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One weird trick: leave some code NOT compiling or with failing test or runtime error. Come in, reproduce the error and you’ll be back in it quickly!
30min downtime after work however is nothing, that's not warmup, that is well deserved rest and while meditating sounds super healthy and mahjong doesn't I'd argue it's quite similar. I think your brain needs this, especially if you do mental work during the day. But even on a free schedule I'd say off-time keeps me sharp.
If you took hours on a saturday I'd recommend habits: read hn (or what ever you choose, just not all of it) in bed so you than have a clear cut by getting up. Than have some pleasure along with starting your todo: good coffe and a nice sandwich or something.
Another trick is keeping your todos tiny: find a tiny thing you can do right now without it feeling a burden and don't feel pressured to do more. Once doing it it's often easy to continue by free will or at least have the task working in your brain in the background to get you back to it later.
One weird trick: leave some code NOT compiling or with failing test or runtime error. Come in, reproduce the error and you’ll be back in it quickly!
One weird trick: leave some code NOT compiling or with failing test or runtime error. Come in, reproduce the error and you’ll be back in it quickly!
Hemingway would stop writing right when he was getting to something good, so he could continue on the next day.
I will say, this did not occur when I "picked up" something else. If I worked on another project or went to the gym and did something stimulating (sparring, not just picking up weights), then I had no issues disengaging from the day's work.
Let me elaborate - If you have a TODO list of N work items that could belong to one or more of - Set A - require more thinking Set B - require larger communication overhead Set C - have a clear go-to strategy and can be broken into multiple items
Then, picking up the items more inclined to Set C right after you reach the office might be a good strategy. The obvious reasons are a. you know what to do and b. you know how much time its going to take
Just out of curiosity, do you mind sharing some info about your circumstances? - what kind of job? - which country / state / etc? - what hobbies, especially sports do you have? - what exactly is the problem with your old schedule?
I'm python developer, worked in a startup before doing all kind of technical stuff from product development, through infrastructure to daily development routine. I work remotely (however I rent a co-working desk for simple reason to have clear division between home time and work time), I'm based in London. Well, sport is sort of my Achilles heel - another thing I constantly fail to improve... Old schedule resulted in…
Unfortunately I don't have The Perfect Advice™, sorry :-)
I would probably do some self-reflection on my job situation. "Am I failing to deliver what is expected?" "Is my daily routine seriously that inefficient?" etc.
Sometimes we want to fix things which are not broken in the first place. YMMV
One weird trick: leave some code NOT compiling or with failing test or runtime error. Come in, reproduce the error and you’ll be back in it quickly!
Relevant, you are not alone: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/