We should declare our desks sacred, and define a set of rituals to perform at those desks, to calm the Gods of Creativity and ask their forgiveness for all those sins we committed in their temple - the Desks.
Things I've quit doing at my desk
71–80 of 97 posts
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#72I would add "Eating" to the list. I eat at my desk all the time, and I really need to stop. When I eat at my desk, I'm generally eating things that aren't that healthy to begin with, snacking unnecessarily, and/or eating too quickly, and doing it in some misguided notion that I'm able to work and eat at the same time. I'm not actually productive at times like that, it just lets me deal with some illogical guilt I fee…
Yeah, this is high on my list too. Often I fool myself by thinking that I need to eat to concentrate. Of course it ended up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy (if I don't eat I can't concentrate).
I think a lot of times, what we do at our desk are some sort of "rituals" that we think help us to get into the zone. Most of the time they just get in our way of doing things.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#73I call BS. Nobody has a desk that looks like that.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me this is an important step to help get rid of mindless eating. That kind of eating, where a hand goes reaching into a bag of fried shit to grab one more piece of something you never wanted to eat in the first place. I'm not great at it yet, but I try to stop myself before every bite and ask "Am I hungry?" in my head. I stop way earlier in meals, I eat more frequently with much smaller amounts, and I honestly hav…
I have this problem and will mindlessly eat anything in arm's reach while working. I used to buy mints for anyone passing by to have, but would eat them myself... and they would go fast. I put on about 10kg before I realised that it was because I was essentially eating a bag of sugar every day...
For a couple of weeks my wife bought me chocolate-coated coffee beans once a week. These lasted about 5min once I remembered about them at work, due to (a) yumminess, (b) tendency just to mindlessly eat at the desk.
After that, because chocolate-coated coffee beans are expensive, I figured I'd cut out the middleman and I bought a 5kg bag of coffee beans and just munched my way through that.
DO NOT DO THIS, even though it sounds cool.
After a couple of hours the increased caffeine made me jittery, my heart rate was up, my head hurt and my skin was dry and scratchy.
After a few weeks I quit that. It was hard. I'm a water addict now.
/CSB
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's really unfortunate that, for many bosses, if you're sitting, staring at your screen you "must be working." To really increase productivity we need to give employees the flexibility to reach "true productivity". True productivity isn't sitting in a desk all day: it's achieving a good measure of quality work.
And some bosses, like mine unfortunately, are so uptight about it that if I stop and stare at a wall / ceiling / close my eyes for even 30 seconds trying to solve an issue, I get the ok get to work speech and 15 things added to my already too long list.
Dude, get another job. Seriously. I've been in this kind of environment before and there is nothing good about it. That kind of garbage creates stress that is going to shorten your life.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#76I quit working at my desk.
It's uncomfortable (despite considerable investment), takes a lot of space, has terrible lighting, is too hot or too cold and is eerily quiet. It's quite depressing really.
I tend to sit in the garden when it's not raining - good lighting, relaxing ambient noise and great air (which is really important). Plus you can get up and walk around regularly and focus on stuff that isn't right in front of you.
The only downside is bird crap and my neighbours think I'm insane.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#77I would add "Eating" to the list. I eat at my desk all the time, and I really need to stop. When I eat at my desk, I'm generally eating things that aren't that healthy to begin with, snacking unnecessarily, and/or eating too quickly, and doing it in some misguided notion that I'm able to work and eat at the same time. I'm not actually productive at times like that, it just lets me deal with some illogical guilt I fee…
Often when I think I'm hungry, I'm actually thirsty. A glass of warmed water (surprisingly) quashes the need to snack. Cold water is no good. Does anyone know why that is?
I remember reading somewhere once that warm drinks are more easily absorbed by the body than cold drinks. Maybe it's something to do with that?
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that too - much of my best thinking in the past has come to me during the walk to the office or back home again. I once took to carrying a dictation machine so I could capture these thoughts because I used to find that the process of arriving at the office, making a coffee, booting up and logging on used to distract me and I'd forget what I'd thought of while walking. My theory about thinking and walking is th…
I suspect it's a mental context switch more than anything physiological. For example, I'm pretty bad at creative tasks when at a keyboard (this was also true in pre-internet times, so it's not a matter of distractions), but sit me down with a pencil and paper and the juices start to flow. It just creates a different state of mind.
I combine both by walking near a blackboard.
I tried to replace pencil & paper with minimalist emacs buffer but .. paper is non linear, just like thought trails so it's a better fit for now.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#79> Even better, I’ve felt more freedom to just walk away when I’m faced with a problem and need to do some thinking
I don't have a standing desk, but this is possibly my biggest incentive to consider getting one: if you're already standing, there's a lot less inertia to keep you from just walking away from your desk.
Re: Things I've quit doing at my desk
#80#1 (thinking elsewhere, especially while taking a walk) is definitely true for me, but it does require being in a setting where you're allowed to leave the office for a few hours in the middle of the day to go for a walk in a nearby park. In academia or at your own startup, probably not a problem, but many companies aren't very accommodating of people leaving the office for hours at a time.
Back in the pre-smartphone days, I used to take some code printouts and a legal pad -- whatever I needed to reference while I was thinking, and space to write down my thoughts -- and go out to lunch solo at a sit-down restaurant. Going to a separate space where I didn't have either my IDE or any distractions like a web browser seemed to give me better space to think through a problem. Lunch dragged on for a couple of…
This has made me wonder: a tablet app that took a codebase and let you sketch notes and reference anchors to other files in a transparent canvas layered over the code (a stylus would be required, though).
Something like mindmapping over a code printout that could be exported back to your IDE or text editor via a plugin, maybe.