hear the origin story a little bit before we continue. I gotta imagine that there was a point where, you hit a breaking point or something where you realized that you needed to figure these things out in your own career, before you were helping people in these areas. Was there a point like that where you were just hitting a plateau or it was taking a toll on you?

I feel like a lot of people are struggling with this and I want to just hear what was your journey like?

Richard Donovan: Yeah, it's interesting. So there was a point, there was a point where I was like, okay, like we, we can probably call it a midlife crisis. I, I was approaching 40, so we can probably call it that. But when I think about my career and all the things that I've struggled with, they actually spread quite vastly through it.

And so I already talked about the introverted nature that speaking up and meetings and meeting new people. That was a real kind of problem for a long time in my career.

There was another episode where, I felt like I was a little bit past that and I'd done things to progress that, but I then hit imposter syndrome on the back of starting a new job. That in itself actually then led to burnout. So the impact of imposter syndrome and me trying harder and staying later and doing all the things around that to try and prove myself and to be this better person actually led to me neglecting relationships at home with friends and partner at the time.

And that became a cyclic thing where I was struggling at work, I was struggling at home, I was struggling at work, struggling at home. I then lent heavily on physical exercise as a bit of an escape, and I probably did that too much as well. And the combination of all of that.

I remember laying on the sofa and my partner was basically nagging me to do the hoovering right. Now I'm a physically fit guy. I was going to the gym four or five times a week. I'm not a lazy person by any stretch. I'm more than happy to help out here, there, and everywhere. And I remember laying on the sofa just thinking, I just absolutely did not have the energy to do this hoovering around the house.

And it wasn't just physical, it was mental. And I was like, I haven't even got the mental capacity to hoover the house and wow. And I just thought, what kind of state must you be in to not have the mental capacity to do a simple chore?

That was a key time when I started to speak to a few other people around me. I definitely started to work more on my mindset then. And so that was a key point. But it wasn't the turning point. It probably was, when I look back and reflect. It was a key point, but it wasn't the turning point of, oh, okay, I'm gonna change my career now. I moved on from that role after a couple of years and I really did turn that around because that same role turned out to be one of the most fulfilling roles that I've had in the end.

So that was interesting, but. A real kind of turning point. So I'm sitting at my desk, I'm a software architect for Aviva. They're a global Fortune 100 company. There are probably 200 developers beneath myself and a few others in the architecture team. And we're writing reference architecture and defining the standards and making things, how they should be for those guys.

And when I think about, my career, I've been through all of these roles. I've been a contractor and I'm pretty high up in, in this big company and I'm thinking, okay, do you know what, when I decided I wanted to go on this journey this is probably as far as I ever really expected to go.

It's a bizarre thing. 'cause obviously in software development, software engineering, you don't ever know everything, so you don't ever get to the end. But I did as far as like my own mindset was concerned. I didn't think I knew everything. I just felt that I'd done enough and that was interesting to me.

And so with that realization, I'm sitting there, I've done enough of this and then I had a somewhat morbid thought, if you like, and I jumped forward to my deathbed and I'm laid there on my deathbed and I'm thinking, Okay, I'm looking back on my life. I continued doing what I'm doing today back then. And so let's say I spent, I don't know, 80% of my life or my time on this earth sitting in front of a computer tapping away at a keyboard. And I just asked myself, would you be happy with that? And the answer was just no.

Given what I've now done, I've got this like overriding feeling that I can help people and I can do so much more and I'm not doing it. So I'm sitting there and I'm like, I'm not doing it. Like I, I should do more with the time that I have here. And, we don't really know how much time that is.

So in that moment, I made a decision that I wanted to work with people more and I wanted to have more impact with people, rather than computers. And I guess at that time, I had no idea how I was gonna do that. None. No idea. But I had, I planted the seed. So it was people. I explored a little bit, I did some coaching. I trained to be a personal trainer, and I did some of those things.

And then I remember a friend of mine who I spent a fair bit of time with, he'd spoken about this mindset company who he was actually a mindset coach himself and had no doubt being secretly coaching me, if you like without me ever knowing. And so I remember thinking, do you know what maybe I need a mindset coach to help me work out how I get out of this job and into another job.

So I go to this company, I go to the website, start looking at all the stuff, and I start reading it and I'm like, oh my God this is what I can help people with. This is what I wanna help people with. So I go to this website looking for a coach, and long story short, I end up becoming a coach instead.

And then, just upon becoming a coach, doing a lot more self-reflection and getting clarity of where I wanna go, and I suppose who I've even been. Suddenly I'm realizing, do you know what, as a software developer, I've felt so uncomfortable so many times, I've lacked confidence. I've not wanted to speak up. And suddenly I'm seeing this transition of how that impacted me earlier and how when I become so much better and more comfortable being myself, I added so much more value, as I said at the start, to businesses. It was about me as a person. It was about my interactions with other people. It wasn't about the code that I was writing.

Doug Howard: That's amazing. I'm getting chills as you're telling me that 'cause it's just, it's all about the impact. It's all about the impact and I just think it's so powerful that you had this realization and what I'm hearing you say is it all started with just asking yourself, am I happy? Would I be happy with this? Would my life be meaningful if I stayed on this path that you were currently on?

Richard Donovan: Exactly. And I suppose that there's something about thinking about the time that we're here and recognizing that's not gonna go on forever. It's gonna come to an end.

Doug Howard: It's a depressing thought, but it's a reality.

Richard Donovan: It is. And it's gonna come to an end. And there's an amount of time, and when you think about it coming to an end and you think oh, okay, what did I do with it? And it's just that, it's like, what did I do with it? And as I say if you had the, would I be happy with that if I was at the end? That's a, that's a difficult question to, to answer if you're really being honest with yourself.

I'll back that up with, I'm super proud of what I did as a software developer, going from nothing to teaching myself how to do it. I don't wanna say I didn't have any help. Of course I did. Like lots of people helped me throughout my career, of course. But I went from nothing to an entire career going through various levels. And, I'm super proud of that. If I can now, make that journey a little bit easier and more productive for someone else, then actually do you know what I would be happy with how I've spent my time doing that.

Creating Mental Health Awareness Throughout Software Development Industry

Doug Howard: I know you're helping a lot of people out there and you're making a big impact in the industry and that's ultimately what you want. From talking with you, before we, we recorded this, I was asking, what motivated you to do this? I'd like you to share your story 'cause I thought that was so powerful to me, the impact you want to have.

Richard Donovan: Yeah. It's interesting. It's a little bit cheesy to be honest, but it doesn't matter. Like it is what it is. My vision is that I want to impact the software development industry. Because from what I've seen, mental health, wellbeing, even the physical side as well, imposter syndrome and mindset, all of that stuff I just think has been overlooked in software development. And yet it's so apparent, it's so apparent in so many people. But when I first started, putting things out on LinkedIn, for example, and talking about some of these things, there was just tumbleweed.

Like people either they didn't know or they didn't wanna talk about it. And part of my journey is actually in some of my posts, I'm putting stuff out there feeling quite vulnerable about, do you know what? I made this mistake. I was a leader and I did this, and it, what a terrible thing. I feel pretty stupid now. But, I've learned from that stuff and there are people still doing that and you can't hope that maybe they're gonna see that and they're gonna, they're gonna think if Rich can talk about that openly about, failing or doing something wrong or not knowing something, for example, then that can become a little bit more normalized.

But as I said that there are really three things. So there are developers that don't really recognize this stuff and so that's hard for them. And we already talked about how, I would've even seen someone coming to me as a mindset coach and I'd be very skeptical that I'd be like, get out. You, you don't know. You don't know anything. You don't know what I do. You don't know the stress I'm under, the anxiety, and the judgment I feel when people are looking at my code. You don't know what it's like.

We're gonna have like skeptical developers who just don't really see this stuff. And as I said before, it's about planting a seed. And I don't expect any developer who thinks like that to wake up tomorrow and be like, bam, yeah, let's sort this out. Yeah, I'm gonna do this. It's about planting a seed and making it more normal.

Then you've obviously got businesses, and again, I've worked for plenty of companies and the support for this kind of thing is next to nothing. And we know full well that by providing that support, the business is definitely gonna benefit. Happier people are way more productive. They, they're not gonna be off as much healthier people, mental health, good mental health, all that stuff. We know that when they're bad, it's problems for the business, right?

So we've gotta, we've gotta help to change developers' minds to a certain degree. We've gotta help change businesses' minds to a certain degree. And, ultimately that results in my impact on the industry.

I think what you were alluding to earlier was the fact that at some point I was actually offered a job as a coach to software developers, which is what I'm trying to do. And I realized in that moment, that, I didn't want that job. And that was because I haven't set out to do this for a business or for a company, I've set out to do this for the industry. And if I'm just doing it for one company I'm not having the impact that I ultimately want to have.

Doug Howard: That says it all to me, 'cause I'm in this coaching world with you and there's a lot of people that are full of it. I'll just say there's a lot of coaches out there that are just selling a bill of goods and I know you're not one of them. That's proof in the pudding right there, just about how sincere you are and how much you care about this and how much you wanna make a difference. You're actually turning down offers to work at a company because it would stop you from having the impact you want. And I just think that's so special.

Richard Donovan: What's interesting about that is that I didn't know that until I got that offer. I thought it, but only when I got that offered, did that just go no. I reflected afterwards and I was like I said no to that really easily, like, where did that come from? And I yeah, just reflected on it and I'm like, yeah, that, that's what I'm trying to do, and that doesn't allow me to do that.

It's another tick in the box for clarity and for vision and for goals. And, a lot of that is part of mindset coaching as well. Being clear about where you're going and what you want. Sounds, sounds really simple, but a lot of people are really not clear about what they want. And if you're not clear about what you want it's very difficult to make good decisions, quite frankly.

How to Change Your Way of Thinking - Exercise

Doug Howard: Yeah. How could you get to where you wanna be if you don't know where you wanna be or what you want to be doing? Which, I guess getting to some practical advice for the audience, where would someone begin, if they're listening to us right now and they're thinking, yeah, I really relate to a lot of these problems, but what do I do? How do I get clear on what I want, for example, or how do I change my way of thinking? What's some tangible tips we can give them?

Richard Donovan: There's a super simple exercise that I do as part of my coaching, and I do it with everyone and it's, sometimes I feel a little bit embarrassed about doing it, to be honest. But it's so helpful. So simplicity is one of, one of my core values. It makes it. Okay. And so this exercise is as simple as making a list of all the things that you want in your life, like just on any given day. So it doesn't have to be like, five to the future or anything like that. It could be like, tomorrow what are all the things that I want in my life? And they are things like, how do I wanna feel? What kind of emotions do I want to experience? What do I want to do with my time? Who do I wanna spend that time with? And it can go on and on.

By the same token, you can do the same with your don't wants. What don't do you want? So what don't you wanna do with your time? What emotions don't you want to feel? And you can go into various categories of your life. Just start creating this list.

And once you get started, you just get on a roll and sometimes what you want and what you don't want, they're like directly opposite and that's fine. That's absolutely fine. And just simply reflecting on those things and just even adding to them all the time and you look at them, you reflect on them and as I said, like repetition, they become a little bit more embedded in your mind. And what happens is they start to influence your decision making.

So when you've got decisions to make, you are more likely to kinda stop yourself and be like, okay, I've got this decision to make. Just making that decision, take me towards the things that I've said that I want in my life. Or does it take me towards something that I've said I don't want. And that in itself like, is so simple.

But when you have to answer that yourself and you've gotta say to yourself, okay, if I make this decision, it's taken me towards this thing I said I don't want in my life. It gives you pause and it's okay. So how do I not make that decision? How do I not go in that direction? And it, it's not always as simple as I'll just do the opposite.

We all find ourselves in situations and circumstances that might not be ideal, but it does then get you to try and explore what else could I do? Okay, this takes me here and ideally this would take me here. Okay, I can't quite do that for whatever reason, but what else could I do? Is there a middle ground? Can I at least get rid of the thing I don't want? Can I reduce it in some way? And, we can do that again and again with decision after decision. And it's such a simple question, is this taking me towards the things that I want? Or is it taking me towards the things I don't want?

Doug Howard: That's great advice. And I really feel like a lot of, especially engineers, we're overworked. We're burnt out. We're not taking the time out to ask these questions to ourself. And I think what you're saying is just by creating a little space to reflect on these things and think about, what am I doing with my time and what do I want to do more of, what do I wanna do less of? That alone in itself will just start, it's one of these first little moves that you can control to start moving the needle in the other direction.

I'd like your thoughts on this. I focus on influence, and I focus on understanding people. That's, what I really help people with and with influence, there's all these laws of influence. One of them is, the law of consistency. If you believe you're this type of person, then you're gonna wanna live up to being that type of person. If I tell people I love dogs and someone shows me a picture of their dog, I'm gonna wanna live up to that and be like, all right, show me a picture, even if I'm not in the mood right now.

Just by declaring that about yourself, it makes you want to be consistent with your beliefs about yourself. Otherwise if you don't, there's cognitive dissonance, right? Where I feel like I'm a fraud because I'm not being who I'm supposed to be. And that's very compelling to motivate yourself to take action the right way. Am I on the right track here? Is there a relationship between these two things?

The Relationship Between Identify and Thought Habits

Richard Donovan: So interestingly, just going back to atomic habits. There's a whole section in there exactly what you just described about your identity. So how do you identify?

So for example, when I started playing squash new sport, never played it before. Initially I was just someone who, goes to the court and knocks a ball around. And when I started to get serious about it, I, I had to question myself. I entered the leagues. I was in like division six and it went all the way up to the Premier League. The people I was playing with, they just turned up and had a game every now and again. Not for me, I turn up like four or five times a week on the court on my own, knocking a ball around. And others are like what are you doing? I'm drilling, I'm gonna be good at this thing, right? And so when I started to do that, I identified as a squash player. I started calling myself a squash player.

Now, what does a squash player do? A squash player trains. A squash player turns up to the court and drills. A squash player analyzes the game and tries to work out where they can improve. Now it was probably like three years, but it did include Covid. But in that time, going from complete novice division six in the league that I was in, I actually worked my way all the way up to the Premier League. Whereas, some of those are the people that I was playing with, they pretty much stayed between one or two divisions of where they were because they just, they weren't trying to progress.

But it all came from the identity and linking the kinds of habits of that kind of identity. I suppose when we think about leadership as well, what kind of leader are you? Ooh, that's an interesting question. Because when you label yourself as that kind of leader ooh, what gonna, what are you gonna do? What kind of habits do those kinds of leaders have? Okay, what are you gonna start doing? It's so powerful.

Doug Howard: It's funny you say that, 'cause that's what I make, everyone who works with me, what I make them do is define their leadership core values. And use those to drive your decisions. And use that to basically give you that energy to do the tough things. And to go outta your comfort zone and have a difficult conversation. 'Cause if you believe about yourself, I'm always, looking out for my team, having a difficult conversation is part of that, and you need to use that as motivation in those points.

Mindset Shifts for Transitioning from Individual Contributor to Leader

Doug Howard: Before we wrap up, I just wanna ask, a lot of leaders struggle with making that transition into their first leadership role of just changing their mindset about, how they look at productivity. It's like when you're an individual contributor, it's, okay, hands on, I'm getting stuff done. I am completing tasks, I am punching stuff off the list, and I'm getting things done my way. This is the right way. This is the way I know. These are my systems. And then all of a sudden you're not in a role where you're hands on productive anymore. It's a little bit more subjective about how you should be spending your time and letting other people create new, better ways to do things that aren't maybe the same. And I'm just curious, does any of this correlate to that transition and making that shift into a leadership role?

Richard Donovan: Yeah, it does. There's a couple of aspects I think. I mean I've got my own example of doing it. When I first went into a leadership role, I was performing really well as a developer. Knocking stories out of the park, really like contributing. I then get put into this role and I see that I'm put into this role because of what I've been doing. And so I try and do more of that. Obviously that's not why I was put into that role at all. So I then basically end up delivering like the Morse points on the team sprint after sprint. And there was one instance where the product owners had come in. It was getting late in the sprint. They really wanted this feature, obviously 'cause they always do. They really wanted this feature and I give it to someone and they run it for a day, and they weren't making the progress.

And I had a chat with 'em. I was like, is this gonna be done? I've got product on, I really, really wants this sprint. And they're like yeah and they didn't really know whether we're going with that. And I did the classic thing. I said, do you know what I'll take it. And I took it off him. I didn't even complete it in work hours. I worked out of hours through the night and but worse than that, I did the stories, the feature completed it. Went back in, said to the project owner, yeah, no worries, got it sorted. Took all the credit for it. Took all the credit for smashing it through the night. And basically delivered more points, I think, in that sprint than the rest of the team combined.

And wow, looking back that's a low point. That's a real low point. And, the mindset, the self-reflective nature of having that kind of mindset means that I can look back on that now and I can learn from that. If I didn't do that, I'd look back on that now and be like, yay, remember that time and delivered all those points. No that's not it.

So yeah, that change of, I'm delivering, I'm technical, I got all the answers, and then you go into that role and actually, you don't have all the answers and that's okay. You need to show that's okay to the rest of your team, because they won't always have all the answers either. And I think, it's a very interesting point about not having all the answers. And it's a message that other leaders need to take on, and they need to know that's okay. But it's also interesting that software developers and software engineers and team members also need to recognize that their manager's not gonna have all the answers. We don't really talk about that, actually.

And that's really interesting because I was speaking to a software development leader. And he gave me that exact story. He was really good. He was really good with the communication. He was really good with all the kind of hands off stuff that we would hope for from a leader. He was good technically as well, but obviously didn't have all the answers. And he told me about this instance where he had a quite junior person on his team and a technical question came up that he just never encountered before. Oh, guess what? That happens more often than you'd think. And he didn't have the answer. And this junior developer did. And rather than that just being okay, this junior developer actually went over his manager's head to the person above him. Basically said, why is this guy running the team? He didn't even know this. Even I know that. And it is just wow. It's easy to see where it comes from, where a leader then gets into this position and they think that they have to know everything, if they have to deal with things like that.

So it really is, there's two sides to that or there's two avenues that we need to kinda spread that message in. And I think, getting that message across to the developers in a team is something that no one talks about.

Doug Howard: That's a great point. I never hear anyone talking about that kind of training the team to understand the relationship between the individual contributor level and the leadership level because yeah, it's sports, right? The coach isn't gonna go out there and dunk the basketball or, kick the goal. The coach is there to strategize and put the team in the right position to succeed. You don't want your best player coaching and vice versa. You don't want your coach playing.

Richard Donovan: I suppose a similar analogy, it's like a hundred meter sprinter. I can tell you now, the coach isn't gonna be running as fast as the sprinter is. So what does the sprinter do? Oh I'm not gonna listen to you. You can't run as fast as me. That would make every sprinter that ever lived, not having a coach. It doesn't make sense to sit

Why It's Difficult to Empathize and Consider Other People's Perspective

Doug Howard: Right and it makes me remember before I was in leadership, when I was still an individual contributor and this kind of ties, I think back to what you were saying earlier about just this perception shaping your reality. I couldn't think with the leader's perspective ' cause I was still at that level. I didn't have that perspective yet.

And every time my boss didn't do something right. I was that person that you're talking about, how does he not get this? How can he, how could he not have time for this? How could he not see how this issue is so important? How could he not see that this needs to be fixed right now? It was always, how could he not in my head, how could he not, how could he not? And then I would start to demonize the person in my head and they weren't a bad guy. I figured he'd see everything the way I saw it.

And then once I got into the role, and then I could see that reaction from people on my team. Like they didn't say it, but I could just see in their eyes, oh, I was Doug not paying attention to this. And I'm like, okay. Seeing the circle of life here.

Richard Donovan: Just going full circle to, what mindset coaching is and things like that. You just touched on, a bit of self-talk, which is massive, and that's a little voice in your head. And, I always say that there are two types of people in this world. There's those people that talk to themselves and there's those people that don't realize they talk to themselves.

Being aware of that and that little voice, I talked about the beliefs that we have. One of the ways in which we form them is through repetition. And you are your biggest repeater. So as you just described there, you're saying, how doesn't he get, how doesn't he get this? And then you're forming a belief about that person because you keep repeating this thing to yourself. And as you said, like there's nothing wrong with that person, but you've then created this perception or this persona or whatever it is, and it becomes a belief. And it shapes how you behave and how you feel around that person.

Doug Howard: One thing that helped me personally, I'm just curious what you think about this. Once I was in a leadership role and this went upward and downward, I was in a middle management role at first, and I felt like how could my new boss not get it? Different levels and layers of issues. But then when I saw my team, I started thinking, okay, you know what, instead of judging, let's make it a goal to understand.

Let's make it a goal to understand the other person. And that's, that was a big thing for me was just changing this. Okay. I'm measuring them up. That's my goal, to, okay, do I have enough information to measure them up? Do I really know? Am I asking enough questions to understand their perspective?

And it took me a while. I didn't realize I was doing what you described, but I was doing the little movements. First just ask one question before making an opinion and then ask two questions. Is this in line with what you're talking about?

The Power of Curiosity for Developers and Engineers

Richard Donovan: Yeah. It touches on another point. As in, a lot of software developers are really curious. They're curious about code and they're curious about technical things. And it's only a mind shift or a perception shift, or a change of a belief that allows you to redirect those skills that you've already got, that curiosity in another direction. And it's what you did there. It's okay, how do I understand? I'm really curious and I know how to find things out. I'm gonna use all those skills that I've got over here. I can do them right over here.

I did a similar thing around, people and listening and understanding and it was just the mind shift. How do I understand? How do I be more interested in other people? Which I guess looking back now, I spent a lot of time being interested in me. That's a literally a, a 180. I had to turn that around. I'm not here for me now. Of course I am, like, I, I'm super big on my own health, for example, and my own wellbeing and putting myself first. There's a reason I do that is because I can't help others if I don't put myself first. I'm really big on that, but I've really had to turn that. I've spent a lot of time thinking about myself now. I turn that the other way and be like, okay, how do I understand others? How do I help and impact others as well?

Doug Howard: What you're doing is so impactful and so great and we need to put a thousand megaphones behind your voice because I just think there's not enough people talking about this and it's having a real devastating impact in the industry. I want to ask, anyone's still watching right now, I'm assuming they're very interested in this stuff and they wanna learn, how can Richard help me? What are the ways that you work with people?

Connecting With Richard Donovan

Richard Donovan: So I do one to one coaching with software developers of all levels. So if you're in the software development industry, to be honest, I more than happily kind of work with those people.

And again, there's different contexts there. Yes, you can work with the technical, but you can also work with people who work with software developers and I can help them understand that relationship a little bit better as well.

And then as far as businesses are concerned, I do workshops and mindset training with software development teams. So just introducing them to the kind of mindset concepts that lead up, that come out through my coaching and that kind of thing. And the kind of end goal with that is, to impact a team and be able to support them in introducing these mindset concepts into their culture and even into the software development lifecycle.

The thing about mindset is it's, most people won't even think about it until there's a problem, whereas actually mindset could be a fantastic preemptive strike. You do it before there's a problem, and the problem potentially never arises. So it can help with various problems, but actually the power of mindset and almost the original reason why I got into it in the first place is that mindset is the difference between someone who's doing perfectly well and someone is doing fantastically well. So it's actually about performance. And you will improve your performance with mindset. And your starting level could be anywhere. Your starting level could be rock bottom and you're really struggling. You're gonna get outta that. You can continue and keep going, but equally you could be doing pretty well and it's gonna be mindset that's gonna take you to the next level from there as well.

So yeah, one-to-one coaching with individuals, workshops and training with software development teams. And, basically I offer a software development team support package where I can be available for those teams. If anyone in particular kind of decided either they wanted to have a coaching session or even they just wanted to have a chat about like their mental health, for example.

Doug Howard: So for those of you watching, if you feel like you're struggling in these areas or if your team is, definitely reach out to Richard. He's obviously a wealth of knowledge on this stuff. And I guess before we wrap up, Richard, how should people get in touch with you? What's the best way to reach out to you?

Richard Donovan: Best way is LinkedIn. I post pretty much daily on LinkedIn. I spend quite a lot of my time there,

Doug Howard: We'll make sure to include a link to your LinkedIn profile in the episode description, if you guys wanna reach out. And I'll also put a link to Richard's website too.

I just wanna thank you for having you on. I think this is really great. I would love to keep talking longer on this 'cause there's a lot of great point here that I'd love to dive deeper in and I might I'm gonna warn you, I might have you back on.

This is a lot of great stuff and I agree with you. They're not talking about this stuff enough in tech and in any industry, honestly. So I just wanna thank you for having you on, Rich.

Richard Donovan: As you said, any kind of platform to talk about this stuff, it's not talked about enough and thank you for having me on.

Doug Howard: For those of you watching, if you are struggling with burnout and you want some more tips on this check out my YouTube episode called Seven Ways to Recover From Burnout. I'll include a link in the episode description. Alright, thanks for watching.

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