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Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

nickjanetakis.com

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Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#21

Post by 616c »

I see others asking for advice. I am skeptical and embarassed to ask here, but I feel like many like-minded lurkers are here. So I think this follow-up on M4v3R's inquiry is worth a shot.

I have multiple study interests. Many of them are beyond my comfort zone, by design and with intent, and I have no way of knowing when or if I can absorb them with a timetable. How do you schedule?

I am currently enrolled in a few Coursera courses:

Algorithms Crypto I Scala

They all have deadlines. I am 1-3 weeks behind in each, respectively. I have been an off and on again convert to programming and open source. I desire to really get back to computing, after a kind of numbing support career. I love the machines, but I cannot force their theory to love me.

I can watch lectures over and over and take notes. This takes time. But when it comes to assignments, I cannot connect the dots.

Solutions:

- Review the material AGAIN

- Switch up assignments to reduce load; all of them are equally rigorous, so this backfires, it still takes time

- I try reading supporting material (the Crypto101 book for Crytpo I for example, and it might be helping as of this week), but this takes time, and my choices can be invested wisely or unsound

This is not to mention wanting to study for more infosec certs, building a lab to strengthen that effort, and move to working on personal projects in a more focused way by building VM and containers using all the cool kid tools, boosting career prospects and increasing discipline.

I lost a lot of weight, and maintain with exercise (sometimes twice a day now) to stave off depression. I have lot of very dramatic personal drama with a relationship that consumes my spare cycles.

Someone, give me advice! I burn out frequently, watching TV streaming when I can, and reading sites like this.

This would not bother me so bad if NOT for HN. I procrastinate with you all, for sure, but this website exposes me to a very unique subset of computing culture and counterpoints I need as I live abroad with limited community engagement. You all fill me with rage and jealousy, as there are so many brilliant programmers exposing me to great people pushing the bounds of their curiosity.

What if HN backfires? It pushes on me, but without that push, where the hell does the inspiration come from?

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#22

Post by spaced_out »

M4v3R wrote: post #7

> It’s easy to fall into habits like slacking off with Youtube, HackerNews and other social platforms – but have you ever stepped back to think how destructive it is? > I call it the “social loop of death” where you make your rounds on various sites and before you know it, 3.5 hours have past and you haven’t gotten anything done. > You end up getting 60 minutes worth of actual work done in an 8 hour day. I feel like…

The only solution is to be more self-disciplined, and there is no magic trick for that. Discipline takes time and effort to develop, and you'll be disappointed with yourself plenty of times along the way. The only secret is to keep trying.

To brag slightly, but maybe add some perspective, for many years I wanted to learn to speak Spanish. Now, I'm at the point where I can read the news in Spanish with hardly any difficulty, have read a few high-school level books, and can hold conversations, even on engineering topics, without too many mistakes.

For years it was just something I kind of wanted and put off, but at some point I wanted it bad enough, that I committed, and followed through, with spending a few hours every day studying. Sure, sometimes things just came up and I missed a day or so, other times I fell into my old patterns of playing video games after work and was disappointed in myself, but everyone gets disappointed in themselves sometimes (otherwise you must have no shame whatsoever). The important thing is to just try again tomorrow.

Anyways, I didn't really mean for this to sound braggy, but I did want to answer your post. Things like working from home and organizing and/or coming up with a scheduling system helps some people, it may even help you, but you won't develop more discipline overnight. In my opinion, the only secret to becoming more productive with your time is not never give up trying to be more productive with your time.

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#23

Post by nojvek »

cgriswald wrote: post #4

Lately I find it difficult to enjoy playing games but I don’t think it’s because I grew up. I’m pretty sure that no one really grows up. In my case, whenever I try to crack open a game and play it, I feel guilty. This guilt stems from thinking “damn it Nick, you should be working on xyz instead of slaying monsters in Path of Exile – you didn’t do enough today!”. I was not enjoying gaming as much as I used to and had…

Biggest difference I found was having a fast Dev loop while programming. Using watchers to auto-build and run.

Having a good ide with intellisense made a big difference. My brain could be engaged for hours on a problem.

I still end up slacking if something takes more than 5 seconds. The brains on a whole level of train thought.

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#24

Post by M4v3R »

swsieber wrote: post #8
M4v3R wrote: post #7

> It’s easy to fall into habits like slacking off with Youtube, HackerNews and other social platforms – but have you ever stepped back to think how destructive it is? > I call it the “social loop of death” where you make your rounds on various sites and before you know it, 3.5 hours have past and you haven’t gotten anything done. > You end up getting 60 minutes worth of actual work done in an 8 hour day. I feel like…

Change your browser? There is research (I'd have to find it) that says addictive behavior is strongly attached to your environment. The example I heard is that soldiers who got addicted to drugs overseas have a much better time at home if they quit before coming back - then the addiction is associated purely with where they served overseas, and not at all at home. We're talking an order of magnitude more successful.…

Unfortunately I'm a web developer and I have and frequently use all major browsers :).

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#25

Post by effie »

616c wrote: post #21

I see others asking for advice. I am skeptical and embarassed to ask here, but I feel like many like-minded lurkers are here. So I think this follow-up on M4v3R's inquiry is worth a shot. I have multiple study interests. Many of them are beyond my comfort zone, by design and with intent, and I have no way of knowing when or if I can absorb them with a timetable. How do you schedule? I am currently enrolled in a few C…

Don't schedule 100% of your time, schedule more like 60%. Much easier and more motivating to keep up with that, and you will have time for detox from the web dead loop - time for sports, reading a real book, meeting people etc.

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#26

Post by 616c »

effie wrote: post #25
616c wrote: post #21

I see others asking for advice. I am skeptical and embarassed to ask here, but I feel like many like-minded lurkers are here. So I think this follow-up on M4v3R's inquiry is worth a shot. I have multiple study interests. Many of them are beyond my comfort zone, by design and with intent, and I have no way of knowing when or if I can absorb them with a timetable. How do you schedule? I am currently enrolled in a few C…

Don't schedule 100% of your time, schedule more like 60%. Much easier and more motivating to keep up with that, and you will have time for detox from the web dead loop - time for sports, reading a real book, meeting people etc.

I have time for that: I exercise, I read.

The problem is I cannot schedule in the stuff that is hard where I need progress.

Let's say I must understand Shannon's perfect secrecy, which I do abstractly, but these 3 quiz questions I do not get.

10 minutes passes, I have no answers.

20 minutes passes, I am not closer.

Two days later, do I need to go back and review the notes from the whole lecture to steer this ship back on course?

My point is context switching to topics I need to advance in, not the ones I know I can advance within parameters, consume time but with variable estimates of duration AND worse any success at all.

What are people in this spot doing? Just chugging along? I am going to not take these courses for credit, but I do not spend some time daily for the last week dropping one or all and admit I will never be the programmer I said I would be like 5-10 years ago! Haha.

UPDATE: To be clear, after those 20, I procstinate a little, and maybe come back. Or I move to a different class, or something else. Point being I have no way of knowing if it will click, and when. So scheduling these things adds another level of failure, where I miss deadlines I impose, and I start cussing myself out for not reaching my own desired accomplishment for the day.

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#27

Post by Raphmedia »

stevecalifornia wrote: post #12
Raphmedia wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added 0.0.0.0 www.facebook.com 0.0.0.0 www.gizmodo.com 0.0.0.0 gizmodo.com 0.0.0.0 www.drudgereport.com 0.0.0.0 www.reddit.com 0.0.0.0 news.ycombinator.com 0.0.0.0 lobste.rs to my hostfiles. Sure, I can remove them if I want, but the extra effort keeps me from doing it. I left messenger.facebook.com open so that I can talk with people.

I did this as well and, surprisingly, it has been effective at keeping me off of Facebook + Reddit (I'm find with Hacker News).

Yes, HN's built-in anti-procrastination features make it so that I don't mind having it out of this hostfile.

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#29

Post by hinkley »

M4v3R wrote: post #7

> It’s easy to fall into habits like slacking off with Youtube, HackerNews and other social platforms – but have you ever stepped back to think how destructive it is? > I call it the “social loop of death” where you make your rounds on various sites and before you know it, 3.5 hours have past and you haven’t gotten anything done. > You end up getting 60 minutes worth of actual work done in an 8 hour day. I feel like…

Pomodoro. It trains you to stay on task for 25 minutes at a time, and evaluate how you did during the last cycle, both from a distraction standpoint and a chasing-your-tail standpoint.

Over time you build up to 4.5-6 hours of solid, head-down coding a day.

Re: Become a 10x Programmer by Managing Your Time Better

#30

Post by rpazyaquian »

hinkley wrote: post #29
M4v3R wrote: post #7

> It’s easy to fall into habits like slacking off with Youtube, HackerNews and other social platforms – but have you ever stepped back to think how destructive it is? > I call it the “social loop of death” where you make your rounds on various sites and before you know it, 3.5 hours have past and you haven’t gotten anything done. > You end up getting 60 minutes worth of actual work done in an 8 hour day. I feel like…

Pomodoro. It trains you to stay on task for 25 minutes at a time, and evaluate how you did during the last cycle, both from a distraction standpoint and a chasing-your-tail standpoint. Over time you build up to 4.5-6 hours of solid, head-down coding a day.

I gotta admit, this sounds awful. Adding more mental overhead to your everyday habits sounds like it'd just make things worse.
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