Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks • Hacker News Board

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#31

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 5:52 AM UTC

asciimo wrote: post #28

DenisM wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of GTD - if you found the book impossible to read, consider watching this video version: https://www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Getting-Thin...

Great link! I found it very possible to read; I read it at least 2.5 times across multiple physical and digital copies of two editions. Turning the words into actions is the hard part for me. Surely this is the format that's going to work :)

For me, turning the words into actions was the easy part. The hard part was sticking to the habit of doing weekly reviews. I always fail at this after few weeks, and if you don't do weekly reviews, suddenly the whole GTD methodology falls apart on you and you have to start over...

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#32

Post by Chiba-City » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 6:43 AM UTC

bartread wrote: post #23

Chiba-City wrote: post #22

We used (enforced) a writing method for software developers of three categories: So Far, More To Go, Save It For Later. It was something like a personal Kanban board for project members sharing a real schedule in weekly compiled/tested feature deliveries. This was a visibility feature for schedule and release rationalization. There were no Hail Mary pass negotiations or requests permitted. The prose mattered and proj…

"We used ( enforced ) a writing method"; "project leads were forced to read them"; "We fired people who could not write English right alongside" (emphasis mine in all cases). Forgive my bluntness, but your place of work sounds awful. "I attribute it to HR weeding out ADHD gamers suffering bad grammar of inadequate educations needing paychecks." Ironic, considering how poorly constructed this sentence is. You treat pe…

Smart clever people loved racking up resume win after win with high profile clients. Liking it is not in your job description.

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#33

Post by qualitytime » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 6:44 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #22

We used (enforced) a writing method for software developers of three categories: So Far, More To Go, Save It For Later. It was something like a personal Kanban board for project members sharing a real schedule in weekly compiled/tested feature deliveries. This was a visibility feature for schedule and release rationalization. There were no Hail Mary pass negotiations or requests permitted. The prose mattered and proj…

I see what you just did there. From the article: "Simply writing about your feelings may help you perform an upcoming stressful task more efficiently"

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#34

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 6:56 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #22

We used (enforced) a writing method for software developers of three categories: So Far, More To Go, Save It For Later. It was something like a personal Kanban board for project members sharing a real schedule in weekly compiled/tested feature deliveries. This was a visibility feature for schedule and release rationalization. There were no Hail Mary pass negotiations or requests permitted. The prose mattered and proj…

[deleted]

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#35

Post by dvt » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 7:00 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #32

bartread wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We used ( enforced ) a writing method"; "project leads were forced to read them"; "We fired people who could not write English right alongside" (emphasis mine in all cases). Forgive my bluntness, but your place of work sounds awful. "I attribute it to HR weeding out ADHD gamers suffering bad grammar of inadequate educations needing paychecks." Ironic, considering how poorly constructed this sentence is. You treat pe…

Smart clever people loved racking up resume win after win with high profile clients. Liking it is not in your job description.

> Liking it is not in your job description.

Of course it is. Culture is very important to one's job. In fact, if you don't like you're job, you're not going to do a good job. Some companies make millions off of that premise (see Bonusly).

I actually completely agree with the idea of prose being written alongside technical requirements, but the work environment (and your tone) sound god-awful.

And for what it's worth, I'm a gamer.

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#36

Post by hyperpallium » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 7:05 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #32

bartread wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We used ( enforced ) a writing method"; "project leads were forced to read them"; "We fired people who could not write English right alongside" (emphasis mine in all cases). Forgive my bluntness, but your place of work sounds awful. "I attribute it to HR weeding out ADHD gamers suffering bad grammar of inadequate educations needing paychecks." Ironic, considering how poorly constructed this sentence is. You treat pe…

Smart clever people loved racking up resume win after win with high profile clients. Liking it is not in your job description.

Can't argue for those results, but I wonder who decided "who could not write English"? Some other effect may be at work... e.g, perhaps having people who thought and communicated in compatible styles.

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#37

Post by michael_storm » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 7:14 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #32

bartread wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We used ( enforced ) a writing method"; "project leads were forced to read them"; "We fired people who could not write English right alongside" (emphasis mine in all cases). Forgive my bluntness, but your place of work sounds awful. "I attribute it to HR weeding out ADHD gamers suffering bad grammar of inadequate educations needing paychecks." Ironic, considering how poorly constructed this sentence is. You treat pe…

Smart clever people loved racking up resume win after win with high profile clients. Liking it is not in your job description.

Nah. Sounds like you fired everyone who didn't drink the Kool-Aid, then told yourself that whoever remained was smarter than those who'd left.

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#38

Post by tudorw » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 7:19 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #22

We used (enforced) a writing method for software developers of three categories: So Far, More To Go, Save It For Later. It was something like a personal Kanban board for project members sharing a real schedule in weekly compiled/tested feature deliveries. This was a visibility feature for schedule and release rationalization. There were no Hail Mary pass negotiations or requests permitted. The prose mattered and proj…

Your English is okay, you used initial caps after a colon for a sentence that is a dependent clause. 'It was not anything' needs help. Team time, should probably be team-time. Proofing is reasonable, though you missed the 'grammar of' which I assume should read 'grammar or', then the education should not be pluralised. I don't disagree with your point though :)

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#39

Post by Chiba-City » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 7:50 AM UTC

Chiba-City wrote: post #32

bartread wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We used ( enforced ) a writing method"; "project leads were forced to read them"; "We fired people who could not write English right alongside" (emphasis mine in all cases). Forgive my bluntness, but your place of work sounds awful. "I attribute it to HR weeding out ADHD gamers suffering bad grammar of inadequate educations needing paychecks." Ironic, considering how poorly constructed this sentence is. You treat pe…

Smart clever people loved racking up resume win after win with high profile clients. Liking it is not in your job description.

Back then educators and technical writers knew about pervasive passive voice writing problems. Brad Cox (Objective-C) ran our library and formalized onboarding. These were dark ages. Blog writing was yet to be. We walked people through "Dynamics of Software Development" and handfuls of shorter articles during lengthy onboarding. We shared examples of good writing. Project kickoff automaton was still instruction based and tarball then. We ran an internal early "best practices" Wiki to let people write more. We worked in groups on special projects more than task fulfilment. Group composition was important to clients. Our developers often shared our office space with clients on daily or weekly bases. We did a good job of doing a good job possible for that era. [Edits: typos]

Re: Expressive Writing Cools Brain on Stressful Tasks

#40

Post by klibertp » Mon, Sep 18, 2017, 8:00 AM UTC

bartread wrote: post #23

Chiba-City wrote: post #22

We used (enforced) a writing method for software developers of three categories: So Far, More To Go, Save It For Later. It was something like a personal Kanban board for project members sharing a real schedule in weekly compiled/tested feature deliveries. This was a visibility feature for schedule and release rationalization. There were no Hail Mary pass negotiations or requests permitted. The prose mattered and proj…

"We used ( enforced ) a writing method"; "project leads were forced to read them"; "We fired people who could not write English right alongside" (emphasis mine in all cases). Forgive my bluntness, but your place of work sounds awful. "I attribute it to HR weeding out ADHD gamers suffering bad grammar of inadequate educations needing paychecks." Ironic, considering how poorly constructed this sentence is. You treat pe…

> "We fired people who could not write English right alongside"

The rest of the "features" of the GP workplace aside, this one is something I wish I've seen more often.

Would you read a novel riddled with language errors? Where no sentence connects seamlessly to the next? Where there's an order of magnitude more implicit content to track than what is actually written? Where all the usual rules of orthography and punctuation are casually ignored, for no apparent reason? Where there's no structure to follow and things happen in a pretty much random order?

I wouldn't. Yet I have to read hundreds upon hundreds of pages of code written in such a fashion. It's not just about aesthetics - code like that is harder to work with and, I think, in most cases is a net loss in productivity, ie. it would be better if that code was never written. I understand not all the code can be written with sufficiently well-worded comments and docs, but there should be a limit to how bad things can get!

In other words, if you don't want to be treated like a child, please start writing like a grown-up instead of like a 5 years old who's convinced he's the best writer in the world.