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A trick to reaching flow: Leave your work broken

census.dev

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

#181

Post by JonChesterfield »

augment001 wrote: post #24
JohnFen wrote: post #6

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…

I'd have quit over that. If the work is interesting and going well I'm not stopping because someone likes to exercise control over my schedule, I'll build something else instead.

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

#182

Post by withinboredom »

pl90087 wrote: post #178
withinboredom wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes you have another computer that isn't a brick. I have 6 other computers within this house, yet only one other one (my wife's) is currently functioning.

Either you have been extremely unlucky, or a good time investment for you would be to fix a few of the non-working ones. That's likely a better use of your time than wondering how to leave notes to your future self.

I was actually advocating not to bother leaving notes for yourself.

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

#184

Post by butz »

I like leaving some easy finishing touches at the end of the day, so next morning starts with a quick win and morale boost. Or even leaving in the evening with no idea how to solve the issue, usually solution comes itself until next morning.

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

#185

Post by lisp-pornstar »

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…

Some people at a previous job used vscode, passed their day clicking at stuff with their mouse, navigating directories via a native file explorer, using GUIs to commit their changes, using windows with no knowledge related to virtual desktop management, automating nothing etc... That wasn't no problem at all : they did their job and at the end of the day they wrote code. But then, with the right tools you could have done what they did in half the time, minimizing all the unnecessary micro-movements with some keybindings and some editor plugins or some really good text editor. Now, if paired with this mechanical mastery you have a good ability to pack related problems/functionalities to implement and are efficient at solving them/implementing them; then you can add some multiplier to the mechanical speed explained in the previous paragraph. That's some weird way to think about this, but let's say the ideal instance of the project requires X lines of code; if you work faster, then you reach a higher level of expertise on the project codebase and by this excess of expertise you gain speed relatively to others which in turn makes you more expert and so on. Except, working "fullspeed" is more tiring than working "normally" and you usually don't want to have a tornado in your team that write 50+ -major changes- commits a day and that cannot cooperate with others because they cannot follow up and are "too slow" to even review those changes. You decide to fire "slow" workers, but then the tornado must work 9+ hours a day to keep up with your expectations and finally burn-out leaving a work that every other member of the team fails to understand, due to too much litterature to read written by some sort of alien. So I'm fine with programming 2 to 4 hours a day, since, as an alien-tornado, I prefer my code to be read, reviewed, and understood by my peers.

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

#186

Post by catiopatio »

lisp-pornstar wrote: post #185
catiopatio wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Some people at a previous job used vscode, passed their day clicking at stuff with their mouse, navigating directories via a native file explorer, using GUIs to commit their changes, using windows with no knowledge related to virtual desktop management, automating nothing etc... That wasn't no problem at all : they did their job and at the end of the day they wrote code. But then, with the right tools you could have…

Some of us are good at our jobs, use our tools well, and work for the hours we’re paid to work.

You’re not a 10x “alien tornado”, you’re just a fish in a very, very, very tiny pond.

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

#187

Post by mock-possum »

JonChesterfield wrote: post #181
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…

I'd have quit over that. If the work is interesting and going well I'm not stopping because someone likes to exercise control over my schedule, I'll build something else instead.

I do get what you’re saying on the one hand, I feel the same way, but - is your employer compensating you for working past 6pm, in this imaginary scenario? I started out doing a lot of hourly work earlier in my career, and sure, if I was on a roll I could jam for hours, and I was gettin paid accordingly.

Lately, in salaried positions, I’ve basically had to break myself of that habit - that’s my free time I’m cutting into when I stay late. In emergency situations, I’m happy to stick around later if possible, with the understanding that there’s bonus compensation or at least comp time queued up for me - but if I’m just feeling engaged when 6pm rolls around? Im out, I’ve got dinner to cook and videogames to play.

Work will wait for tomorrow, part of what I’m getting paid for in standard work week is developing on a schedule, you know?

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

#188

Post by mock-possum »

nonethewiser wrote: post #39
gweinberg wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you don't get there until 10 is isn't. But enforcing a late start is a lot harder than enforcing an early finish. What are you going to do, refuse to let people in if they show up early? Besides, sometimes you can't help it. When I was taking BART to work, I had to get to the station before the parking filled up.

It’s still late in absolute terms. Not everything can just shift around to an abnormally late work schedule. This sort of schedule gives you virtually no free time with kids. Get home, eat, put kids to bed, wake up early because school doesn’t start at 10am, send them to school, wait a bit, leave for work. We are lucky that things are more flexible now. I don’t blame the manager. It was a different time. But it’s a s…

Your problem should not be how early or how late the schedule is - your problem should be that it’s arbitrary across all workers, regardless of circumstance.

We all would prefer to work a particular schedule - we all deserve to be able to negotiate our hours based on necessary overlap with our coworkers preferences.

“I wake up early so all of you have to wake up early” and “I work late so all of you have to work late” are both not nice.

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

#189

Post by lisp-pornstar »

catiopatio wrote: post #186
lisp-pornstar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people at a previous job used vscode, passed their day clicking at stuff with their mouse, navigating directories via a native file explorer, using GUIs to commit their changes, using windows with no knowledge related to virtual desktop management, automating nothing etc... That wasn't no problem at all : they did their job and at the end of the day they wrote code. But then, with the right tools you could have…

Some of us are good at our jobs, use our tools well, and work for the hours we’re paid to work. You’re not a 10x “alien tornado”, you’re just a fish in a very, very, very tiny pond.

What I am saying is that this conception of work is absurd. The truth is you are hired to build stuff, not for being at an office during X time. I like fishes, that's cute.

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

#190

Post by catiopatio »

lisp-pornstar wrote: post #189
catiopatio wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us are good at our jobs, use our tools well, and work for the hours we’re paid to work. You’re not a 10x “alien tornado”, you’re just a fish in a very, very, very tiny pond.

What I am saying is that this conception of work is absurd. The truth is you are hired to build stuff, not for being at an office during X time. I like fishes, that's cute.

I’m hired to spend the time I’ve been paid for building stuff.

If I only dedicate 2.5 hours every day to my work, I’m not meeting that obligation.

If I start accounting for my showers and commute as working hours, I’m being dishonest with both myself and my employer.

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