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A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

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Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#81

Post by actionfromafar »

catiopatio wrote: post #58
irrational wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm over 50. I work from home now, but when I did have to go into the office, I'd typically show up just before 10:30 standup and head out by 4. And I'd take an hour or two to workout in the one of the fitness facilities on campus in between. My bosses have always been happy with my work and output.

With an hour for lunch, that’s only 2.5-3.5 hours of work a day. Even less factoring in the stand-up. What role were you able to be successful at while only putting in 2.5hrs of work a day? Posted as an edit, since YC is doing its inexplicable rate-limiting on replies to this thread: > Work != presence. In a role in which you don't have to sit in front of a computer, 3h presence could mean 8+ hours of work. … I typic…

Somebody got a case of the Mondays!

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#82

Post by aequitas »

yuuuuyu wrote: post #67
augment001 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That could backfire. Maybe they were in the middle of something hard that's difficult to pick up from. To use the metaphor, perhaps you would be forcing them to park uphill.

Or they could have been stuck driving in circles. A good nights sleep often offers a fresh perspective to tackle a problem from a different direction.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#87

Post by m463 »

gavmor wrote: post #74

"Go Home Red" is a slogan I've heard tossed around the length of my career, meaning "leave a unit test failing overnight." It's trivial if you're practicing TDD, since most of your time is spent coding against a failing test. A failing test really expands your short-term memory, ameliorating interruptions like meetings, Slack messages, and having a life. Regarding open loops "living rent-free in my head," preoccupati…

one thing that helped me with open loops is to have what David Allen of GTD calls a "Trusted System"

It's a system you trust to record those ideas bumping around in your head. That lets you get them OUT of your head until you start working again, and relax.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#88

Post by m463 »

generic92034 wrote: post #16
Cardinal7167 wrote: post #5

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.

can't tell you how many great solutions appeared in my head in those moments when you're awake before getting out of bed.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#89

Post by semireg »

augment001 wrote: post #73
yuuuuyu wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could backfire. Maybe they were in the middle of something hard that's difficult to pick up from. To use the metaphor, perhaps you would be forcing them to park uphill.

> Maybe they were in the middle of something hard that's difficult to pick up from. Certainly some of them said that, and I had to push for them to leave anyway. I also feel like that when I’m coding myself sometimes. But I think the of times when it’s actually true are vastly outnumbered by the times when it’s just an illusion, and it was obvious from the velocity and energy level that the policy worked.

I pick the kids up from daycare at 4:30. Every few days its 4:25, I’m in the middle of something and I’ll spend 60 seconds writing out simple English sentences or bullet-points of what I need to accomplish when I get back to my desk. This context switch allows me to disengage. Sometimes I’m tempted to try “one more thing” a “Hail Mary” but it almost always backfires into a future wrong-approach distraction.

Re: A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

#90

Post by nmat »

irrational wrote: post #29
augment001 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

6pm? Man, I’m so glad I didn’t work for you. That is late.

This is big generalisation. In South Europe leaving at 6pm is early. Most of the people I know have standup after 10h30 and do 1h lunch breaks.
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