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What “work” looks like

blog.jim-nielsen.com

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Re: What “work” looks like

#211

Post by alfor »

jerrygoyal wrote: post #115
Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

> So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. I get it that it works but wonder what could be the logical explanation of this. I remember this method was also mentioned in the movie Turner & Hooch.

When you are focused on a problem your left side of the brain take over (thinking in worlds and steps) When you relax, draw, daydream or sleep your left brain can take over and think in parallel, images, abstractions.

When you dream the constraint on your consciousness (simulation) are lifted to allow more divergent scenario. That’s why dreams can be a bit crazy.

It’s a bit like brainstorming on steroid, letting loose of more constraints.

Re: What “work” looks like

#212

Post by jereees »

slifin wrote: post #181
willturman wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hammock Driven Development by Rich Hickey [1] is a presentation that dives into why taking a step back from the immediacy of a problem often leads to clarity. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f84n5oFoZBc

The urge to invoice a Hammock for my home office to my employer

Just buy it. Look at it as an investment for your future mental health.

Re: What “work” looks like

#213

Post by spidersouris »

mr_gibbins wrote: post #140
lqet wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination. The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what…

> Companies need to promote creative problem-solving spaces, and I'm not talking about a beanbag area with free lattes, but a sit-and-think, light, non-social way of working that promotes this kind of thing.

Would that really solve the problem? I feel like when you're standing in front of your computer screen searching for a solution, it's because you're switching to some different and unplanned activity that you are able to get an eureka! moment. Creating a specific place where employees can go to think would defeat the whole purpose IMHO, because then people would go there and would do the exact same thing as when they're in front of their computer screen.

What may work is promoting short breaks during which employees can do any activity of their liking, whether it be playing video games, walking, smoking a cigarette... Basically anything that takes their mind off work. That guarantees development in creativity.

Re: What “work” looks like

#214

Post by psychomugs »

lqet wrote: post #77
Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which o…

I got an Apple Watch in the endgame of my PhD to catch all the thoughts I'd have out and about, particularly on runs. I rarely reviewed them and a lot was adrenaline-induced ranting and raving, but the act of documenting helped cement them better and drastically cut out the anxiety of potentially forgetting something really good.

David Lynch analogizes his sitting-with-cigarettes-and-a-notepad-to-catch-ideas to fishing. You can't chase after them but once in a while a big one will come along.

Re: What “work” looks like

#215

Post by bradlys »

Bakary wrote: post #151
bradlys wrote: post #89

I think this really depends on the type of work you're doing. I've found that often the work I'm paid to do at many jobs is one step away from pure code monkey - even if that job is pulling me $1m+/yr. It seems like the author here is more on the design side and isn't working as an IC anymore. So they probably are making big decisions rather than having to implement others decisions. (I loathe implementing others but…

If you pull in a million+ a year... why not just become financially independent and do the work you want to do?

Lean FIRE wouldn’t be hard. But I’m more of a fatFIRE type.

Re: What “work” looks like

#216

Post by a_e_k »

Test0129 wrote: post #16

I've had more ideas come to me after hiding in my office to take a nap than sitting at my desk. It got to be such a gold mine of solutions that I still to this day allocate 30 minutes of my day to a nap. Non-negotiable. So many hard problems that have been brought to me, or complicated needs for architecture, etc were solved by simply turning my active brain off. When I was in graduate school I'd regularly get stuck…

At the grad school that I went to, senior grad students were offered a chance to move out of the lab and into a private "dissertating office" as they became available. With a couch I could nap on, an incredible window view to gaze out from, and a door I could shut for focus work, it was amazingly productive for finishing my dissertation. Those few months were the only time that I've ever had a private office and to this day I still rather miss it.

(And most of my favorite papers came about from ideas that I'd had while on vacation.)

Re: What “work” looks like

#217

Post by spfzero »

Collaboration may be attractive to management teams due to reasons apart from productivity. Management may even know and accept that productivity suffers.

A brilliant idea coming from an individual is less trustworthy than a mediocre idea coming out of a group effort. Management has little idea how to judge the quality of a new idea, and worse, the risks of adopting it. When the idea comes from a group, it is much "safer" because if it were dangerously risky, or likely to cost 10 times as much as proposed and fail anyway, or step on toes, someone in the group would have noticed and nixed it, supposedly.

In a collaborative situation, you'd not only need to come up with the idea, but then sell it to others with different outlooks, who favor their own idea instead, or their friends' idea, or with a desire to change your idea to appropriate partial credit for it.

That's not to say in a small group of like-minded people, collaboration can't be great. At its best, that becomes actual brain-storming and the idea can evolve organically into something better than any of the individual ideas. But that is not the usual big-corp cross-functional collaborative team.

Re: What “work” looks like

#218

Post by trap_goes_hot »

Dismissing collaboration because a few people didn't find it useful is equally dumb as thinking everyone can just sit in solitude and come up with great ideas. Treat everything as a tool, if it isn't producing results, use something else. The most important thing is to be honest with yourself.
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