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I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

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Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#121

Post by myth2018 »

deevolution wrote: post #105
emerongi wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Working from home changed my life in the opposite direction. Being able to fully manage my own time and not have someone breathing down my neck has enabled me to actually not procrastinate. I used to suffer from a lot of stress and anxiety and I think that fueled my procrastination. Now that I no longer suffer from those, I can just focus on work. For a while I've wondered how I even started procrastinating as hard a…

I think the stress and anxiety is caused by procrastination and the stress and anxiety causes further procrastination. It's a loop! The trick is to get out of the loop by establishing productive, rewarding habits.

I totally agree and I got caught in such loop. And it took me too long to do something about. Had to reach a really sad local minimum until I decided to act.

I will maybe write something about this in the future. When it comes to procrastination, people are usually so concerned about not realizing their full potentials. But it can be much worse than that. I was concerned about a suboptimal improvement and I ended up in a position worse than when I started.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#123

Post by koala_man »

saghm wrote: post #76
sh87 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some pre-requisites to Pair programming. That you need to have a well defined task, that you need not be bogged down by insane deadlines and can afford to have 2 people work on the same thing and both need to be well versed at the task at hand to live up to the promise of productivity. My experience pair programming for a year was sh*tty enough to never consider it again unless I have these pre-reqs met. I'…

I haven't had a job that required pair programming, but I've found it can be a pretty useful tool in certain circumstances. There have been a number of times when a colleague and I have naturally fell into pair programming for tasks, normally starting with us just sharing ideas and one of us eventually jumping in front of a keyboard and the two of us trying out several ideas live. It certainly isn't as formal as "pai…

I'd rather have a design session and a code review in that case.

What I've found pair programming useful for is tooling and workflow.

When working that closely you'll notice when they hit a few keys and are suddenly in the right file, and you go "wait, what did you just do?" and they tell you about this great new Vim plugin.

Inversely, they start doing something really manual and you can say "hey, I do this a lot do I wrote this utility script that automates it"

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#124

Post by mratzloff »

williamdclt wrote: post #41
StaticRedux wrote: post #29

Now do that for a month. Or even a week. You may be more productive bc you don't want to be seen as slacking off with someone watching, but maintaining that kind of pace is untenable. Did you ever get stuck and check your email or Facebook just to give your brain a little break? Did you ever sit, unsure of your next move? Or did you do the first thing you thought of, even if it was wrong, so you didn't look like you…

That's one way to see it. Another way is "I've shown that I got some unleashed productivity potential. How can I make it sustainable rather than an exhausting sprint?". In other words "how to make it a habit", habits are easy to sustain I'm not arguing for having a stranger watching you all the times or that you should only think about productivity, just that it shows that there's a margin for improvement that can't…

It's not sustainable. Your brain needs downtime, just like you can't run everywhere you go.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#125

Post by drdeca »

Erlich_Bachman wrote: post #63
drdeca wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For me, guilt/shame is something to be overcome, not used as a tool. Wow, I think I quite strongly disagree. What do you think it exists _for_ ? It is good for society that people have the capacity for guilt and shame. If we did not, I cannot see any other recourse other than fear!

It sounds like you are basing your life on negative emotions only. Just so you know, there is another universe out there, based on positive ones.

By “recourse” I meant “recourse for bad behavior”.

Society must have a way to discourage bad behavior, not only encourage good behavior.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#126

Post by perl4ever »

I used to think that the sense of "having to look over my shoulder" with all the productivity monitoring going on was what made me miserable at work. But I'm now in a different environment, and it has been revealed to me that the issue I had was not at all what I thought. The problem was that I was formerly employed to do technical stuff and all of the administrative work was just piled on as extra stuff, theoretically required, but all metrics involved the actual technical work. Now I have a job that is just administrative, and anything involving programming is extra. Now that mentally I am in the mode of doing administrative work as my real job, it no longer seems like a burden to be doing it every minute of the day, and accounting for every minute, and I don't even mind having my phone turned off all day so I don't spend any time goofing off.

What I'm saying is that the agonizing thing for me was the contradiction, the equivocation between saying "you're employed to program, etc., but you also have to do all this stuff that interrupts your thought process, but we don't really care how you cope with it..."

Now that my primary task is the administrative stuff (working with project managers), suddenly it doesn't hurt! I'm being compensated and valued for doing it. Any programming I may do is extra.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#127

Post by OrgNet »

tessmann wrote: post #46

Well in China they do that with cameras see if students are focusing on the classroom. I think the feeling may be the same.

A camera or knowing that someone can remotely view your computer screen at any time should do the trick.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#128

Post by perl4ever »

perl4ever wrote: post #126

I used to think that the sense of "having to look over my shoulder" with all the productivity monitoring going on was what made me miserable at work. But I'm now in a different environment, and it has been revealed to me that the issue I had was not at all what I thought. The problem was that I was formerly employed to do technical stuff and all of the administrative work was just piled on as extra stuff, theoretical…

You know, I wonder if the advice I would give a younger me, circa 20 years ago, is don't do what you enjoy for a living. Get your satisfaction at work out of doing something that needs doing and that other people appreciate, but don't do what you enjoy for itself, because that only makes you a target for exploitation, and you won't get to do it in a way that you like. Be a janitor and not a prostitute.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#129

Post by noego »

perl4ever wrote: post #126

I used to think that the sense of "having to look over my shoulder" with all the productivity monitoring going on was what made me miserable at work. But I'm now in a different environment, and it has been revealed to me that the issue I had was not at all what I thought. The problem was that I was formerly employed to do technical stuff and all of the administrative work was just piled on as extra stuff, theoretical…

You've touched upon something that made me find work a lot more bearable as well. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what your designated "primary" task is, as long as you tell yourself that your primary task is to do whatever the business requires.

I used to get extremely frustrated whenever I got bogged down by inefficiencies, grunt work, or bad technical/business decisions made by others. Until one day I came to the realization that my employer isn't paying me to do things I enjoy. They are paying me to provide them with services they need. I certainly speak up if I think there's a better way of doing things, but I recognize that big corporations by their nature are bureaucratic, political and inefficient. If I dislike my work so much, I can certainly leave and work for myself, or find a different employer. Until then, they are certainly paying me extremely well, so I have no reason to complain for having to do some grunt work.

This subtle shift in attitude has made work so much more enjoyable. Every time I find myself frustrated by something, I remind myself this is precisely the reason I'm getting paid the big bucks. My job isn't to solve all the company's problems, it is simply to do the best job I can within the work hours agreed upon, so why complain. Having low expectations truly does make you happier.

Re: I let a stranger watch me work for a day and I've never been more productive

#130

Post by novarek »

I see it as a version of telling people something you're trying to do so you feel more pressure to do it, a classic trick to force yourself to start habits.

This sounds a bit extreme though, and I'm not sure if it actually reinforces the bad habit of needing someone watching you in order to do any work.

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