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Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

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Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#11

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

voidr wrote: post #6

What if our brain is actually a multi core machine that has millions of cores? Would you still force it to use one core? What if the task you just put into background kept working on it's own? I think humans were built to multitask, our environment is too complex to be single threaded, think driving: you need o pay attention to multiply things at the same time.

"What if our brain is actually a multi core machine that has millions of cores?"

The brain has billions of cores on parallel units, but they are unconscious.

"Would you still force it to use one core?"

No, you can't use only one at all, but you use "the one",the conscious brain(that could only do one thing at the same time) to coordinate them all, you should "force" the millions of cores to work in the same thing at the same time.

"I think humans were built to multitask, our environment is too complex to be single threaded, think driving: you need o pay attention to multiply things at the same time."

They were built to multi task over the same thing. If you go hunting but you are also thinking on your girlfriend while you remember the taste of the food you ate yesterday and try your nephew does not get hurt you won't be as efficient as someone that focus all their senses and thoughts over one single task.

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#12

Post by chrislomax »

This is the first news story I have bookmarked, ever. Mainly because I got distracted and started reading Mashable.

Jokes aside, I thought I had a form of ADHD with how much distractions distracted me. It's quite comforting to know other people operate this way.

I have recently, as kind of a new years resolution, aimed to be more productive. I have found myself managing my project management list more efficiently and using my "priority" status on my tasks. When I get in, in the morning, I just work top down on my priority list.

My main issue was down to not knowing fully what my next task was so I would spend time finding the task that needs sorting. I have found that the extra 15 mins a day I spend updating my task list has saved hours per week.

This has also helped when you get to the end of projects and you get the small tasks that can take hours to sort when there is no clear defined list.

I'm a task completion junkie, I feel good when I mark a task 100% and the changes I have made so far this year have fuelled my addiction.

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#13

Post by jstntherhckr »

Aren't we all distraction junkies in some way or other? Haven't we immersed ourselves in hedonism so deep, that we can't make out noise from signal? Every little part of our lives, is given to so many instant gratifications. We have become information gluttons and unfortunately we don't even seem to realize it.

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#15

Post by greenyoda »

voidr wrote: post #6

What if our brain is actually a multi core machine that has millions of cores? Would you still force it to use one core? What if the task you just put into background kept working on it's own? I think humans were built to multitask, our environment is too complex to be single threaded, think driving: you need o pay attention to multiply things at the same time.

Software development seems to be something that's very different than what humans were "built" (evolved) for. During the millions of years over which our brains evolved, we had to be acutely aware of our environment so that we didn't get eaten while foraging for food. Driving might be similar to that: keeping your eye out for danger while your main goal is navigating your car to its destination. But that doesn't suggest to me a million-core machine -- it's more like a foreground process with a couple of lower-priority background processes. And adding just a few extra distractions to driving -- cell phones, texting, kids yelling in the back seat -- increases the probability of accidents, which suggests that our capacity for attention is quite limited.

However, software development calls for a very different kind of mental work, one we couldn't have evolved to be good at since our species only started doing it very recently: juggling multiple levels of abstractions in your head along with countless low-level details. That's so hard to do that trying to do it concurrently with other tasks severely degrades our ability to do it. Paul Graham wrote about this very eloquently in his essay "Holding a Program in One's Head" (http://paulgraham.com/head.html).

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#16

Post by tobiasSoftware »

I would add to this a way to keep on coding while compiling. Sometimes I read the code, which does give a coding break since I am taking input and not producing output. However, at the same time I might discover errors, figure out better ways of coding something, and learn or remember how to software I wrote works.

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#17

Post by amrtn »

twiceaday wrote: post #3

I find that it depends on the project, but there have been times when I am so focused I start coding in the shower. Then proceed to forget to eat breakfast... lunch... and dinner. I just forget about my body.

That have not happened to me even once. My brain needs too much sugar to function propery and if I miss a meal he won't work at all. On the other hand I can easily disconnect my body from my brain while riding my bike and forget completely about eating & drinking. When I reach my limit I faint, stumble and fall.

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#18

Post by yason »

I think I just mostly try go with the flow. Often I don't succeed in that but sometimes I do and it feels good.

Give me an interesting task that has few dependencies to others and you're going to have a hard time removing me from the computer. Give me a loose task that requires a lot of waiting and you're going to have a hard time removing me from HN or from other interests.

If I try to be highly productive all the time, I just fail myself and get depressed. Since that doesn't work I try to optimize my workflow by working on things that benefit from the idle lulls. Tasks that last days or weeks are most suitable: there might be a lot of "idling" but when I get to writing code I can bang 16 hours straight and accomplish in a day what would otherwise have taken ten days.

Conversely, doing a lot of communication-bound work will soon make me feel busy and exhausted. I'll be waiting or polling something all the time, and what's worse, I can't start anything I think is real work because I have to maintain the stack of pending tasks all the time so I know how to unwind when they finish one by one. If I dive into something then it'll take even more time for me to figure out what to do when I next hit the event loop again.

I try to teach myself that even little work is enough: working like I would love to work, the artist's way of work, is pretty much impossible in a business environment. If I'm confident I've done enough eventhough it's nothing compared to a weekend roll with a hobby project, then I don't feel so bad about getting "nothing" done. And when I get done a lot, I try to enjoy it as a precious window of time rather than the minimal bar I should reach in the following weeks.

Re: Are You a Zen Coder or Distraction-Junkie?

#20

Post by farkob »

I don't think this article offers anything to solve the problem. I believe most of the people can identify the problem. Yeah you check your mail or facebook while you're working and it causes productivity loss. But just being aware of it doesn't solve the problem. It's like when people try to lose weight they know they have to eat healthy or less but just knowing that again doesn't make them easily lose weight. Because just like losing weight, the problem about productivity isn't about knowing what to do or what not to do. Everybody knows what to do, it's simple, no distractions = better work. Real problem is avoiding that one quick facebook check every day and every hour.
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