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I've been using this "trick" for many years. An old mentor taught it to me, but he called it "park facing downhill". The idea is to leave the workday with the work in a state where there's an obvious and easy task to start the next day with, like parking your car facing downhill so that gravity will get you rolling before the engine is up to speed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the way. I stop working with tests passing but write a context comment on whats to be done next. It’s like flushing my working memory.
On the other hand it can be helpful, in my experience, to stop right in the middle of a very hard problem, where you are still searching for a good solution. Come the next morning I often know at least a possible solution, without having worked on it consciously.
I've been using this "trick" for many years. An old mentor taught it to me, but he called it "park facing downhill". The idea is to leave the workday with the work in a state where there's an obvious and easy task to start the next day with, like parking your car facing downhill so that gravity will get you rolling before the engine is up to speed.
It worked extremely well. Engineers just wanted to get on with their work as soon as they arrived in the morning. We'd have a 5 minute literal stand-up that really did only last 5 minutes because people were so impatient to get on with what they had put down the night before.
The policy had to stop when a new VP was hired who valued presenteeism and the appearance of hard work over focus and energy.
Leaving a test broken that is going to be straightforward to fix does help me pick up the pieces again the next day. A next steps text file helps too.
“ Before stepping away, leave the code in a state where it is Obviously Broken, but Easy to Fix. ”. So purposely introduce a break that you can fix would work just as well?
I typically use personal "Did do" and "To do" notes to leave myself breadcrumbs as to where I left off and where I should start again.
I've been using this "trick" for many years. An old mentor taught it to me, but he called it "park facing downhill". The idea is to leave the workday with the work in a state where there's an obvious and easy task to start the next day with, like parking your car facing downhill so that gravity will get you rolling before the engine is up to speed.
As an engineering director years ago I had the rule that engineers hours were 10am-6pm, and I'd walk around the office at 6pm and send people home. I'd get complaints that I was making people stop when they were in the middle of something, and I'd just say, you can carry on with it in the morning. It worked extremely well. Engineers just wanted to get on with their work as soon as they arrived in the morning. We'd ha…
Never stop until you know what you are going to pick up with next. https://www.fastcompany.com/3021905/hemingways-secret-to-mai...
Ideally, sure I'd fend off these attention suitors and get to them once I hit a stopping point. Love my job and my kids but this triggered me a lil bit. Somewhere along the line I feel like I just became battle hardened into actually accomplishing things regardless. Just a lot of picking up the pieces of context and ideally I left myself notes (e.g park facing downhill, a good mantra)