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“Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

vangemert.dev

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Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#121

Post by BitsAndObjects »

breuleux wrote: post #115
BitsAndObjects wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hear hear! I maintain it’s because productive people know how to focus on what matters, to cut through the noise, and it’s not just by carefully thinking things through (though that’s an important skill too). It’s partly because they “just don’t see” the noise - if you like, they’re not distracted by it, they can tune it out - or rather, they don’t need to spend any energy tuning it out because they don’t ‘see’ or he…

I don’t tidy up very often, but when I do, it doesn’t take much time or energy. I just dump everything that isn’t version controlled into a junk folder, and it feels great.

Instructions unclear: I purchased multiple bins, labeled them V1, V2, V3, and have dumped most of my pens, pencils and notebooks into them. What now?

Lol

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#122

Post by ventricity »

donatj wrote: post #93

I've worked in the software industry for just over twenty years now. In my experience basically without question the most productive people I have known have had the messiest most chaotic setups online and offline. Hundreds of windows open, more icons on their desktop than it can display. I worked with an older gentleman for the last decade until recent layoffs who had worked on Oregon Trail for MECC. Single most pro…

I know and have known plenty intelligent coworkers that spend more time organizing and creating structures and planning than actually doing anything useful. I had a colleague who spent so much time setting up his coding environment and whatnot - that when we finished the project he hadn't done anything. at all.

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#123

Post by thenoblesunfish »

I personally find the same approach very effective. It forces me to know where to look for things, and to document things because I cannot hold onto the fiction of being able to hold it all in mind.

But the real advice here is "think about what you're doing". Any system, whether it's "clear your workspace" or "arrange absolutely everything so its visible" probably works, because you're acting deliberately.

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#124

Post by Trufa »

echelon wrote: post #62
Trufa wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be pretty lost without my pretty crazy zellij setup.

I thought this might be a neat JetBrains thing. Turns out this is an even cooler tmux. Thanks for sharing, I'm gonna grab this right away.

I never got the hand of tmux, and I really tried, but zellij clicked immediately

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#125

Post by manmal »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #107
manmal wrote: post #84

Clearing my tabs and IDE is also the best way to lose context and miss all kinds of things I've had queued up.

Then perhaps list of tabs or recently open files is not the best way to stay organized.

A bit too obvious to make a comment about it, no? You have zero information about my workflow & needs. Maybe browser & IDE tabs works perfectly for me. They are all persistent across restarts, and searchable.

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#126

Post by grumblehound »

SilverSlash wrote: post #110

A thing which happens to me very often: I realize I'm experiencing a very real visceral discomfort nagging at me in the back of my mind. It happens because I will have ctrl+c'd something several minutes ago. My mind subconsciously "holds" onto the info that I have text copied in my clipboard. It's only when I ctrl+v it and consciously discard it does the nagging go away. I have no idea why it happens or if others exp…

I've been using clipboard history for several years now. I could not go back. I realised it released an unknown continuous pressure on my brain I wasn't aware of.

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#127

Post by andsoitis »

theonemind wrote: post #9

I've found mostly the opposite. Some well arranged windows are quite a nice anchor, I'm working on what's there in front of me. It's like bowling with bumpers in place, instead of the ball going in the gutter, the structure keeps it in the lane. I've found it necessary to devote time to cleaning and clearing windows, and sometimes I forget what's going on, and as I'm closing out the windows because I forgot what was…

Agree that different things work for different people. And even different things work for the same person at different time.

I, too, operate using the "nothing" approach as my DEFAULT and most common mode.

In my mind, the big things I never forget to attend to (they are big). The small things that I might forget, who cares, they're less important and the forgetting is a natural prioritization mechanism.

Some times I do feel overwhelmed by how many "big things" I have to juggle but won't "remember" or "it takes too much cognitive load to track". In that case, I make an ephemeral list on paper. That helps me adjust my perspective (sometimes things that I worried about are now clearly in the not urgent or not importang bucket).

Re: “Nothing” is the secret to structuring your work

#128

Post by jillesvangurp »

This is highly subjective; not everybody is wired the same way. What looks chaotic to some is normal to others.

Some people are just naturally a bit chaotic and actually thrive on that for creativity. Others can't think straight until they first clean and organize everything around them. This can relate to the physical world but it also extends to planning and the state of things in software projects. I spend a lot of time staring at screens. The distinction is not that relevant to me.

I have a thing that I call problem inception where it's normal for me to start fixing one thing discover another thing in the process that also needs fixing and so on. I sometimes find myself four or five levels deep before being able to climb out and fix the thing that I was supposed to fix. It's fine. But it's hard to estimate and plan this. Solving hard problems is almost impossible without getting good at keeping track of such problem dependency graphs and getting structured about dealing with chaos and uncertainty.

Part of my process is another thing which I think of as "immersing myself in the problem" which boils down to embracing the chaos rather than trying to contain it. Patterns only emerge from chaos once you fully grasp it.

And another thing at play here is spatial memory. Your desk might look chaotic to others but once you have internalized the chaos, you kind of know where everything is. Chaos is just complexity you don't understand yet.

And sometimes there's just too much chaos and cleaning it up is actually exactly the right thing to do. I deal with technical debt and other gardening type issues when I get stuck. Often that unblocks me.

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