this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore keys technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers have you been wronged by mystery hubs within your network does the fear of a fiber cut keep you awake at night have you ever said to yourself is it dns no this problem can't possibly be caused by dns sonofa it was dns or perhaps do you suffer from you touched at last syndrome if you answered yes to any or all of these questions then you've made it to the right podcast our resident networking professionals with fairly decent reputations are standing by to collaboratively complain right along with you because hey we're all in this thing together welcome to the art of network engineering holy shit yeah we're gonna have to edit that out i fucked that up but that was amazing that was like i don't know how to like take that from you that was an amazing weight that i cannot carry you just did yeah that we're in it man here you go here you go dude christ you yeah you aced that one man i don't have to i don't have to do that again do i no no no no andy and editing doesn't mean see i feel i feel like i gotta i gotta do the contrast right because we've got such the the professional uh canned intro from aj you know you got the the rockin music that got andy put into youtube jail for a little while and i just i got i got to break it up a little bit i love it no no that that was great and you know what that's a perfect segue into into where i would like to start this evening before we get to the winds uh so if we've learned anything over the past few weeks it's that trying to balance a successful podcast and the rest of our lives has shown challenging uh you know i'm here this evening i've been on the road for last two weeks andy's here he was on vacation for a little bit dan is joining us but i know he's been up to other things uh aaron unfortunately can't make it again uh he but he's he is very busy with some some life stuff right now and he will be joining us again soon hopefully um but to to help make sure that we can keep this train going um we have invited tim to be a permanent fifth podcast host with us uh and so he is now officially as he has accepted the role of podcast host uh so tim welcome to the team thank you so much for joining us i love the energy and ideas and the enthusiasm uh just you know by that beautiful intro we love what you bring to the team excited to have you here thank you so very much and one thing to add to that too is tim does a lot of behind the scenes work like on our on our blog site he does the faces of the art or actually the faces of the journey and uh so that the journey is our disc our discord server and so he he goes through and he will interview several people within that within that uh discord server and they make it to that blog so he does a lot of stuff on the back end that maybe you don't hear on the podcast as much not to mention the ccna series yeah that just launched recently yep now i really appreciate that guys i think i said in my episode my original episode with you that i've got you know real passion for for networking and technology and i really kept it kind of within myself uh until about a year ago when i really met you guys and saw what what magic you were doing here and i'm i'm thrilled to be a part of it thank you thank you all so much thank you glad to have you on board man absolutely well with that let's get into some wins some more wins let's hear him uh so this week we have the incredible goose started a new job at an msp congratulations incredible good goose gotta love the new job uh this next one is is pretty good because there's a couple of like funny jokes that followed after it so it's uh psychomet said that he's now 5g certified and like three people asked him what certification that was uh i was one of those people he implied that he got his his second shot uh and somebody asked or or somebody said like oh yeah i got my moderator and someone replied moderna that's like getting a juniper cert um which i thought was wow funny and you know somewhat inappropriate shame on you for making that comment that yeah that's horrible uh but anyway it was really funny uh next bill murray got his jncia missed ai that's a relatively new one for for juniper so congratulations bill on on knocking very cool big win for matt d this week passed his encore exam whoa congratulations i can't i'm not going to say it because i don't think cisco wants you to say your scores anymore really because they're taking them off this worksheet if you've seen the updated score reports they take the scores off you don't get a score now you don't get the score on the score report because a lot of people take pictures of their score report and post them online and you're not supposed to show your score or the score the minimum passing score that's part of the an nda oh okay now was it was it matt was it matt that said that he was actually supposed to take it next week but with the holiday coming up he decided to switch it yeah this week just to get it done yep that's right you may say you made the right choice matt yeah absolutely so so when when did he take it then i think it was like just today or yeah i think it was today or yesterday today i've seen a lot of score reports with scores on them over the years and not one of them have helped me pass the cisco exam so i i don't exactly understand the logic behind the nda but you know yay it's gone now good job i don't disagree i don't disagree i'll rock on man that's amazing another reminder i need to start studying for my encore again yes like you needed another reminder yeah excellent so uh in that vein that to remind andy that he needs to start studying again let's talk about time management hey aj i don't think i have time for this well hopefully you you came to that conclusion somehow by awaiting your priorities and deciding what you can and should put your your time to so does anybody on the panel feel that they're good at time management let's just get that out of the way no sir yeah i feel like i'm probably the absolute best at time management if i no i don't feel like i'm good at it but i feel like i'm getting better at it all right i i i would i would uh i would probably vote aj too strictly because of the back to the uh leadership and management roles that he has he's he's not only had to manage his own time but a bunch of other people's as well so i i vote aj that's fair as like the de facto expert in time management yeah you're you're a sme on this time all right all right well within the four of us i think you have to be aj so i hope you were ready i i'm happy to share my experience and wisdom as i always am let's hear it man i i think it time management the biggest thing for me is eliminating things that either you know waste my time or don't add value right and you know the ad value thing i think is like big like if you spend any time in like manufacturing then you understand like the whole uh uh manufacturing thing that toyota came up with i'm really bad at remembering what that but like was kanban and i know they come up with a bunch of rules like if if what you're doing right now doesn't add value either for the organization or for the customer then why are you doing it you know and so right that's that's the simple takeaway like if what i'm doing doesn't add value for me and my family or if if what i'm doing doesn't add value for somebody else then why am i doing it so you know i used to play a lot of games and that would be a huge time suck and so i stopped playing games but then i realized like you know i needed i need a mental break so maybe there's a balance in there where you know i do play games but i don't let it suck so much of my time away um spending too much time on on things that you feel are important and not enough time on on things that maybe actually are important so for example you might spend a lot of time studying for a certification but if you're not spending time with you know your friends and trying to grow those relationships like when you want those friends later on after you've passed your certification like what's really nice about passing stuff is having people around you that are excited for you when you pass those things uh and and so there's definitely balance in there so you know eliminating the waste prioritizing everything and giving everything like a really solid priority like because you're always going to have competing uh things that want some of your time and so when when you have a a competition like hey there's two things that need my attention right now you have to have like a clear line in the sand like okay it the decision has to be easy because you you probably can't sit there and think for like a half an hour like oh well i really need to do this and you know that that kind of thing so you know for for an example like friendships are very important to me but i've narrowed down my friends that i'm willing to give my time to right like to me it's not the quantity of friends it's the quality of the friendships and if i i had friends before that maybe i didn't have the most quality friendship with them and so i've stopped giving them some of my time and you know what no no hard feelings as it turns out so uh so now i have some really great close friends that you know i absolutely love and so when it comes down to certain things like if if a friend needs me then i can generally like put aside whatever i'm doing unless it's a family thing uh which then they'll they'll probably understand so having the the priorities the clear lines all that stuff helps it takes a long time to really set that stuff up and make those kinds of decisions but and you know to be honest i'm still getting there i'm still learning on some of those parts but that doing all those things over the past couple of years has really helped with my time management so let me ask you this aj when i hear time management my mind immediately goes to creating and sticking with schedules um and that that kind of scares me because i feel like if anything slips then it's all gone to hell and i just i feel down i feel discouraged does time management mean that you have to create and stick to these strict schedules um i stopped doing that too okay stuff pops up all day long um it for for me it's you know i have a priority i have some time let's work on that priority if i get to either completing it or to a stopping point now i have some more time what's the next priority that i can work on okay that's fair because that's that's one thing as i i feel like i get discouraged because i'll end up putting a little too much stress on sticking to something or making sure that i always do it because i feel like i get into being kind of like an all all-or-nothing person and if i'm if i'm gonna do it then i need to do it right i have to set a strict schedule and then like i said things slide you just get discouraged and you slide further back than you were before so so yeah i like the idea of of setting a smaller amount of priorities and really devoting the time that's needed to those and then just be able to go to the next thing but in order to do that you have to understand what those priorities are and how to set one two three four etcetera yep and those priorities that like the weight may change so good example i haven't written a blog article for my personal blog until like a couple weeks ago so i'd gone like four months plus without writing a blog article and so very slowly the priority of writing a blog article started to rise and rise and rise and it finally got to a point where it's just like i gotta write something you know okay kind of thing and so i i found myself with some free time i was like it's time that's it i'm going to make this a priority because i want to put something out you know new on my blog so that that kind of stuff happens right like um it's there's definitely a the the priority of the right now kind of thing like what needs my attention right now versus you know what maybe doesn't and then over time if if you continue to put other things off like if it's been a really long time since you contacted your friend you should probably make that a priority so that way you can keep those relationships going because that you know friendships balance all that stuff is it's part of mental health too so is is this all in your head or do you write things down on paper do you have digital apps that you use to to track this stuff how do you do it so uh there's there's a couple of different things um i don't track everything in an app there's a lot of stuff i have in my head um which sometimes is good and sometimes is bad some of it can become more emotionally driven than maybe fact-based if that makes sense yeah like it just may get to a point where i feel like i need to take care of something even though it might not be you know a fact i definitely use apps to track my tasks and i keep track of my tasks and prioritize things that i need to do like some of it's just a recurring thing that needs to happen every once in a while um versus you know a task or two that i need to do to complete a project or maybe a larger task um i have like an inbox that sits here on my desk uh it is my mouse pen because if i put it in my own way that forces me to look at it and take care of it okay that's a good little trick and so you know even even my wife has got into the habit like if there's something that she finds that i need to take care of she puts it here on my desk and then i can't really use my mouse until i you know look at it analyze it take care of it you know file it either in the trash or otherwise you are a better man than i because i absolutely love my wife but i absolutely hate it when she put stuff on my desk so you're you're a better man than i it's okay she told me earlier that she listened to my first episode but she quit after that so we can go well that's better than my lifestyle i don't think she's listening to a single episode yeah but but it's true putting putting stuff in your way to force you to look at it yeah i can definitely see how that works it just makes me angry but that's me you should have seen my desk when i got back from uh yeah i had a lot of stuff i did take care of before i could use my desk so so what kind of apps do you use for keeping track of your task uh my favorite is todoist todoist todoist so um you know you have an inbox what's nice is is that if i think of something that i have to take care of i can just open my inbox add the task and then later on i can triage the task and you know give it more more information like is it something that's actually due today is it something that's due tomorrow is it something that's due several weeks from now can i categorize it you know i have a list of projects most of them are work related because that's how i track all of my project tasks for work i keep track of tasks related to the podcast related to my personal blog family related things personal things uh and and so forth so i even have like super long-term goals of a list of books that i eventually want to get to reading there's no end date there's no due date i'll get to it when i get to it but it's just stuff that you know i'm trying to keep track of that i want to eventually do at some point so do you do you have every single day pretty much like somewhat of a schedule on every day no i can't do that no because if i've learned anything especially with this job i can't plan to that degree because somebody you know i'm not a religious person but some higher power laughs in my face and says haha f you when i try to plan my life to that degree i got you and so everything just comes crashing down so i i used to do that i used to try to do that and i just been smashed a bit so many times by outside forces that i don't set myself up for that level of failure so so when you say you have like a due date on something right is it like do you give yourself like hey i need to get that done this week and then you figure out a day that you're going to get that done right or is that kind of how your due dates work because like because for me i tried doing something similar to that and i was like all right i need to do this on wednesday right or you know whatever the day may be but it just seems like i could never get it done because i had that written down that i needed to get it done that day it's like it's like the world's against me on getting whatever when i when i put it when i put a time limit on it like that you know and so i was constantly hey this is past due this is past due because you know i'm not sure if i had todoist or or what i have but it would constantly like send you an alert saying that hey you're past due on this task or you know whatever the case may be and uh and so i eventually just turned it off because of that and so i i mean i will say like if if there's certain tasks like that where time's ticking and you're getting closer to your due date and you're not holding yourself accountable to it or other things have hit you in in you know made made themselves more of a priority either because they are because you know like your boss came in screaming like my internet's not working i can't see cat videos kind of thing and you gotta go like take care of that right it's a squirrel videos yeah go ahead same thing um i i block time out in my calendar and it becomes on our team we kind of refer to it as a cone of science right like you know i've got to drop myself into kind of silence so i can take care of this thing and you know you put yourself out of office you mark yourself unavailable on microsoft teams and that way typically speaking people know not to bother you and if they are bothering you then it's probably something worth bothering you about but it's just trying not always not always not always in there but it you know it's just trying to set yourself up for that kind of success right like yeah if i know that i need to get this done then i'll block time on my calendar and make it look like i've got meetings all morning to make sure i give myself the time to be able to do that otherwise if i don't block the time on my calendar somebody else will right that's a good way to think about that so i want to take a real world example here and it's one that uh directly applies to all three of you and it is this podcast in the community that you guys started almost a year ago so i'm not saying that you guys didn't do anything outside of work before this but how did you guys one decide it was going to be okay time wise to try to start this and two how did you work on fitting it into your schedules because again i'd like to hear from each of you but how much time a week do each of you think you put into this endeavor both between the community and the podcast and how do you make it work and how did you decide it was okay to dedicate this time or the amount of time it takes to put this all together one word one word comes to mind which would be sacrifice because okay i uh i had to sacrifice time with my wife i had to sacrifice time it would have been spent studying before you know this podcast kind of came from a study group that aj created an encore study group and then he said hey a couple you guys want to do a podcast and here we are and right around that time the night that we were spending two and a half hours studying for encore we did this instead so at that time sacrificing study for that um we sacrifice an hour and a half two hours tonight whoever's editing will sacrifice another hour or two um so for me like time management to me seems to be a lot about you know like i i did i tried to do some research the past couple days when we picked the topic and i'm like well how do people do it right and no matter how many articles you find in psychology today and ted talks and the most productive people like nobody has it there isn't one answer right you know so to me that means nobody has it figured out and maybe it's you know it'd be nice if we could have just found the book and like oh here it is and you know you're done but um but it kind of what i'm hearing is it's kind of different for different people right like some people i know they are dead set on a schedule and they do not you know break their schedule but then you got someone like aj who you know he was talking about he tried that and it just he couldn't make it happen were they not as busy as other people like if they're setting a schedule and this is why i'm saying it i've been sitting back listening to you guys and i've tried so many methods and so many apps and so many like techniques and so i i block my calendar and outlook at work you know for for me like when i was a younger guy time management wasn't a thing i just floated around did what i did life was easy you know you you get a career you know you get a family you get more responsibility and then time gets scarce right you know when you're when you're 19 sitting on the beach whatever you don't know you have to manage time you just got to get beard 11 when the stuff opens right so you're managing your time right but the bigger your life gets the more responsibility you get the trickier it gets and you know it seems to be so what i do at work because my biggest challenge the time that my family wants and needs for me and the time that my career wants and needs for me there's that quote of like you know the finest line anybody will ever walk us between like career and family so those two things both want my time and i have to try to balance that and it seems like an i.t if if if you're at a you know if you let it your career will consume you and destroy you and you know you can work 15 hours a day and be on call and still you know there's those people right it's a badge of honor hey man i've been working you know 15 hour days for you know three weeks i'm a hero so you know what i do at work is i block my time in outlook i know all the stuff i have to do and i and i block it but what happens for me and that's why you made me think of it dan there's people that schedule all their time and stick to it and it works for them i see something i have to do and i'm like all right i'm going to block two hours for that if it takes me longer or if the call pops up that i have to be on which now i can't do my engineering or whatever like when something else comes up so you know we're talking about prioritization right what's important what are your priorities what are you going to decide you're going to do what app are you going to use but if i block 9 to 11 tomorrow to work on something and then something pops up well that thing gets pushed i move it down in my account i would say 50 to 70 of everything i block in my calendar moves from day to day today now i don't know if i'm just too busy i mean i guess everybody's busy but how does that person you're referring to that has a strict schedule that they stick to yeah because if i have a two hour script i gotta write and that two hours something else pops up like you're saying aj something always comes like it just yeah you have to stay flexible in this industry i think because stuff's always coming up but i don't know how in sam hell i'm supposed to get all these changes written and infrastructure built because stuff comes up like i have a ton of calls a ton of calls and i don't know about you can you guys write scripts and and build infrastructure at the same time that you're on on the phone for hours probably not a good idea but okay yeah because again i talked to people well of course everybody does that that's what you do now like it just you know so so for me i can't be on a call and write engineering stuff because it is ones and zeros and if something's off it's going to break so right i've really i'm about to shut up sorry but i've really had a hard time with time management with work and in my perception it's just because there's too much work and not enough time and no respect for time blocks if you block time in your calendar i started blocking lunchtime because i don't want to work at lunch but in the culture i'm in nobody gives a shit and they'll book time you know the book meetings at lunch like so i you know i guess there's like culture in there too but um i don't know i have a hard time with with time management but i think like you guys have said you got to decide what's important you got to come up with a system and you got to have boundaries because if i block that time and people step on it well now it's up to me like so a lot of what i've done yeah right like i skip a lot of calls which hurts me but i got to get my work done at the end of the day i got to build infrastructure i got to upgrade stuff and if i'm on calls all day talking about fa-la-la stuff that's coming down the pike you know i can't get my job done so i don't know how those people stick to that schedule though dan it just you kind of triggered me of like if you can schedule your day and stick to that schedule and do that every day i'm either doing something wrong or maybe it's just where they work that you can do that you know what i mean i think a lot of people especially now do you know multitasking like i'm going to sit on this call and i'm going to do this other task and you're really doing yourself a disservice in my opinion i mean like any time that i've done that i don't feel like i'm paying enough to the to attention to the thing that i'm doing and i'm certainly not listening as closely as i could you know to the details of what's going on in the call and that's bit me in the ass on on a couple of occasions i've broken things same thing like people will ask me follow-up questions like oh hey you know what about this i'm like i don't know what you're talking about like well listening yeah you know right they see my avatar they know i'm on the team's call but and you know what's funny when i was a cable guy i think that was the first job i had where i had to manage time because you had like eight tickets a day you had eight hours a day and by the time you're driving back and forth to places you have about 40 minutes of place to go and that's not a hell of a lot of time so what i would and then if you have an install you could have a triple plan so it'll take you four hours so now you're down to 20 minutes of house right yeah so the way i overcame that was cut corners you can't fix everything you can't rewire everything let you know what do i got to do to fix this thing and get the hell out of here because the next person's going to get a 20 credit because i'm late then i'm going to get in trouble and blah blah blah so as a cable guy i could cut corners and not fix it every wonder why cable service sucks well right but in this job driven by the wrong metrics well thank you right so but in this job like how do you cut a corner right your you know you're building infrastructure you're upgrading infrastructure like you can't so you don't want to cut corners on this stuff right but but you know how do you so i i don't know it's just it's a very interesting conversation and i i was i thought it was interesting that i spent a day and a half researching and nobody has an answer and everybody does it different some people say a to-do list is great some people say to-do list is the worst thing you could do block your time don't block your like it's you know there's probably a good book out there aaron used to talk about atomic habits which i'd almost have to guess probably has some good you know tidbits in there on how to manage have anybody read that one i keep hearing that i i haven't read it i listened to a podcast by the author and um you know some of the tidbits that i took away from that you know that the app that i use and stuff like that is referenced in atomic habits okay okay how much of this do you guys think uh relates to managing and ignoring distractions and one of the biggest one of the biggest things i'm talking about is this freaking thing this phone i i can't put this thing down and it's i you know what i did earlier today is i uh i put it on vibrate and i flipped it over so it wouldn't even show me a flash if something popped up because i just wanted to get on something in focus and honestly i think managing distractions is a huge thing i've tried to to spend less time just mindless scrolling on on socials i i think that's a huge part of that and i think that maybe uh so maybe i'm gonna tell you about an app when you're done so go ahead okay i i think that maybe some of these people that do the the whole scheduling and don't let anything get in their way i think taking out distractions might be a factor i i don't know that for sure but i i think it almost has to yeah it comes down to that discipline right and cal newport's deep work he wrote a great book i read you know i read about half of it but that's what he talks about like it's all about managing distraction and he he talked about concentration as a muscle just like anything else and you have to work at it and concentrating on something for 20 minutes uninterrupted he said is extremely difficult the first time you try it but just like a muscle the more you can do it the longer and longer and longer you can concentrate i know the pomodoro technique is brought up a lot as a way to start you know building that muscle i i've i turned all the notifications off on my phone tim just because of what you're saying that wasn't enough so then i had to delete all the socials off my phone because i'd still look even though there's not notifications because like i think our brains want to avoid pain and if i'm doing something unpleasant i know i can get that dopamine hit if i just look and say you know look somebody said something funny on twitter or her what's that app you got aj that you were showing us there uh so so it's along the lines of the pomodoro technique um it's called tree or no forest i'm sorry foreign yeah so so you set yourself up for like a pomodoro for like 25 minutes and you you know you set it down and the longer you don't touch your phone the more your tree grows so if you pick your phone up and use it you have to swipe out of this app to use your phone then that kills the tree so the more cycles you complete the more trees that grow in your forest and the makers of the app will actually say hey if you plant enough trees they'll actually plant a real tree isn't it telling that that app has to exist right yeah i would have an app full of weeds there's also there's also a vpn app that you can download that does a similar thing where it shuts all internet down on your phone and won't you know when it's time i mean that's how addicted we are to distraction and all the makers of all those that you guys probably saw social dilemma like the smartest people on the planet are all working on distracting us because it's an attention economy and the more we look at that crap the more money they make with advertising so you know ai the smartest thing in the world is pointed at our brains to distract us like it's pretty it's pretty so i think i've said it before like i i used to get bothered and interrupted by every ring ping and ding that that thing produces and one day i sat down and i turned off all of my notifications by default same and then only turned on the ones that would i that i felt deserved to be able to break my time or my concentration so like i don't get notified of every single email i checked my email like once an hour and then i take care of it as i need are you talking about email or personal person both right like if if somebody needs to contact me they shouldn't be doing it by email like we have teams now if something's really important somebody should call her you just said a dirty word with teams because i was just going to bring that up so again what i need to do is shut teams down and turn off my email and turn off my damn work phone because otherwise so this is another time management thing i struggle with is i'm constantly checking email and i'm constantly watching teams because i know if i don't in an hour i'm gonna have a bunch of stuff to catch up on so it's almost as bad as being on a call the whole time being distracted because i'm i'm looking somewhere else i'm looking somewhere else but right i really struggle with it it's it's hard you know there's just too much and you know brilliant people have written about this there's ted talks about it i mean we're we're more distracting than we've ever been we're more we have more time than we ever did i was watching this ted talk and he said our great grandparents didn't have any time he's like they didn't have washing machines so everything was by hand they didn't have freezers so they had to make all food from scratch he's like those people had no time he's like we have more time than we've ever had in human history and we have the most problem with managing all this time that we have you know it's just kind of it's crazy you know it's it's totally crazy and i'd really really like to manage my time better and i just no matter what i try i finally went back to a pen and paper i i have every morning i i wrote a list of my top three things and today i spent all day on the first one i didn't get to the other two and i'll work on the other ones tomorrow but that that's that's my time management i do block time in outlook but it just seems to move and move and move and you know i don't really know if uh i don't know if it's a better way to do it so if you set uh blocks on your calendar and things um continue to move do you do you think that you have too many things set is it expectations that need to get managed or is it just the the constant distraction somebody always needs something and it takes x amount of time to focus on something you finally get focused and then you get pulled away what or is it a combination for me for me yeah for you for you andy i mean work wise if i'm understanding your question i can tell you the biggest difference in the past year and a half to two years i used to have an average of two hours of calls a day that i was expected to be on now it's six hours of calls a day and i'm not exaggerating what i can show you my calendar so you know you know we're talking culture again i'm not complaining and i'm grateful and all that good stuff but like i can't i don't know when i'm supposed to do my actual job of engineering because there are all these calls that i'm expected to be on so i don't think that's exactly what you ask but my biggest challenge with all this and i can't say calls or distractions but like well yeah i think they can be i think meetings can be a distraction absolutely like i can tell you yesterday i had two hours of meetings that i had to be on and they were both a complete waste of time one was a sales call that none of us had to be on you know as a vendor get to know you blah blah blah yay but like i got too much work to do i really got too much work to do and it's really that you know respect of time and all of our meetings start late and go over like it's just you know what i mean i i don't know i don't want to get myself in trouble here but i'm being honest about like time management challenges and i think there's a lot of things being done that are kind of damaging to it's almost impossible to manage i even talked to my boss about it tam like dude how do you do it because he's busier than i am and i'm pretty sure he works 14 hours a day because well yeah you know what i mean so i i i don't know man so yeah when uh when you said that you're averaging you know six hours of calls or meetings a day i was gonna congratulate you for getting promoted to management right right yeah so i think one thing for me to just to pivot a little bit um is how do you how do you set priorities right like because at where i work it seems like everything that comes in is a priority one yes say that again at the highest priority yes and and i struggle with that right like i i struggle with i look because i so one thing i do i kind of make my own little to-do list you know i use sometimes i'll use like notepad plus plus sometimes i'll use teams it just it varies i i drift on systems and stuff like that but but ultimately i make me a little checklist right and and as people call in or i get emails about stuff you know or projects that i'm working on i i make a list of things that i need to be working on and i'll put like a little ex beside them as i knock them on uh knock them out and but my but my biggest problem is how do i say that this is more important than this is that is that something that we as the employees should be doing or is that a should be a management management should be very clear on what needs to be the management in the business ultimately should be driving the priorities right like right and if the matter is you everything's a priority then by definition nothing is a priority yeah and i've been under that for years everything is a priority and yeah dan you can't how can you prioritize a manager time when everything is equally as important right yeah and it's insanity that's something i struggle with sure because i i i i always feel like if i'm doing something you know i probably should be working on this rather than this and that's like my day 24 7. i worked at a company that had this um it was this thing that they referred to as rocks so major projects were large rocks and smaller projects were small rocks and the the idea was is that we have to clear the path for company success so we have to get the large rocks out of the way and those are the priority small rocks we can probably just drive over but if we can get those out of the way too that'll make things a little bit smoother for us so if something were attached to a large rock project that was a priority and things that were attached to small rock projects if we weren't working on a large rock project we could then work on these small rock projects so that's that helped you know that definitely helped drive uh what was a priority versus what wasn't or what we could give time to over other things right because there's always going to be something asking for your time so it's just a matter of when faced with a dilemma which one of these is associated with a large rock er go that's the one i work on yeah and i think unfortunately um something that some people will do is they will attach whatever their issue is to a oh well that's actually one of the it's on the big rock you know like all right although it might not know how to play the game yeah yeah exactly so yeah that's definitely a culture thing because if if everything that that you're doing is a running and diving catch like then you're just gonna get worn out right like oh yeah not everything has to be the the game winning diving catch right there's there's definitely going to be some grounders and some midfield plays too so at some point do you think that most companies are trying to get the most productivity out of their people as possible right well sure i mean why not i mean most most knowledge workers are salaried employees so the more that they work the more work that you get done even if it comes at a cost of working you know more hours like doesn't affect their bottom line when it comes down to it they're paying the same fee whether you work 40 hours 50 hours 60 hours and i don't know what the breakdown is but i know like i don't generate revenue for my company i'm a call center you know what i mean right it's not like i'm in sales where i'm bringing in money all i t is right right so i i had this thought the other day as i was talking to my wife i'm like you know we don't generate revenue for the company so like it's not that big of a surprise to me that i don't know i i could see them being like let's beat the hell out of these people as much as we can because like it's just a cost center and they're draining us and they haven't made us a dime you know as opposed to like oh the sales guys hell hey we got to throw them some more bonuses because you know they're keeping the lights on like i don't know just i so so the whole cost center thing is is an interesting conversation and i'm sure that we could have a whole episode on this but i have worked in several environments that did chargebacks so like business units kind of yeah absolutely and so then suddenly we went from a cost center to we actually made a little bit of profit right like we we charged uh we rented laptops like every month somebody paid a monthly rental fee for a laptop if there was problems or issues help desk tickets got associated to cost centers or business units and then we could track like you know who's who's costing the help desk more time kind of thing like every bit of it's time was tracked and then made billable back to other departments to show that like hey this is why we're here um that's nice there's there's there's another uh just looking at my notes so like you mentioned distraction tim i i wanted to mention procrastination as well oh don't get me started right and if you if you need a sme on procrastination you're talking to him right here well yeah so so again i was having a conversation with with my manager because i knew we were doing this episode tonight and he's really good at managing his time and i asked him like man what's your secret i don't really think we got there but the one thing he told me because he was an architect you know engineer worked his way up and he said uh one thing that he learned that was really helpful for him is um identifying procrastination like being honest with yourself like what are you procrastinating and and i had like an honest moment i'm like you know and then i had a specific thing this this cloud thing i'm doing tonight i was giving it like five weeks ago and i was so overwhelmed by it because i just didn't understand it and it was you know a lot 800 pound elephant that i had to try to figure out i put it off because i procrastinated on it because it was intimidating and i'm like it was just overwhelming you know so it was a horrible management of my time deciding to do other things because this was a thing that had to get done and i procrastinated so not so much a distraction but kind of a willful you know semi-subconscious like you know what i'm not gonna do this today you know so so i'm glad you brought that up because it was something that i put in in my notes and something i wanted to talk about so like you you put a priority on everything and then you suddenly shift your priorities uh to your own i don't know liking you know obviously procrastination is what it is yeah you can set a priority and have an app and all that stuff but like but if you're going to abuse your your own priorities in that way to suddenly make something more of a priority just because you don't want to deal the other thing then you're just doing yourself a disservice which makes me think of another word and a particular person that we just had on because we're talking about right we're talking about all these systems and how and apps and papa and distraction and procrastination we had a kick-ass woman on here recently yeah yeah you get five seconds yeah she was to me my takeaway was it was all about discipline and i looked up discipline earlier right control gained by enforcing obedience taniya right so like i don't know man this might all come down at least for me to discipline what is it that overcomes distraction and procrastination and excuses and like why aren't i studying you know like all that crap it she was just like i just do it there are no excuses i don't want to you either do it or you don't she said something like you know when it's three in the morning and you're on that treadmill your your body doesn't know the difference between if your mind is tired or not you'll still burn the same amount of calories that's like damn like that's you know so just being a badass and being disciplined right um you know maybe if i was more disciplined i wouldn't have procrastinated this cloud job for a month and i wouldn't pick up my phone as much as i do to see what you guys are up to during the day because i'm sick of looking at a cli and you know i think this so maybe so maybe the question is is how do you how do you get more discipline maybe that's an episode right there like i have to be disciplined for for me more discipline came when i saw results right like when i decided to spend the time doing that thing that maybe i didn't want to do or was p procrastinating against when i got the results and it was worth my time that's when i decided you know there's the discipline right like i went through a weight loss a weight loss journey it was very hard to start i got started i dedicated the time i saw the results and i realized it was worth my time yeah okay so god can i have an honest vulnerable moment with you guys like the the hell of it right like is seeing the results yeah so i just had a vacation and it's the most relaxed i've been in years and you know you get used to anything and i guess being like short and irritable and tired like it just kind of became my norm unfortunately i just kind of got used to the grind of it and being removed from it for a week and going somewhere wonderful and i really had a profound experience of like whoa okay this is the dad and the husband and even for myself this is how i want to feel like i don't want to feel this pain in my body of being under the weight of the world constantly and yeah cove had made it harder and stuff but like long story short is that i decided when i was there i am not going to return to my life and continue living like what am i doing you know it was like a wake-up call so i decided every morning to get up at 5 15 in the morning which i've been doing all week and i meditate for 15 to 20 minutes and then i go work out for an hour now the results what you're talking about this week returning to work which is a stressful environment it's more stressful than sitting by the beach in the outer banks north carolina watching the pelicans fly by and the wild horses scatter by you know like so but i've returned to the same stressful environment i was before that really had me grumpy and i've had a really damn good week up till this point and i think it's the discipline of going to bed early getting up early doing the things i need to do for self-care and mental health to feel better and be a better dad husband colleague whatever now i'm seeing results now this isn't the first time i've done a reboot and felt better so you know i can do it for a little bit of time but there seems to be like i start to feel better and then i forget why i feel better and then i start staying up late and stop doing the stuff in the morning and then weeks go by and you guys call me out i'm like dude why are you so bitchy right now you know what i mean so you have a snickers you're not yourself yeah yeah so so what i'm hearing andy is you sound like my terrible vacation what i'm hearing you know but i i like i like what you said aj because when you do see the results yeah it it it's very motivating but it starts with discipline i do not like going to bed early i do not like waking up early and my body hurts for working out all week but like like my daughter she's three years old and she's always been mom has always been her favorite and you know it hurts my heart sometimes oh this little girl i wish she liked me more she fell in love with me on vacation and now she's by my side constantly like you talk about motivation and results and you know things to want to keep you going like she's my best friend for the first time in her three years of life so i'm like oh shit i gotta i can't blow this so like there's a lot on the line you know career family you know yeah it's a freaking juggling act it really is man it's you know and these kids have no idea they're coming in today and i'm on my technical erb and i'm presenting technical stuff they're like daddy my spongebob is at work and i'm like would you get out of here yeah so i don't know no and i think uh that's something else too about like time management um it so one thing i've been doing is i've been trying to get better at blocking off you know like you kind of said getting off of social media and stuff especially while my kid is awake and playing and all that because have you been caught looking at your phone and your kids trying to get your attention it's awful it did awful you know i there's been multiple times where like i've gotten so distracted and looking at my phone or something you know whatever's going on and i i look up and my kid's sitting there he's like right in front of me and he's been saying my name i know you know and it's just like what am i doing it's heartbreaking what am i doing why it's just it shows the power of this it does seriously becomes more important than our own offspring it's insane i mean not really but you know what i'm saying like yeah our lives are what we give attention to right lives are the results of our choices and what gets our attention and like yeah like sorry kid you know i gotta i gotta see what the hell aj said today and come up with a witty retort like yeah it was happening today like even on vacation the phones went away it was off it was nothing i deleted all this so i didn't call anybody like i was gone and it was great but today we're outside and something's going on today with us with the side chat and i'm like oh my son's like come on dad you know you said you were going to play baseball and man also makes me want to throw the damn phone i'm going to go old school and just get a flip phone and delete everything yeah i mean it's it's crazy yeah i i don't know so just for me personally i'm sorry i it's okay i had to be i had to be like real honest there for a minute you know like but for me though i tried to block off as much as i can and and that's kind of why like you know you're talking about our group texts and stuff like that it you know i might go several hours where i don't respond or something it's because i'm trying to mentally block out like you know stuff like that because you know we put our we put our kid to bed around 7 7 30 somewhere around there and uh so after that i'm like okay that's where i can have me time or you know me and my wife time that kind of thing but i try my best to but when i get off work to the time that we put the kid to bed i try my best to try to sit there and focus on on uh just you know whatever he's getting into and that kind of thing um doesn't always work yeah but you know it and i think that goes back to discipline too seeing results you know when when you're having fun with your kid and everything like i i he's he's a mama's boy uh he he's definitely all about her and here lately it's like i don't know what it is but here lately you know he's starting to be more about me and stuff like that and so it's like ah feels so good you know so i'm like all right i'm blocking this out you know they they come they get the results they come they come around and i even did a similar thing dan i think i said it to the group i know at least said it to aj i was like listen man i'm i'm deleting discord and stuff off my phone like if you need me here's my number text me because it's just i struggle too much with getting pulled into to all that stuff like i need to unplug and be with my kids and because otherwise yeah i'm just looking at my damn phone and my kids are there i'm like what am i doing no you know i mean it's a i like what we're doing but none of it's that important i should be ignoring my kids to see like you know what the latest thing somebody said was so right yeah and i think you need to know that there's nothing wrong with that right because what you're doing is you're you're doing that prioritization and you're sticking to it which i think is is really important but it's the same thing with the emails tim because when i sign back on there's like 73 messages i missed and i'm like oh yeah i gotta catch up and see what everybody's talking about in the aone like discord thing i mean it's my own nonsense but then i gotta get caught it's the same reason i'm staring at work emails all day like i'll unplug but then when i hop on i'm like oh i gotta catch up like i almost needed i think i need to break out of like i'll go back like five minutes and read and then try to get the gist and if i have questions i'll ask like i i used to just log into the discord and try to read every single message and now that we have like almost 1500 members like it's impossible you know yeah and that used to bug me so bad too and that and then i just kind of had to give up on it right i just can't keep up with everything that's cool and you want to be engaged and keep up and contribute and stuff but it's like where does it end you know like right yeah it and kind of hit on what you were talking about the emails like i almost dread going on vacation because the amount of emails i have to come back to it's like i got to spend my first day back pretty much just sorting through all my you know what i did so that's another thing for time management and i don't know if it's what you guys do but i have a folder for important things and then i create rules and outlook to put it in folders so managers is the most important for me because gotta keep them happy right so so when i got back from a vacation i read through the managers and then i right clicked mark all as read the rest of the shit and i said you know what if it's that important they'll get back to me they got me out of office and whereas i refuse to go through six seven hundred emails like yeah yeah i'm right there with you man it is so i i am kind of a a little bit of an email nazi like i've got a million folders yeah and if if there's something in my inbox that means i haven't answered it yet right so i move everything out of my inbox into you know whatever my folder structure is but and so when i come in and there's like 400 emails in my inbox it's just like oh because i got i've got to go through it you know i've got it but don't you feel like that helps you manage your time like you can prioritize all those emails so it's not just one big inbox but like like do you do folders and stuff and like rules you think that helps you i think it happens i think it i think it helps with keeping track of what's going on and prioritization right like some emails yeah hey i've got to answer this email you know yeah for sure um and if you're on vacation and somebody emailed you how important was it you know what i mean they saw you're out of office like they know you're back they can hit you again i don't know it's might be the wrong way to look at it but like yo i was calling man email me again if you need me yeah i mean you should have called if it was important right but see that's another thing too so like i i work with a guy who um so at at our work we they give us the option of giving us a phone and you using that as your personal phone and work phone or you can get a separate phone and that's what i do i so i've i've got two phones right one's my work phone and one's my personal phone i thought that was a little tv in your left hand there yeah that's yeah what the heck that's not a phablet it's a fabulous samsung iphone yeah he's holding up his 50 inch vizio in his hand hey what's going on guys that's not a knife that's not yet but uh so i split mine out right and and i work with a guy who he didn't split his out and he got so much anxiety from every little notification that goes off and everything like that he he just recently decided i'm splitting them because it you gotta have in action yeah and and that comes back to like you know being on call 24 7 type thing um you don't get paid enough to work 24 7. i know none of us do yeah but but the company will gladly yeah they'll stick to work to keep you that that busy so yeah that's another thing to you like every once in a while you know especially if i'm on vacation i'll take my work phone with me just in case there's something that just absolutely horrible has happened uh luckily that hasn't happened yet but i don't carry it with me everywhere i go if i'm on vacation like i might leave it at if like let's say if i go to the beach or something like that i'll leave it at the hotel or the you know where we're at if we're at an airbnb or whatever the case may be i'll leave it there you know but i don't take it with me everywhere i i wanted to ask tim because i know that you were like i mean you got four kids some of them are little and i know the vertical that you work in and they're you know it's probably it's probably intense and stuff so like i mean how do you do you manage your time you know decently and you know what are you doing i mean what are you doing right or wrong do you have any kind of like takeaways or tips of like hey here's what i do that works or like don't do this because you know it's not good i'll say in the last year i've gotten better uh i mean we we've talked about the going to bed early getting up early kind of thing and and that's still working for the most part um one thing that i have done recently that i really like is i i've tried to turn a negative into a positive and one of the things that i see as one of my many character flaws is that i i have anxiety i have a hard time being idle i i can't be still i have to be doing something um most of the time unless i'm in in the evenings i'll sit down on the couch and my wife and i will watch a show but even then if i do that i have to put my phone out of arm's reach because i i have an issue i mean i i've gotten so tied to that thing um and even just sitting here right now talking to you guys for the last hour i have noticed myself pick it up and i'll force myself to not even take it off the table it's i don't know it's a thing but what i've tried to do is i see that as a negative so i try to turn it into a positive and that okay if i have a couple minutes where i am idle and the kids are off doing their thing so i don't feel like if i look at my phone i'm not paying attention to them that kind of thing i will do some advice that i learned here is i started doing the yankee flash cards so i tell myself okay you can pick up your phone but you're not going to scroll through facebook you're not going to scroll through through twitter if you want to pick up your phone you hit that inky button and you go through three to five cards and that's more discipline right like getting up in the morning is discipline going to better yes discipline using anki instead of the other stuff i mean i mean it all seems to be you know it's about the choices we're making i guess right yeah but but don't get me wrong i i still feel like i struggle just like the rest of you guys it i don't know that you'll find many people uh that say it's easy uh i do well and i i was gonna say tanea but even tenea said it's not easy you make a choice right um and the choice doesn't always have to and isn't always easy but but you make that choice so yeah i don't know that you'll really find anybody who says that it's easy and each choice has a cost right there's sacrifice oh exactly for all of it so sacrifice is huge involved right like you know when i i think about that i've been thinking about that a lot lately because i'm like okay i spend probably close to two hours most mornings um studying going through flash cards doing uh the white papers the ocg all that stuff i could just as easily hang out with my wife a couple more hours at night sleep in in the mornings and i wouldn't have any of that so it's it's making a choice because i know i i've got the long game right i know what i want to do with my life i know where i want to take it and i know that there that comes with sacrifice so it's managing that sacrifice managing the distractions and and just taking it day by day i think is a big thing finding that balance of yes you have a long term plan but you kind of have that high level plan that can have peaks and valleys and then you just take everything else day by day not every day is going to be super awesome fun time and just get that out of the way right away and just take it day by day you're going to have good days you're going to have bad days but it's it's a it's a marathon not a sprint right and having that support system is huge because that was one of the things that i talked about vacation with my wife i'm like listen i think we we would hang out two nights a week just like yeah let's sit down on some ice cream watch tv or whatever and because of this thing i'm trying to do to like feel better and be a better you know version of myself i was like listen i think i need to just buckle down and get to bed early all week like you know we'll hang out on the weekends and unfortunately she's been on board and she's been on board for you know we were first dating i'm like oh sorry i gotta go to like school four hours friday and four hours saturday for the ccna thing and like study all the time and like she was on board but would have been really hard it might have not worked out if she was like hell no i need all your time this isn't working for me like you gotta have a support system at least at this stage in our lives right like and if you do have that good support system which i i think the four of us do um do not neglect it yeah um don't take it for granted even if that support system does understand what you're trying to do the the discipline that you're trying to have do set that time aside that's necessary to give back to that support system that's doing so much for you yeah yeah well put them i mean it in order for you to have a support system you also have to support it too right like yeah not a one-way street right absolutely not uh andy you've brought it up a couple times tonight so that the dopamine hit you get from playing with your phone i've heard a good tactic is to spend a day uh being absolutely bored right like so put away the phone don't do anything fun or exciting and just kind of reset for you what gives you that dopamine hit so like you know clean the house and and do other things instead of playing with your phone all day like and then once you have some accomplishments you'll see like oh hey like this feels good like i just checked twitter kind of yeah i'm never bored i don't understand boredom like tim kind of said he's got that busy mind and he's always doing like i have a half a dozen hobbies that i have hardly any time to i i guess not boredom but what gives you the dopamine hit right kind of thing yeah right gives you that like readjusting is what you're saying right yeah yeah yeah realignment of that being outside like when i walk in the morning the sun's coming up there's deer walking around dan mentioned camping as we were talking you know before the podcast like that livestream where the hell do you live dude i got more deer poop on my lawn than you can imagine it's ridiculous there's deer everywhere here but but but yeah i'd much rather be you know sounds like you got a hunting problem much rather be outside breathing some fresh air you know with some sun on my face getting my dopamine that way then right you know nonsense make pretend you know we're basically in the matrix trying to choose between the red and the blue pill most of the time you know so yeah no that's a good i really i want to get rid of my smartphone i really do i i i don't want it anymore and i want to delete all my social media accounts i don't think i can because we're on this podcast and we got to promote like but i want to get rid of it all like what the hell am i doing on there i was on facebook for years and got on to promote the podcast guess what i haven't pronounced the podcast at all connected with a bunch of people i haven't talked to in 20 years from high school i'm like what the hell am i doing back on this thing you know what i mean so i don't know i i want out you guys are gonna have to promote without me i'm going back to the stone ages with my flip phone yeah to try to close it up i i think that what we've heard here is that there's there's no smoking gun there's no like real way to to do time management what's gonna work for you is what's gonna work from you you know i shared some stuff that works for me um you know prioritization taking out the stuff that doesn't give you a benefit like i think those are all steps that will contribute to your success and f from what i'm hearing from other people too i think it's along the same lines right like find your priorities really put a priority on it and and give your time to you know either things that give back or or help you in some way shape or form uh or you know definitely spending time on things like support systems friends family you know loved ones stuff like that you know even though it might not be studying for the next cert it's it's stuff that definitely deserves your time and none of it works without discipline yeah ain't that the truth i need a little bit more of that that's a bummer we're gonna do a disciplined episode soon just yell at each other i'm out just get tonight to come on here and yell at us for an hour yeah gotta crack the seltzer rather than a beer that's hard to do sometimes speak for yourself ajs yeah well before we go i want to remind people that we have a merch shop and that all of the profits from our merch shop support the podcast and cover our cost and after we cover our costs we like to do some fun giveaways we're looking to do some improvements to the podcast and bring more content to you so if you like what you're listening to here make sure you head on over to artofnetenge.com forward slash store and if you have any suggestions on what you're looking for if there's something that you wish we had that we don't you know we have open communication channels like hey i want a beer blog or something like let us know and we'll see what you know the vendors out there a1 paint glass i don't know i'm all about it probably stuff we haven't thought of we could try to get uh in the store for you yeah absolutely absolutely and i think we're gonna try to do you know once we have some good uh funds uh we might do some like special giveaways right like we'll buy a hundred uh maybe we'll buy a hundred pint glasses and give those away or make them for a limited sale kind of thing uh you know the again all the proceeds that come back to us we're not gonna live high on the hog that's for sure all we want to do is cover our costs uh for doing this and then give back the rest of the community which you know i hope folks have already seen that we've done on a couple of occasions by giving away you know the books the raspberry pi's and the other giveaways that we've done so we want to do more of that and and i'm sure you all that listen want more of that so the the easiest way is buy a shirt you know go on go online check out the store see something you like buy it and when you do that if you're in the discord throw in your discord handle and a happy message and that will pop up in the uh a1 fans uh stream so you can see a special shout out every every purchase on teespring in our our website uh store so yep thanks in advance for all your support all 80 000 downloads fellas i i keep refreshing it every uh every couple of minutes here for the month wasn't there like yeah yeah so for the month of may uh i mean we still have several days left so anything can happen but we we broke 13 000 downloads that's all for a single month andy get the damn goat so what was our previous highest number uh like ten thousand five hundred something like that that's that's not only did we break it we shattered it wow yeah that's uh that is so cool and i say we like it's something that we did no it's something that our listeners did uh yeah and obviously we have a bunch more listeners so welcome i'm seeing hips on all 45 of our episodes so there are definitely newcomers here you're binge listening you're checking this out or maybe you're going back through the catalog i'm not sure uh either way every time you download an episode it counts it's ringing the bell for us we're seeing it it gets us excited it keeps us motivated to keep this keep us doing this so um i i checked earlier this evening and we are less than 400 downloads away from 80 000 so if we don't hit that tonight i'm sure we will hit that uh tomorrow which will be a great way to end the work week by hitting 80 000 downloads it's really cool what episode are we on we know what episode number this is episode 45 yeah wow yep so 50 would be another cool milestone too maybe we'll look for something fun to do for episode 50. absolutely yeah absolutely stay tuned fun things are coming i love it i love it any uh any parting words fellas dan what's uh what's on the tip of your tongue i can tell you're you're holding on to something there i i don't even know i i don't know that was awesome it just looked like it had something profound hidden that beard uh maybe it's just a bird yeah it hold on let me see yeah uh also if anybody is planning on you know buying it you know a boson is it the xm in the nexum um if you are planning on buying that we have a link uh that that you you can go through and it doesn't unfortunately doesn't give you a discount but we do get a little bit of a kickback off of that so that goes back to what aj was talking about if you want to support us and you're planning on doing this already please use our link it's a referral code we'll drop a link in the show notes so if you're planning on buying any boson product not just uh xm or nexsim or whatever oh okay you know any any if you use the link it has our referral code attached to it so any sale through that link will ultimately 10 of that sale will come back to us uh in in the form of just a referral kickback or whatever so um for a limited time boson was doing a discount code perhaps we can talk to them and see if they're interested in doing that again but for now it's just a referral they are happy to float us money and um you know i think we've all had great experiences with their products and can speak to it's a worthy purchase if you're on the fence so if you're gonna buy it why not buy it through our link and uh and what our listeners may not will definitely don't know is that there's a lot of things happening in the background that we don't announce for example we have been approached by a handful of people who are like hey i got a bunch of gear that like you have to give away that you guys can have right the challenge of that is it costs you know i don't know around 100 bucks give or take to ship all that stuff somewhere so you know we did a few but it starts to add up and we don't really you know we're not making money off this right like you said we're not getting rich but like all those purchases that can build up like enable us to do things like that there's things we're working on in the background that we don't announce that you know so the more purchase you know if you go to teespring if you get that boson thing it's i'm not trying to buy a tesla or get a bigger pool we we really wanna i'm definitely trying to get a lambo though and that is on my list we want to reinvest this in the community and you know we could send out some home labs we could send out some books some test vouchers i don't know maybe someday try to send somebody to cisco live we just got to kind of see it so yeah please um please help support us and and help us help you i just want to thank you guys for this conversation because this is a challenge that's you know near and dear to my heart that i struggle with daily and it's part of why i love this show so much as i get to come on here and learn stuff and how different people are doing different things and i'm sitting here in my home office thinking i'm doing everything wrong and at the very least it's comforting knowing that other people have the same struggles and you know i will have tanaya in my head tomorrow when i start to you know struggle and i'm like oh just gotta be disciplined suck it up dude five seconds you got five seconds over go do what's gotta be done so i i just really appreciate the show you guys and and what i get to learn here so that's my parting thoughts likewise tim parting thoughts take it day by day um don't sweat the small stuff don't fear the reaper and it's all small stuff yeah yeah no just uh like like i always say take care of each other out there try to smile try to make somebody laugh have fun oh yeah one and one more thing uh welcomed him to the podcast yeah welcome tim thanks guys to the team yeah all right well speaking on behalf of the crew thank you so much for listening and have a great night hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering dot com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you