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Embrace the Grind

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241–250 of 320 posts

Re: Embrace the Grind

#241
I would argue this is predicated on others not knowing your doing on the days leading to the delivery of the result.

This is fine for a magic trick, but I think the work example may be more difficult to realise if there is accountability. It'd be magic if you can deliver an extraordinary value per time unit spent.

I also think there is challenge and beauty in completing something which you consider tedious. There is opportunity for exercising self-restraint and speed of delivery.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#242
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is why it's so utterly toxic that corporate America runs on an interrupt driven system, with meetings sprinkled carelessly across engineer calendars. I agree with this statement and your other points. I’ve noticed a more insidious variant of this behavior: the expectation of interruptions. Some groups have such frequent priority shifts and/or a culture of fire fighting or door knocking such that even with a r…

I think you can blame "agile thinking" for that and the general laziness in product planning which is so typical of the last 10 years. We went from recognising that requirements may change after planning to zero planning and telling developers what's the next priority for the day, day by day. This lack of planning and product definition is also what drives the lack of documentation, which is another big problem in 20…

It's my pet theory that we have to go back 50 years and do waterfall right.

See http://bawiki.com/wiki/Waterfall.html

Re: Embrace the Grind

#243

This is really what it takes to make a quality product. It's not only being able to focus long enough to get the job done, but also having co-workers that also value quality and focus. I get so annoyed with co-workers who don't value quality. Everything has to be done yesterday, quick and dirty, with little to no care involved. And for what? To move on to upper management's other random idea that probably isn't great…

I find there is a general assumption that quality means things will be more expansive, and take longer. To the contrary, I have often times found that a quality driven approach ultimately gets you to the goal faster and cheaper. However there are strong incentives to get ‘something’ working as quickly as possible at the expense of quality. That then sets expectations of the standards of quality that persist.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#244
post #85
post #16

This quote stuck out to me: > More trouble than the trick was worth? To you, probably. But not to magicians. It makes me realize how fundamentally different the values are between some fields. The amount of time magicians put into the craft is mind-boggling. I see it also with how movies are made -- to think that sometimes they're spending days or months and tens of thousands of dollars, building sets, waiting for th…

> It makes me realize how fundamentally different the values are between some fields. The amount of time magicians put into the craft is mind-boggling. Larry Wall was quoted in the article, regarding laziness. Bill Gates has a famous quote, "I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." Neither of those people can be accused of laziness, yet they both embrace it. Lazi…

They both use the word “lazy” to make their quotes memorable. But that’s it. They’re not actually describing real life laziness.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#246
Going into off-topic: It's kind of funny that in the "Anatomy of a Scene" for "The Accountant" that is linked in the article they explain that for making the scene, they didn't have Ben Affleck write all the hand writing himself, but instead took a handwriting sample and used that to make a full wallpaper from it digitally.

So they did exactly the opposite of embracing the grind and just simulated it.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#247

"People said I did the impossible, but that’s wrong: I merely did something so boring that nobody else had been willing to do it." Well, for some people it is indeed impossible to keep on working on boring tasks regulary without going crazy or dying inside. I feel like this. And I was proven right on quite some times - to not do an endless work of stupidity - and instead find a clever way around to automate and save…

It's not necessary that these two approaches can't coexist. In my experience, you HAVE to put in the slog to gain deep knowledge which lets you do these "clever tricks".

https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1311343418422046721

Re: Embrace the Grind

#248

It's funny. I was talking with the team on a call, yesterday, and one of them was telling me we should hire someone to do "the boring stuff," so I would be free to do "the fun stuff." I said no. I've been shipping (as opposed to "writing") software for over thirty years, and, if there's one thing I've learned, is that "shipping" software is about 60% - 80% "boring" stuff. I can avoid it, if I'm only interested in "ha…

Different strokes for different folks - and a mix of different types is often necessary.

I remember the very first time I ever completed (through by work at the time) a psychological profile. (I know such things are mostly discredited, but bear with me). I think it was based around Belbin's team profiles.

I came out as a creative, innovative, 'starter' of things - which actually matches me pretty well: I'm excited by solutions and new ideas, but I often don't complete personal (and sometimes professional!) projects 100% - I've lost interest and moved onto the next shiny thing by then. (Professionally, I'm best with a complimentary team around me.)

A colleague who I got on well with but also often found frustrating, came out as a 'completer finisher'. Which again aligned well with my observation of her and her own testimony of where she drew her gratification from, and also explained why I sometimes found her frustrating: because we were total opposites in this regard.

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Anyway... maybe the situation you describe on your team is explained somewhat by this? You both want to work on aspects of a project that you find gratifying - but you derive gratification from different aspects?

Re: Embrace the Grind

#249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm familiar with the experience - not directly from ADHD, but from my own issues. Trying desperately to keep on top of things, running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. I'm not saying that "ADHD is easy, just don't be lazy lol", but that you may still be able to do a little better than yesterday if you practice the right skills. I'm in no position to hold someone with ADHD to baseline standards, but…

You might, and you might not. The incentives for me to be better are already as strong as they can possibly be. Not to screw up my health worse, not to lose my marriage, not to lose my job, not to make rash financial decisions. The amount of effort I put into this already is just exhausting. I'm glad I recognise these days the times when the car is out of gas and people are telling me "if you just turned the key a li…

At the end of the day, every individual knows themselves better than anybody else does. I'm just relaying that it helped me, even though I was trying really hard to stay afloat and struggling to focus on most aspects of my life, to just practice focusing - working harder wouldn't have done anything because I didn't have the focus to apply to hard work in the first place. I have no idea whether people with ADHD can improve their focus, but there's people out there who think they might be because they can't focus but aren't, and don't realise that focus is a skill you can practice.

Re: Embrace the Grind

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a great way to end up being the "expert" in PHP, Rails, frontend dev, and other stuff you actually don't really enjoy doing, and have everyone just keep assigning you those tickets instead of lifting a finger to do it themselves. Ask me how I know.

Hmmm....it landed me as the tech lead for all of IT and development.

Survivorship bias?
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