Let’s talk focus. Sometimes, you really just have to get something done and you’re really just not in the head space to sit down and do it. For me, that was yesterday afternoon. I had to get prepared for a meeting coming up. I blocked off my entire afternoon after 3PM, figuring I’d be done …
Month: May 2022
There’s a study out there that says context switching costs fifteen minutes to get back into the task. The classic example: You are doing some deep thought work and have been nose-deep in code or spreadsheet formulas or editing for an hour. Your phone rings. Interrupted, when you settle back down to your deep work, …
When I was a young whippersnapper in the days before MMOs, I roleplayed on MUSHes, text-based multiplayer systems. They came with their own programming language and none of the fancy IDE support that beginning developers today take for granted. Here’s a small sample: [pemit(#20, %2)][ifelse(gte(setr(9, mul(6, u(#513/data-autotf_per[ifelse(gte(%2, 30), cent, old)]_[first(%0, |)]))), 1), [round(%q9, 0)] hours, …
What if Future You were Current You’s best friend? You would treat your future self like a separate person that you care about deeply and would go out of your way to make life easier for. This is the absolute best way to prevent myself from procrastinating. Instead of saying “I’ll do it in the …
Stop using story points and estimating purely based on complexity. Start using coffee points instead. Those working in an agile environment traditionally use story points to estimate the complexity of a task, which is then used to figure out roughly how many stories will fit in a sprint. Evangelists of this method say that estimating …
I had to get up at a time with a six in front of it this morning. I realize I am very lucky to be able to organize my time such that I can usually sleep until the seven hits, but I do not find this humane. At least this world has coffee in it. …