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Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

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Re: Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

#71
post #60

I suggest leveraging the meditative process driving has on the brain. I went through a process where I was trying to be extremely productive every minute of every day. That meant filling every minute with productive tasks including commute time with Podcasts and educational material. But you get into this productivity loop without any real productivity. In the end I found the best use of my drive time is just relax a…

Are we really doing nothing? Im quoting the book Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt here:

"Researchers have estimated there are anywhere from 1500 to 2500 discrete skills and activities we undertake while driving. Even the simplest thing — shifting gears — is a decision-making process consuming what is called "cognitive workload." We’re operating heavy machinery at speeds beyond our long evolutionary history, absorbing (and discarding) huge amounts of information, and having to make snap decisions — often based on limited situational awareness, guesses about what others are going to do, or a hazy knowledge of the actual traffic law. It took years of research, for example, by some of the country’s top robotics researchers, to create expensive, sophisticated self-driving "autonomous vehicles" that are basically mediocre beginning drivers that you’d never want to let loose in everyday traffic. When we forget that driving isn’t necessarily as easy as it seems to be, we get into trouble."

Re: Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

#72
After more than two decades as a developer, I have just now begun to realize all the other valuable skills, outside of technology, that I have not developed. And consequently, I've been very hungry for this additional education.

I understand you're looking for IT education, but I would recommend audio books (or language courses). If you haven't done any of these, give some a try:

* If you don't know a second language, try the Pimsleur courses.

* How To Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie

* Getting to Yes, by Bruce Patton, Roger Fisher, and William Ury

* How We Choose to be Happy: The 9 Choices of Extremely Happy People, by Greg Hicks and Rick Foster

* Managing Oneself (Harvard Business Review Classics), by Peter Drucker

It's easy to learn the technical things with hands-on time and night time efforts, but sometimes the tech is so much fun that some of us just simply ignore topics that have longer term value and frankly can enable us to really make the most of our technical abilities.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

#75

I find TED Talks tend to help inspire new ideas more often than other media I consume. Maybe listening to some of those instead of podcasts.

Just make sure they are TED talks and not TEDx talks. TEDx talks carry the TED branding but are local events and aren't always quality controlled. They're also predictable to a fault. Case and point, Sam Hyde trolling an entire TEDx talk [0] with bullshit was both somehow (1) approved and (2) people actually let him finish.

I used to listen to TED talks but after a while I had to admit to myself a majority of them are painfully predictable in how they presented and so many of them are really someone propping themselves up as some sort of smarter/holier-than-thou savior of humanity.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yFhR1fKWG0

Re: Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

#76
post #46
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They put the DRM in place so they can continue to charge lower rates that more people are willing to pay because the content isn't as easily pirated (for which they make no money at all). What device do you have? What prevents that device from supporting the DRM Audible uses?

Oh, it's some sort of $20 SanDisk copy of the original iPod Nano from ten years ago. Plays MP3s beautifully, but that is about it. So I ended up buying some files from Audible, then had the choice of resorting to torrenting the ripped versions or using some dodgy converter to extract something useful. Or cancelling the subscription and getting a refund, which is what I did.

A few years back I was in the same boat, rocking a Sansa Clip and no smartphone. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, but the way I consumed Audible content was:

- Burning to CD, which their software did - Ripping the CD to wav using other software - (optional) chopping up the .wav files into 5 minute chunks - Compressing everything to MP3 (V8 VBR)

Not sure if they yanked this feature, but worked then!

Re: Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

#79
Listen to software conference talks! It's true that some of the more technical ones will not translate as they require too much concentration. Ideally, you can find some that are more conceptual or do not rely directly upon watching the slides.

I posted a few of my favorites from last year here: https://www.kevinlondon.com/2015/09/10/10-software-talks-to-...

I, too, generally dislike software podcasts in the car. For me, they usually are paced more conversationally, so I find that I get disinterested.

Re: Ask HN: As a developer, how can I take advantage of time spent driving to work?

#80
post #60

I suggest leveraging the meditative process driving has on the brain. I went through a process where I was trying to be extremely productive every minute of every day. That meant filling every minute with productive tasks including commute time with Podcasts and educational material. But you get into this productivity loop without any real productivity. In the end I found the best use of my drive time is just relax a…

I second this, but would also add that I've started motorcycling instead of driving. Even a commute on a motorbike is a thing of wonder, using parts of my brain and fight-or-flight responses I've left dormant for years.

But to the primary point, I also thoroughly agree that downtime is important, and there's a danger of trying to optimise every waking hour too much. Learning the art of structured procrastination (neither too much nor too little) should be part of every pragmatic programmer's toolkit.

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