#145 - Becoming a Happy Engineer Through Lifestyle Engineering - Zachary White

[00:01:15] Episode Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Welcome back to the Tech Lead Journal podcast, the podcast where you can learn about technical leadership and excellence from my conversations with great thought leaders in the tech industry. If you haven’t, please subscribe on your podcast app and social media on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, and also on YouTube and TikTok for video contents. And support my work by either buying me a coffee at techleadjournal.dev/tip or becoming a patron at techleadjournal.dev/patron.

My guest for today’s episode is Zachary White. Zach is a career coach for engineering leadership and the host of the Happy Engineer Podcast. In this episode, Zach shared how engineers can become happier in their work and life through the lifestyle engineering approach. He discussed what lifestyle engineering entails, such as debunking the myth of work-life balance, getting out of comfort zone, mastering your mindset, building our own blueprint, and doing less. Zach also opened up and shared his personal story of getting burnout and gave great insights on how we can manage burnout before it happens. Towards the end, Zach explained the importance of coaching for engineering leaders in order to help reach their full potential.

I hope you enjoy listening to this episode and find some useful tips to become happier and avoid burnout. And if you do, please help share this episode with your colleagues, your friends, and communities, and leave a five star rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It will help me a lot in getting more people discover and listen to this podcast. And I really appreciate it. So let’s go to my conversation with Zach after quick words from our sponsor.

[00:03:20] Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hello, Zach. Welcome to the Tech Lead Journal podcast show. It’s really great to have you here. I’m looking forward to discuss a lot about making engineers happy in their jobs and in their lives. So welcome to the show.

Zachary White: Hey, it’s such a pleasure to be here, Henry. Thanks for having me. And if we’re not happy doing our engineering, then what are we doing it for? So I’m excited for the chat. Let’s dig in.

[00:03:40] Career Journey

Henry Suryawirawan: Great question, indeed. So one thing that I saw in your profile in your website, you brand yourself as the world’s best lifestyle engineer. But before we go there, I’m sure you have some story in the past. I’d like to know and understand a lot more about your career journey. Maybe if you can highlight turning points or maybe some major highlights in your career as well.

Zachary White: Absolutely. I started my career in mechanical engineering. I graduated from Purdue back in 2008. Boiler up, had an amazing experience at Purdue and joined Whirlpool Corporation in what was, and still is, their top talent leadership development program. It is called WERL, the Whirlpool Engineering Rotational Leadership Development Program. And really honored by that opportunity. Had the chance to do six month job rotations for the first two years of my career. Lots of exposure around the organization. Great networking, great assignments. Learned a ton in that time.

And then Whirlpool paid for me to get my Master’s in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. Continued developing and understanding global manufacturing and some of the business acumen behind engineering departments and what we need to know from an economics perspective. And then just kept hustling, got into my career and did a variety of interesting roles from test engineering in the lab, design engineering roles, designing components for ovens, for cooking products and laundry products, and lots of different things that I did.

Of course, one of my favorite jobs was being a tech lead, what’s now called a system integrator at Whirlpool, they’ve changed the job title. But in many ways that was the job that I felt I performed the best. I mean, I really excelled in the role of tech lead and then moved into management. And had some different roles in the management levels. And then my last job before I left Whirlpool was actually in brand and product marketing, which was a bit of a growth experience to move out into that space for KitchenAid products.

But Henry, to answer the question of turning points or things that really stand out, we could talk projects and roles all day, but the actual thing that shaped my career experience was about six years after college. I experienced a deep burnout. I came home from a work trip expecting to walk in the door to my wife and walked into an empty house and there was a note on the kitchen table, said, “Hey, this isn’t working. I don’t think we can stay married. I want to get a divorce.” And for me, that just put me into an absolute downward spiral in some of the darkest times of my life. And ended up not only divorced, but depressed and embarrassed. Just wondering, Henry, how did my life end up here? You know, I thought everything was going so well.

And nobody at work knew what I was going through. I kept it a complete secret for a long, long time and just did everything I could to stay above water. And it was recovering from that time of grief and the darkness of that place that I fell to, where I made the discoveries about how to approach my life and my lifestyle, my career in a whole different way. And after that time is when I experienced my biggest success, my biggest rewards, the biggest growth in my income. Now happily married and life’s completely different on this side of that failure than on the other side. And that’s what became what you alluded to earlier, we now call lifestyle engineering.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you so much for sharing your personal story. I’m sure that was a tough time when you went through that. And maybe some engineers here are also going through the same kind of situations. So hopefully, they can learn something from this episode later on.

[00:07:22] Lifestyle Engineering

Henry Suryawirawan: So you mentioned lifestyle engineering. I’m sure this is not just another major of engineering kind of course, so tell us a little bit more about what is lifestyle engineering?

Zachary White: Right. So I got my M.E. Degree from Purdue and the University of Michigan, but my lifestyle engineering degree came from the school of hard knocks at the street school, right. And maybe, first, it helps to say what is lifestyle engineering not. And a lot of people, when they hear lifestyle, they start to think about the 4-hour work week or the sort of digital nomad life and being a world traveler and backpacking across Europe or whatever, right? These cliche things that come in. And while it certainly could be that, that’s not what my clients or I focus on when we talk about lifestyle engineering.

So think about it this way. At its most core level, we wanna get out of living our life by default, and start living our life by design. And so much of what happens to the average engineering leader at all levels and from all over the world, people I’ve met and talked to and coached, we just fall into these patterns. And our subconscious mind takes over and we have these habits and we have the conditioning that creates the reality that we experience every day. And we start to believe things that aren’t true about what’s possible for our lives. And you know, it’s not that it’s even bad. I suffered a deep burnout, but the real danger is that life can be pretty good, but it’s not the life that you want. It’s not the life that you would choose.

And so lifestyle engineering is about taking the idea that we have within us a power to create a different reality, to design something different and to execute on it, which is engineering at its core, right? Taking an idea, something in our head. Putting it on paper, designing that solution, coming up with the best possible strategy, and then executing, producing it, right, distributing it to the world. Well, let’s do that in our own lives. And it’s amazing what’s possible when you get in the driver’s seat, you become that engineer of your lifestyle. And that’s what we wanna do, is actually start asking new questions, taking new actions, and reaching that next level in our career and in our life.

Henry Suryawirawan: I really love your description, right? We always live by default. I mean, most of the people, not just engineers, I would say. But we should live by design, right? And the engineering part here is basically designing the kind of life, the kind of lifestyle that you want and maybe the kind of job that you wanna do as well. And I think one lessons that we learned from the pandemic as well, many people went through the same situation, right? They start questioning, what is life is all about? Do I love my job? You know, going through this pandemic. So I think thanks for bringing that up. I really like the description, by the way.

[00:10:09] The Happy Engineer Podcast

Henry Suryawirawan: And which also leads you to create your own podcast called The Happy Engineer Podcast. So tell us a little bit more, what is Happy Engineer Podcast, what it’s all about, what can people learn from the guests that you bring, or maybe some of your solo episodes.

Zachary White: What we joked about being a happy engineer at the beginning of this conversation, Henry, and by no means am I someone who would say life is only about happiness, and if you’re not happy 24/7, something’s wrong. The whole spectrum of emotions is important. But what I have found is there are far too many, in fact, if my numbers that I’ve seen are accurate, it looks like the majority of engineers who I’ve connected to and who I talked to, they don’t find happiness and passion and joy and enthusiasm for their work anymore. We’ve gotten disconnected from the very thing that drew us into the career in the first place.

And it’s easy to see why. You know, you get your first job and after a little while it’s like, oh, there’s all this bureaucracy and the red tape and all this paperwork and the emails and the meetings and the stuff that’s not the fun part that we really love. And we don’t get taught how to navigate our careers, how to say no in the right way, how to set boundaries, how to create a career that we love. And next thing you know, you’re just doing something that you ended up in instead of doing that thing that you’re deeply passionate about.

And so the Happy Engineer Podcast is a place where we have conversations around this challenge of lifestyle engineering. How do we create success at work? Get the promotions, get on the best projects, land a job at that dream company you’ve always wanted to. Make those things happen without making the sacrifices or the trade-offs that often lead to the burnout or the dissatisfaction in our lives.

So for me, that was divorce. For other people, it might be a health issue. Or something with your family in a different way. Or maybe it’s just a disconnection from your love of engineering so far that you just wanna get out of the industry entirely, which is to me one of the saddest things that you have the skill, you have the know-how. If somebody would pay you the same salary to deliver pizza, you would do that in a heartbeat, right?

It’s like, oh well. That’s a tragedy. And it says something about the industry and what’s happening. So that’s what we talk about on the Happy Engineer Podcast. And wherever you’re listening to Tech Lead Journal, just jump over and subscribe and tune in, cause I think you know, this conversation coupled with that one, is a really powerful way to help accelerate your goals.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. We’ll make sure to put that in the show notes definitely. But one thing I also go through from my experience as well, sometimes it’s not just the intrinsic unhappiness that we have. Sometimes it’s also the environment, maybe the place where you work at. The cultural thing, the leadership, the targets and goals. And engineers are well known to sometimes, you know, work overtime, right? So they are always cranking code, fixing bugs, any kind of incidents. So all this definitely adds a lot more burden into the kind of like happiness every engineer is experiencing, right? So I think make sure people, you can follow Zach’s podcast as well to learn more some tips and tricks on how to become happier as an engineer.

[00:13:20] Forget Work-Life Balance

Henry Suryawirawan: So let’s dive deeper into the lifestyle engineering itself. When I looked at some materials that you share with me, there are a few key points in the lifestyle engineering. Maybe let’s go through one by one if you don’t mind. So the first one is you said that we should forget work-life balance. This is maybe something strange for some people, because some actually pursue work-life balance. But you say that we should forget about work-life balance. Tell us more about it.

Zachary White: When you say work-life balance, what’s the picture that pops into your mind? It’s that picture of the scale. On one side of the scale is work, and on the other side is life. And for me, that model is flawed. That mental model of the scale that pops in when we think about work life balance, like what is the goal, Henry? Is it to have them be the same? Is it like life is supposed to be heavier than work? Is it the opposite or we’re just always trying?

Well, but wait a minute. Isn’t work part of your life? So, okay. Well maybe it’s work and home. All right, cool. So work and home. Let’s change it. Well still are we trying to keep them balanced? Like if I work eight hours, I should be at home eight hours? Well, it’s not about time. So what is it about? And the whole game of trying to create this mystical thing called balance among these two entities. It doesn’t serve us. And here’s what tends to happen. Oh, I worked too hard last week. I put in 80 hours. So this week I’m gonna take a vacation.

Okay, cool. Well, guess what? When you’re done with your vacation, you have to go back to work. So what are you gonna do next week? Are you gonna work 80 hours again and just volley back and forth? Well, you can’t do that. So, okay, nevermind. Let’s do the perfect 40 hour week. Well, guess what, Henry? You and I both know in engineering, you don’t get to choose a perfect 40 hour week every single week. Some weeks are tougher than others. So for me, the model is broken.

Now, the heart behind it is good. I don’t mean to insult anybody who says we need better work-life balance. I understand what people mean. But we need to be careful using that phrase, because what it’ll lead to is a strategy that is flawed. Work’s not going well. So what, I need to live more? Well then you end up with this situation where people try to party on the weekends a little harder to make up for not liking their job. And that will never lead you to a deep fulfillment and happiness in your life. It just won’t. What it does lead to is a sense of dread on Sunday afternoon that you have to go back to work tomorrow, and anybody who could relate to that, this is the kind of thing it leads to.

So instead, we need to focus on a sense of harmony and balance across your whole life. You need to recognize that balance is an active term, not a destination that you land on and stay there. You’re always in fluid motion of creating balance across your entire being. And one week, you’re gonna be out of balance, because you worked a lot. One week, you’re gonna be out of balance, because you’re on vacation you didn’t work at all. One week, you’ll be out of balance, because you’re sick and you need to focus on your health. One week, you’re gonna be out of balance, because .

And it’s a sense of permission that there is no single perfect way to be, every single week for the rest of your life. But you need to know for yourself what creates the overall health and balance in my life that I need to always have energy, to always be in a place where I can honor my values and move toward my vision. So that’s why I say forget work-life balance. Because it’s born from a broken model, and we need a new approach, a more advanced strategy, if you will.

Henry Suryawirawan: I know some people try to find the perfect formula for work-life balance as well. They read blogs, read books. The four hours workweek, I think that’s pretty popular as well. So I think all these models definitely get people into thinking that there is a sense of work-life balance. I personally also learn one model from my friend. There’s probably less balance in the every day to day life, but there are seasonal balance, right? So maybe you work hard this few months and then later on you probably slow down a little bit.

So there are different models. What I’m trying to say is some people actually might have different strategy. And I think, instead of worklife balance, you said in your sharing is that it is a whole life balance, right? It’s a whole life. How do you design the kind of balance that you want? So thank you for sharing this broken model and hopefully people get to learn something new.

[00:17:42] Getting Out of Comfort Zone

Henry Suryawirawan: The next one that you said is actually to get out of comfort zone. I think this is quite typical in many kind of a self-help, personal development stuff. But tell us more, why is it important for engineers to get out of comfort zone and what kind of comfort zone that you are referring to?

Zachary White: There is no growth inside the comfort zone. So let’s start with that premise. And if you don’t believe that, then we need to ask some questions around how are we defining comfort zone and what’s been your life experience. But what I’ll tell you with a 100% confidence is that if your life revolves around just doing the easy comfortable thing, you are not growing or exercising your full potential as an engineering leader, as an individual in relationships, in any area.

And maybe, as an example or metaphor to help us connect the dots. It’s very easy to see this in working out, going to the gym. You know, let’s say today you’re more than capable of doing 10 reps of the bench press at a hundred pounds. I’m just picking an easy example. Well, if all you ever do when you go to the gym is 10 reps at a hundred pounds, and that’s it. That’s comfortable, that’s easy, that’s known. You can do it. It’s well within your ability. Will you ever get stronger? And I mean, of course not. The answer is no. You will not strengthen the muscle if you don’t take it to a new limit. You know, do enough reps that you get to fatigue or add more weight. Do something to put more stress onto your body so that you will strengthen the muscles and be capable of lifting more.

And it’s the same in engineering. If you’re staying inside your comfort zone, whether that’s a technology that’s known or a level of leadership in the organization that feels safe to you, that feels easy to accomplish. You’re not stepping up and tackling bigger challenges or saying yes to that special assignment. Or taking a risk in a meeting asking that question. When you feel like, you know, someone might perceive me as being ignorant or someone might think I’m stupid if I ask this, but I need to ask the question. Those moments of getting out of your comfort zone is where the muscles are built. You know, the muscles of your mind, the muscles of your emotional intelligence, all the things that it takes.

So this, as a guiding principle, is for me, non-negotiable. If you’re never getting out of the comfort zone, then you’re not growing. And if you’re not growing, odds are you’re probably not happy. Because growth and progress is one of the things that consistently correlates to people saying, I feel fulfilled, I feel satisfied, I feel happy. And so just ask yourself, when was the last time I really intentionally stepped out of my comfort zone? Not was thrust there by my boss or someone else outside my control. But I chose to take a step into discomfort, into a challenge bigger than I ever had before. And if you can’t remember the last time, then let’s get started. We got work to do.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. So yeah, I think I love what you said, right? There’s no growth if you are always in your comfort zone, right. I think the analogy of working out is definitely very appropriate. And in fact, you can only grow your muscles if you tear it, right? So there must be some kind of a healing process with some recovery, of course, and then you can grow the muscles. So I think thanks for bringing that analogy up.

I like what you said, comfort zone, right, because some people may just go through their life, their work, just day-to-day, not stepping up, maybe for some reasons, right? But I think the comfort zone here is also not referring to a danger zone, right, where you step up to something that is really, really out of your depth or out of your league, right?

[00:21:19] Examples of Stepping Out of Comfort Zone

Henry Suryawirawan: So maybe in your personal coaching experience, what kind of comfort zone, stepping up that people tend to do for engineers. Maybe if you can share for some people here who are still thinking what kind of next level that I should try. Because some people may be confused like, what’s the next for them?

Zachary White: Mm-hmm. Well, I’ll give a couple common areas that I see people hold back. One is around communication skills. Many engineers need to focus on developing communication skills in multiple forms. One is your written communication, mastery of text and email based communications or writing white papers or publishing articles, these kinds of things. And then of course spoken, verbal communication. Both one-on-one to be able to have courageous conversations, especially up the career ladder, up the org chart. So when you’re having that conversation with a more senior leader, do you have confidence and capability there? And then also with direct reports, are you having those bold coaching conversations and holding people accountable, and really again, doing a great job leading in one-on-ones.

And then in groups. How’s your presenting skills? How do you do from the front of the room? How do you do in front of 10 people? How do you do in front of 100 people? How would you do on stage in front of 1,000 people? And it’s at that point, most engineers, their palms start to sweat. They get a little nervous and think, wow, please don’t put me on stage. That sounds terrifying. Well, this one set of skills around communication, if your goal is to have a high degree of influence, a high income, to make it to the top of the career ladder, well, you’re gonna need to master some of these skills.

And so in order to do that, you have to be willing to put yourself out of your comfort zone. Go join Toastmasters. Go practice giving speeches. Do the things that it takes, put yourself into the environment where you might fail. You might feel like that went really terribly. You might get feedback that’s difficult to hear because you’re still learning. But anything worth doing is worth doing poorly. Because you don’t get to mastery by jumping straight there. And we know this as engineers, the first line of code you wrote was not your best line of code, okay? It’s the same in these other areas. So that’s one example.

And then another one might be applying for promotions. People feel like, well, I don’t have the qualifications yet, or I don’t have enough years of experience yet. I’m nervous that if I took that job, I might not succeed. And, you know, this is an area where, Henry, there isn’t a single right answer, but I’ll just tell you on the whole, most engineering leaders who I’ve coached wait longer than is necessary to really pursue their growth in terms of role and scope, because they’re afraid of failing if they move up too quickly. And sure, it’s possible to move too quickly, and the Peter principle, we hear about it and you get into a role where you fail. But guess what? Even if that happens to you, you can take a step back. You can start crushing it at the level where you are capable. Keep learning and growing and go again. It’s no different than the communication side.

Those are just a couple of common areas I see it. We could list many more. But I think the important thing is to ask yourself, where am I holding myself back? Is it in pursuit of new technologies because I’m afraid I won’t understand it or be capable? Is it in some of these leadership acumen areas where I need to build? Or maybe it’s in business knowledge. I’m great at engineering, but I don’t understand the business. Well, whatever that thing is, go ask yourself what’s the first step? Where can I begin and start moving forward? Because if we don’t begin, we know where that leads. If nothing changes, then nothing changes. So let’s get started. Find that area for yourself. Get the help you need and get going.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for giving some examples. So I hope people here get inspired. So for me, the key lessons that I went through as well, so it’s not that you find the next perfect option, right? Maybe your first try is something that you knew that you wanted, but after you gave it a try, maybe it doesn’t work or it doesn’t give you some happiness, right? You can move on and try another one. So the key here is, again, not to make it a perfect kind of a formula, right? You can explore and give it a try. Experiment. Learn through failures. And if you went through failures and you like it, I think that’s where you hit the nice spot, right? You can pursue even further. So thanks for sharing this comfort zone and, you know, some of the areas that engineers can step up their game.

[00:25:37] Mastering Mindset

Henry Suryawirawan: So let’s go to the third one, which is about mastering our mindset. I’ve learned from some of my guests, including Jeff Perry, which you know as well, right? Mindset is really important. So maybe tell us more in the context of happy engineer, what kind of mindset here that we should think about.

Zachary White: Mindset is so important. And for a lot of engineers, because we’re so analytical, we’re so good in our intelligence, we don’t think of mindset as being a big gap. But that actually then creates the very blind spot that derails our careers and our lives in so many ways, because we are so smart. And I don’t mean that facetiously, like literally. Any engineer who has a degree in any discipline of engineering is incredibly smart. So when we talk about mindset, I’m not talking about your IQ, okay? But here’s the thing you need to know. Your mindset in this moment is what’s pouring the foundation for your future. And if you don’t strengthen and deepen the mindset that you currently hold, then you’re limiting how high you can go.

So what is mindset? What are we talking about? Well, think about all of the beliefs that you hold, many of which are in your unconscious mind. You don’t even think about these things consciously. They’re just there. That set of beliefs, I want you to imagine it’s like the walls of the box that you’re currently living inside of. And it’s not an insult, but it’s just the truth for all of us. Your current mindset is limiting what’s possible for you right now. And it’s probably best seen through an example.

So let’s say what I believe about myself. This actually came up today with a client. So an amazing gentleman. He’s very successful. He’s had roles at Amazon. He’s brilliant in Machine Learning and AI, incredible engineer. If you saw his resume, you’d think, wow. Incredibly successful. But today in our coaching session with our group, he said, I wanna know how to overcome self-sabotage. Because I continuously struggle with self-sabotage, and it’s something that is a huge problem for me. And I’ve always, and I continue to sabotage my success. Okay, well, on the surface when you hear that, you think, huh, that’s interesting. So he’s got some work to do around this idea of self-sabotage.

But let’s look at the words carefully. He’s claiming an identity, that I struggle with self-sabotage. That’s a belief, that’s a mindset. Well, until that mindset changes, it doesn’t matter if I give him a strategy or a tactic. If what he believes is that I struggle with self-sabotage, then he will continue to struggle with self-sabotage for the rest of his life. Because the mindset is gonna create the limit.

And so the first thing we wanna do is go in and say, hey, wait a minute. Is that true? And does that have to be true of you for the rest of your life? Or is it possible that you used to struggle with self-sabotage, but that starting today, you are improving in your confidence and you are no longer sabotaging your success anymore. In fact, you’re getting better every single day. It’s like, oh, that’s a whole new identity. That’s a whole new belief system. And as you start to buy into that belief, it opens the door for new actions. And as we take new actions, we start to get new results. And those new results reinforce a new mindset, and we start to get this upward spiral of results in our life.

So mindset is the foundation. Literally, of all the coaching I do with engineering leaders, it’s at the foundation of it all and it’s very difficult to master on your own. I highly, highly encourage anyone hearing this. If mindset is an area that you wanna explore, go work with a great coach. Because it’s so hard to assess your own mindset, because it is literally the cage that you are inside. And how are you gonna read the label on the outside of the bottle that you are stuck inside? You can’t, right? You can’t. These are blind spots. And it’s called a blind spot for a reason. For today, we’ll just leave it at that. It’s so foundational, it’s so important, and if you need help in this area, get it. And it will transform your life.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for sharing that particular case with your clients. I think some engineers might also have their own patterns, right? They thought that they are not good in something. And I think that’s probably, sometimes, the first thing is about limiting beliefs, what you said, right? The limiting mindset. So anytime we want to level up ourselves, I think that’s the first thing we should also think about, because unconsciously we may bring this from childhood, past trauma, experience, right. And we always believe that that is ourselves, which is kind of like limiting ourselves.

But I think the first is a self-awareness. Build that kind of awareness and maybe, get help from people, right, like coaches you mentioned. Because we sometimes are blind to this kind of limiting belief and unconscious belief that we have. So I think for people, mindset is really important. I’m personally also still not perfect, right? Still trying to figure out what kind of limiting mindsets that I have. Having someone to support you and guide you is probably one good thing that we can pursue.

[00:30:40] Building Our Own Blueprint

Henry Suryawirawan: Let’s go to the next one which is building our own blueprint, right? This is maybe some kind of the engineering part here. So tell us more what kind of blueprint that you are referring to. Is there any kind of framework that you advocate to people?

Zachary White: Absolutely. And you know, of course being an engineer, it helps to coach in a way that aligns with my engineering mind. And of course, that’s why engineering clients enjoy this process because we think in systems, we think in design terminology, we think in these ideas that we live all day at work. And so the lifestyle engineering blueprint is the methodology. It is the system that we use to go create the results that we want.

So the blueprint consists of that foundation of our mindset. You can just picture a little house, right? The foundation of the house is your mindset. And then what’s built on top of that are four pillars. You can think of these four cornerstones of the house, and that’s your purpose, your priority, your productivity, and the people around you. And then the roof of that house, what ties it all together is what I call your playbook.

So you could think of mindset as this foundational piece we need to strengthen. And if we don’t, it’s gonna limit us in our growth. Period. The four pillars represent, maybe, the strategies or the skill sets, the tools that we need. And literally, every single barrier that you’ll face in your career lands in one of these four pillars. It’s either a purpose problem, a priority problem, a productivity problem, or a people problem. There’s not a problem you’ll ever face in your career that doesn’t land in one or more of these four pillars.

But, and this is a huge but, Henry, strategies, tactics, and tools, you could almost categorize this as the knowledge of what to do and how to do it, is worthless without action. If you know what to do and never do it, duh, you’re not gonna get results. So the playbook, the roof, what ties us all together is all about action. It’s making sure that you’re stepping into the arena of your life every day, getting out of the comfort zone like we talked about already, and you’re taking action. And when you put all that together, that’s where we create this incredible acceleration of the career and life of your dreams, because you have the right thinking, you have the right strategies, and you’re taking action every day.

Henry Suryawirawan: I think that’s really true for some people. I’m myself included, right? So sometimes, we try to learn so many hacks, so many tricks, strategies, right? But we just keep learning in the pursuit of finding the best one, probably. And sometimes, the reminder here is just take action, right? Create a playbook, create an experiment. Take action because you will never learn if you don’t give it a try. You can read hundreds of books, but in the end, it will never come up to something, right? So thanks for sharing this.

Zachary White: That was me, Henry. I read all the books, man. I was hungry for knowledge my whole career. And I made mistake after mistake after mistake, because I didn’t apply what I knew. And so, I’m guilty. I’m not saying this cause I’m perfect. I did exactly what you just said. And so, amen brother. You’re exactly right.

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. And I like the five Ps thing. Let me repeat one more time. The purpose, the priority, the productivity, the people. And the last one is come up with a playbook, right? So I think for people, you can use this blueprint. So maybe think for each of those P, what is exactly that you want to pursue for that P right? And then maybe you create some kind of playbook and take actions from there on. So I think that’s really interesting blueprint.

[00:34:10] Doing Less

Henry Suryawirawan: And the last one here, in the lifestyle engineering, which I think some people would also allude to productivity hacks, which is do less. Tell us more why doing less means happier engineer.

Zachary White: Diluted focus creates diluted results. If you are the kind of person, like most engineers who loves to just say yes and tackle more and keep expanding and things are adding, adding, adding, adding, and we’re never subtracting, we’re never focusing. Your limited precious assets of time and energy. These are the only two resources in your life that are truly limited. You can get more money, you can build more relationships, you can always get more of every other resource. That doesn’t make it easy to get, but it’s always there. The two that are not ever going to expand beyond a limit are your time and your energy.

And so, when you’re doing more and more and more, you’re taking those resources that we use to create results and you’re diluting them across so many things that nothing actually builds the momentum to succeed. And the picture that I think sets the stage for this really clearly is take an airplane. And when you wanna take off, when you wanna get off the runway, you go full throttle. Well, if you put two airplanes side by side on the runway and they’re both at half throttle, guess what happens? They both crash at the end of the runway, okay? So we live our lives in this fashion where we’re trying to keep all these things going, but you’ve got 10 things, getting 10% of your energy. And then none of them ever get off the ground.

So lifestyle engineering, part of how we create these differentiated results is by concentrating energy into the most important priorities—to the point of these five Ps —to make sure that they get off the ground. Once it’s at cruising altitude, yeah, you can bring the throttle down. It’s not that you have to be full throttle on everything all the time. But doing less is about focusing on what matters most, giving that the vast majority of your energy until you get the result that you need. Then we can back off and do the next thing.

This is hard. To do less and then be obsessive about getting that thing going, because it’s fun to do a lot and everybody in your life wants you to do a lot. There’s always more people asking you for your time and energy. So it requires saying no. It requires setting boundaries. But I promise you, you’ll get faster results on the things that matter most if you’ll have the courage to do less.

Henry Suryawirawan: And especially in technology, right? This is something that is tricky. We have so many new technologies, new advancements, you know, disruptions here and there, right? Maybe today is AI, which is a craze in everywhere. Maybe next is VR, right? Previously is blockchain and things like that. But I think you need to stay focused on some things, right? If everything is important that you wanna pursue, nothing is important for sure. There’s the great quote about that. And I think to come up with the focus is also something that is a struggle for some people, because, you know, in the era of internet, social media, news, and also maybe a lot of entertainments, right? So we really cannot be spending our time and energy equally to all these things, so you need to really keep focus.

And again, like it’s not gonna be like 100% always successful, right? You set a focus on some things that you really, really going to like, right? Sometimes you find that it is not the area that you wanna focus on, you can then move on. I think the key here, again, coming back to your blueprint, what are your five Ps and then follow along from there. So thank you so much for this “do less” reminder for people who tend to do a lot more, right? Maybe think and step back a little bit and try to prioritize what are the most important things.

[00:38:02] Burnout

Henry Suryawirawan: So in the beginning. You mentioned about the burnout that you went through. So if you don’t mind, maybe if we can discuss a little bit more about that particular experience, because many people, I will say not just engineers, feel burnout in their life or their work. So in the first place, maybe let’s qualify what is burnout for some people who are confused what burnout is, because it keeps getting mentioned in many, many resources. But what’s your definition of burnout? And what are actually some of the real causes of burnout?

Zachary White: Yeah. That’s a really important question, because you’re right. The term burnout is thrown around a lot, a lot more now than it used to be, and it will show up in different ways for different people. But if I go to the most important principle around burnout that I have found that’s consistent with every client I’ve ever had who says, you know, I’m burned out, and if I look at my own experience of burnout. Burnout is not just that moment when you hit rock bottom, when the tank is empty. You know, even just the phrase burnout, we think about fuel in a tank, right? Or just, maybe it’s an airplane, whatever it is. Well, when the tank is empty, yes, you’re burned out, but that’s not the only thing that matters.

Burnout actually begins in your life the moment that you start burning fuel faster than you’re filling the tank. When you’re running an energy deficit, right, when you’re running a happiness deficit, when you’re running a relationship deficit, when you’re running a career deficit, day in and day out, even if it’s small, you are on the road to burnout. And it’s only a matter of time before it manifests in one of these ways that we talk about publicly.

You know, so and so had a health issue. They literally are in the hospital, because of an anxiety attack or a stress related heart condition or ulcers or, you know, for me it was ending in divorce. For other people, it might be your performance suffers because you’re working so many hours that now you’re delivering bad work and suddenly you get a bad performance review and that throws you into a fear loop that now you can’t do your best work at all and you get fired. These are the stories that make the LinkedIn headlines, but we need to back it up and recognize, that began for that person well before the health issue. Well before getting let go for performance related issues. It starts when your tank is being emptied faster than you’re filling it.

And so if you want to avoid burnout, if you wanna make sure that never happens to you, then we need to pay attention every day, every week, every quarter, every year. How am I doing on filling that tank for myself? And you know, and that can be a lot of different things. It’s not just hours at work. It’s looking at your whole life, back to our conversation from whole life balance earlier. But that’s what I think of when I think of burnout is to say, all right, how are you doing on managing your energy across your whole life? And are you burning fuel faster than you’re filling the tank?

Henry Suryawirawan: I think that’s completely true, right. I personally went through a burnout experience as well. And it started way before you crash. Maybe, let’s put that analogy. So it always started far before and it’s just a frustration that keeps building up, building up and it’s a deficit like you mentioned, right. So if you never take notice and put something, some actions to fill in the tank, I think that’s gonna spiral down easily and faster than you may think of.

And I think one thing that I experienced once you went through this burnout, right? It’s really, really hard to get back up that quickly. So I think that is something that you also have to understand, right? So don’t let yourself fall beyond the burnout threshold because when it happens, it’s really, really hard to recover and you may need to take time to actually recover.

So I like also another thing that you mentioned in your sharing about burnout, right? You said burnout is accelerated by what we are doing, but burnout is caused by what we are not doing. So tell us more a little bit about this, because I find it really, really insightful.

Zachary White: Yes. Well, the most obvious example is people will talk about working long hours. Burning the candle on both ends is a phrase we use. So this idea of time. But the fact is you can work a lot of hours and not burn out. How is that possible? If anybody can do it, then we have to look more carefully about, well, okay, is it really about time and how much we’re doing? And what I’ve found is, I’ve worked with now hundreds of engineering leaders who’ve gone through these challenges. And part of why burnout is such a sneaky thing, like you and I both said, it started way before we actually crashed and burned. So why didn’t we notice? Why didn’t we catch it years before it actually happened?

I can look back now and say, gosh, you know, that pattern in my life started two or three years before I actually got divorced and hit rock bottom. Well, why did I miss it? And the reason we miss it is because we only look at those things that we are doing. Am I working too many hours? Am I hanging out with people who are toxic? Do I have a bad environment at work that I need to try to deal with? We look at what’s present. But the primary cause of burnout is what’s missing. And that’s why it’s so easy to fall victim to this. It’s what’s missing.

So what do I mean? Lemme give you a couple examples. When stress gets dialed up on your project at work as a tech lead, what are some of the first things that happen in your life? Well, you stop hanging out with your friends as much because you’re working long hours. Maybe you don’t sleep as many hours every night because you’re staying up an extra hour or two to check your email or finish that PowerPoint that needs to be ready for the presentation tomorrow, or write those lines of code that you had a solution, you were that close, but you didn’t quite get it before you left the office. So you’re gonna log back in at 10:00 PM and you thought it would be one hour, but then it’s midnight, and then it’s 1:00 AM and then it’s 2:00 AM and you’re still working. And then you don’t sleep well because you’re on the computer and your body’s not ready for sleep. Oh, and by the way, now you’re traveling more for work and you’re not eating healthy foods, right? So you’re not paying attention to your nutrition.

And just little by little, we stop doing all of the things that keep us happy, healthy, and balanced. And so then we start looking at what we are doing. We’re trying to find out like, which one of these things that I’m doing is making me feel the way I’m feeling and causing this burnout. But the truth is, it’s not any one of those that’s the problem. It’s what’s missing from your life that you were doing that was keeping you in that energy surplus.

And so if you want to assess where am I at, first, it’s asking that question, how am I doing in my energy and my whole life? Is it a daily deficit or a daily surplus? And then instead of just asking, well, what’s on my calendar, that might be making me feel a certain way, ask yourself, what do I know I should be doing but I’m not. What are those things that keep me healthy that I’m not doing? What are those things that help me stay in positive relationships that I’ve stopped doing? What are those things that fill my cup, fill my tank that I’m no longer giving myself time for and self-care?

Focus on bringing those things back into your life as soon as possible. Because if you don’t, you’re gonna end up in this downward spiral and what most people experience is there’s a point of no return where even if you realize I’m burning out, now you’re gonna hit rock bottom, because you can’t pull up that fast. And it’s usually too late. And that’s a hard place to be.

Henry Suryawirawan: Very great reminder. So I think you’re right. Looking back also, it’s something that I completely not doing, right. So for example, is it exercise, enough rest, hobbies, right? What you used to love doing, maybe you stopped doing because you put effort in something else. Relationships also like friends, meeting friends, spending quality time. So I think all this is something that definitely you stop doing or you miss doing, but you didn’t realize it. So maybe you can use some kind of, I don’t know, reflection from time to time right, to look back and ask this question, is there something that I should be doing, but I’m not doing? So I really love that question as well for a reflection.

[00:46:13] Coaches for Engineering Leaders

Henry Suryawirawan: So now you said you are coaching a lot of engineering leaders, right? I think in some parts of the world, I would say coaching, finding coach for engineering managers or engineering leaders or even tech leads, right, are not quite common. So tell us more why every engineering leaders or as someone who go through an upper level of engineering, they need coaches. So maybe tell us what’s the reason behind that.

Zachary White: Well, first of all, coaches for engineers are uncommon no matter where you live, is the truth. Maybe it’s worse in some places than others, but it is definitely uncommon. And also, let’s speak clear when I say engineering leaders, it’s not about a certain title or level in the organization. Many of my clients are right out of college and in their first individual contributor job. But they recognize that they want to be leaders, even if they plan to stay ICs. So it’s not about how big is your team or being a manager or a director. It’s about a mindset of a desire for growth and influence. And if that’s you, then you’re a leader. Everyone can be a leader. It’s not about title or station in life.

So that said, why is it uncommon? I think, again, because engineers are so driven by intelligence, our ego, and I include myself in this, leads us to believe that we can just keep learning, keep studying, and solve these problems on our own. We don’t need a coach. And for that, I’ll just tell you, every engineering leader at all levels I’ve worked with, after they work with a coach, they changed their perspective about that. Okay. So the best players have the best coaches. Period. In every industry, in every sector of life, whether it’s sports or in engineering and career. So that’s the first piece.

Now, why do we all need one? The fact is, if, okay, Michael Jordan needed a coach, if Michael Phelps needed a coach, if Olympians need coaches, why would we not? And it’s not about your skill alone. Did Michael Phelps’s coach swim a faster freestyle than Michael Phelps? No! He was faster. He was better in the pool, but he still had a whole team of coaches. Why? It’s because if you wanna perform at your best, you won’t do that in isolation.

Isolation is the enemy of excellence. Your edge, your best, your full potential demands you putting yourself into an environment where someone else can challenge you to actually hold yourself to a higher standard, to reach that edge, to provide new insights. And let’s face it, a coach who’s worked with hundreds of other leaders is going to be able to bring hundreds of lifetimes of experiences into that conversation with you, and you can only live one lifetime.

So tap into those resources, get that help. And it is a catalyst to transformation. It is such a fun process. I think you’ll really love it. So be an engineer. Run the test, right? Don’t draw a conclusion without running the test. I won’t try to prove to you today that coaching is the right thing. I just wanna appeal to your engineering spirit. If you wanna grow and succeed in your life, then run the test. Go get a coach and see for yourself what the experience is like.

Unfortunately, Henry, yeah, there’s bad coaches out there, alright? It’s gonna happen. Anywhere you go there’s gonna be great and there’s gonna be not as great. So be intentional, really look for that evidence of their ability to help deliver results. Don’t just hire the first person you meet. But I think, again, if you’re open-minded to it and you leave your ego at the door, there’s so much potential for you to accelerate all the results you want in your career.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, if we look into, you know, sports or other kind of jobs or roles, right? They do have coaches. Even executive has coaches, right, so because, yeah. And because it is not just one thing that we are good at, it’s the many other things that maybe we are not good at that we need to improve, right. So just like what you said, the coach of Michael Phelps doesn’t swim faster than him, but maybe there are other areas, maybe, nutrition, mindset, going through tough problems, right? So all these will challenge the person to go to higher standards. And coaches, maybe tapping from their previous experience and knowledge, may be able to help you as well.

So I think again, maybe mindset, coming back to the mindset is one other areas that coaches will be able to peel off from your limiting beliefs, so that you can go to the next standard that you can. So I think for people here, engineering leaders, not just the title leaders, right? If you wanna master yourself, improve yourself, maybe it’s worth to explore finding a coach, right? So I think it will be transformational.

[00:50:53] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: So as we go through the last section of the podcast, Zach, it’s been a really great conversation, very insightful. I’m sure many people here also learn a lot. But I have one last question that I would like to ask, which I normally ask to all my guests, which I call the three technical leadership wisdom. So you can think of it just like advice you wanna give to us, maybe from your coaching experience, maybe from your burnout experience, or maybe from other experiences. So if you can summarize, what are your three technical leadership wisdom?

Zachary White: Henry, I’m so tempted to go back to my engineering days and pull some of those practical, tactical things that helped me succeed in my career. But I think it’s prudent to stay in the coaching world cause that’s where I live, and I wanna help people in that space and continue pulling the threads we pulled today.

So the three things I would share. Number one. All leadership begins with self-leadership. So if you want to climb higher, then you need to dig deeper. You know, the tallest skyscrapers have the deepest foundations. One failure mode technical leads and engineering fall into is as you move up, you start to focus more on leading others, and then leading departments, leading strategy, leading the enterprise. And suddenly, you get to a point where you have not been focusing on personal growth and leading yourself, and now you have a weak foundation. So remember, all leadership begins with self-leadership and continue to invest in yourself to develop and grow. That’s number one.

Number two, ask better questions. Really practice and take the time to find resources to learn how to ask better questions in your own life, on your projects, when you’re leading meetings, when you’re in one-on-ones. Being able to ask powerful questions, knowing what kinds of questions lead to better outcomes and just continuously leveling up that skillset. Really think about asking questions as a skill that needs practice and needs developed.

When was the last time you went out and looked for a list of powerful questions and just read through it, and asked yourself, which ones of these might be useful for me to bring into my life or into the workplace this week? Take it seriously. We all just sort of take for granted that we’re good at asking questions. Well, says who? Because this is a skill that you can continue to develop, so ask better questions. That would be number two.

And then number three, I’ll actually go back to something we already talked about in this podcast. But if you wanna accelerate results, get out of your comfort zone. So that’s wisdom number three. Yeah, I mean, I just can’t say it enough. You won’t get to where you want to go by kicking back and staying comfortable. So make that a practice in your life. Ask yourself, how can I step out of the comfort zone this week? What’s something I’m afraid of that I could take a smart calculated risk on this week, or if I don’t know what to do, who can I ask for help in that area? But, get out of your comfort zone, because not only will it accelerate your growth, but I promise you it will trigger that deep sense of satisfaction and fulfillment inside you that might feel like it’s been muted by all the pressure of life. When you start getting into that space of discomfort and fear and exhilaration, it really makes you feel alive. It’s really fun. So, do it. I think you won’t ever regret living that way. So those would be my top three. Henry.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for reminding again about comfort zone. Now also, it reminds me of something, right? So, one fun thing is that as we went through life, so when we are a kid, right, our comfort zone level is actually very low. We always try new stuffs, experiment, fail, and did it with fun, right? But as we go through our age, normally, for most people we tend not to get out of comfort zone. Our comfort zone becomes higher and higher, right? So I think that’s a powerful question for me when I learn about that, right? So as you go through life, think of what areas actually you are holding back. So I think that’s a very, very good reflection.

So Zach, thank you so much for all this sharing. I’m sure it’s really, really useful for all engineers. I hope they become happier just by listening to this episode, although it takes a lot more effort beyond that. But for people who want to learn more, get more resources or contact you, is there a place where they can reach you out online?

Zachary White: Absolutely! Well, Henry, thank you again for having me, and I just can’t say enough about the work you are doing and the value that’s created through this podcast and your passion for engineering and technical leadership. But if anyone wants to go deeper on the blueprint, on coaching for engineers, any of the topics that came up today. We mentioned the Happy Engineer Podcast. If you go over to the podcast in the show notes are all the ways to connect with me. I won’t list them all here.

But one of the things I’d definitely encourage everyone to do if this conversation resonates for you is to take advantage of the opportunity as a gift to you for listening through this whole podcast to get a free coaching session with me and my team. And so to do that, jump over to the happyengineerpodcast.com. There’s a contact form in the upper right. You can send us a note, say you found out about me through Tech Lead Journal Podcast, and we’ll make sure to get you that opportunity if it’s a fit for us to support you for a 75 minute free coaching session.

If you’re in the US, you can actually text the word lifestyle to the short code 55444. That’s another way to get directly to our calendar. It’s just that one word lifestyle to 55444. If you’re outside the US, you’ll have to submit through the form cause the text doesn’t work internationally, but would be an absolute pleasure to provide that free support for you and help you build that game plan, that playbook for where you need to focus in doing less and getting to the results you want.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for giving the opportunity for people to get some free coaching, at least to experience, right, what coaching is all about and what kind of opportunity they can get through coaching. So, for people who just listened, make sure you give it a try. So Zach here has kindly given us opportunity to experience his coaching. So thank you so much for that.

Alright, so I think that’s the wrap of our conversation. Again, thank you so much for sharing, Zach. I’m really, really happy that engineers here can become more happy as well.

Zachary White: Henry, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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