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A simple habit that saves my evenings

alikhil.dev

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Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#51

Post by jaredhallen »

simpaticoder wrote: post #40

A mention of the Pomodoro technique is relevant. It encourages 100% focus on work for 25 minutes followed by a 5 minute break where you are forbidden to work at all in any way. You're supposed to tell a joke, stretch, stare out the window, etc. But no meetings, no email, etc. At first I felt a strong resistance to the "stop work" part, often delaying until "one last thing" was done, but I tried it anyway. What surpri…

Except when all your login sessions time out and you spend 20 of each 25 minute working segment logging back in to things.

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#52

Post by ambicapter »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
pimlottc wrote: post #5

The habit is in the 7th paragraph, after 2 images: > Rather than trying to complete your task in 20 minutes, take this time to write down your thoughts, and a step-by-step action plan of what you think you need to do to finish your task. Then go home. Rest. A feeling of incompleteness will motivate you to come back and finalize your work the next day. Only you will be full of energy, together with a settled plan. No…

> A feeling of incompleteness will motivate you to come back and finalize your work the next day. Unfortunately, in between there's sleep, which is the great feelings eraser / emotional cache flusher. So all that'll happen is that said "feeling of incompleteness" will distract me for the rest of the evening, then disappear at night. Come morning, it won't be there, so I'll have to read the plan to hopefully induce th…

A good night of sleep induces its own feeling of well-being, excitement, awesomeness. I swear, I have terrible sleep and when I get an 85+ sleep score I'm a different person.

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#54

Post by ivanjermakov »

jcul wrote: post #14

To add to that, leaving something in a very obviously broken unfinished state really helps to jump back into the flow the next morning, or whenever you come back. I actually find it very hard to do this, to walk away with some code that isn't compiling or a test that isn't passing. It feels like leaving something unfinished. When you return it's an easy jumping off point, with a tangible goal and helps bring you back…

That's a great trick. I often leave myself a TODO in a source code. But as a plain text, not as a syntactically valid comment. With this project won't compile and on the next day is obvious where I ended up.

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#55

Post by simpaticoder »

jaredhallen wrote: post #51
simpaticoder wrote: post #40

A mention of the Pomodoro technique is relevant. It encourages 100% focus on work for 25 minutes followed by a 5 minute break where you are forbidden to work at all in any way. You're supposed to tell a joke, stretch, stare out the window, etc. But no meetings, no email, etc. At first I felt a strong resistance to the "stop work" part, often delaying until "one last thing" was done, but I tried it anyway. What surpri…

Except when all your login sessions time out and you spend 20 of each 25 minute working segment logging back in to things.

I do hope you're joking.

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#56

Post by vunderba »

pimlottc wrote: post #5

The habit is in the 7th paragraph, after 2 images: > Rather than trying to complete your task in 20 minutes, take this time to write down your thoughts, and a step-by-step action plan of what you think you need to do to finish your task. Then go home. Rest. A feeling of incompleteness will motivate you to come back and finalize your work the next day. Only you will be full of energy, together with a settled plan. No…

This is related to the zeigarnik effect which states that an activity that has been interrupted may be more readily recalled.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeigarnik_effect

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#58

Post by eduction »

pimlottc wrote: post #5

The habit is in the 7th paragraph, after 2 images: > Rather than trying to complete your task in 20 minutes, take this time to write down your thoughts, and a step-by-step action plan of what you think you need to do to finish your task. Then go home. Rest. A feeling of incompleteness will motivate you to come back and finalize your work the next day. Only you will be full of energy, together with a settled plan. No…

You sound like you want your money back

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#59

Post by thabit »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #54
jcul wrote: post #14

To add to that, leaving something in a very obviously broken unfinished state really helps to jump back into the flow the next morning, or whenever you come back. I actually find it very hard to do this, to walk away with some code that isn't compiling or a test that isn't passing. It feels like leaving something unfinished. When you return it's an easy jumping off point, with a tangible goal and helps bring you back…

That's a great trick. I often leave myself a TODO in a source code. But as a plain text, not as a syntactically valid comment. With this project won't compile and on the next day is obvious where I ended up.

I'll just delete what I wrote and forget about. It also doesn't work with python. Can someone make a todo app that forces you to see it? I feel like it's already done.

Re: A simple habit that saves my evenings

#60

Post by chasil »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #36
pimlottc wrote: post #5

The habit is in the 7th paragraph, after 2 images: > Rather than trying to complete your task in 20 minutes, take this time to write down your thoughts, and a step-by-step action plan of what you think you need to do to finish your task. Then go home. Rest. A feeling of incompleteness will motivate you to come back and finalize your work the next day. Only you will be full of energy, together with a settled plan. No…

> A feeling of incompleteness will motivate you to come back and finalize your work the next day. Unfortunately, in between there's sleep, which is the great feelings eraser / emotional cache flusher. So all that'll happen is that said "feeling of incompleteness" will distract me for the rest of the evening, then disappear at night. Come morning, it won't be there, so I'll have to read the plan to hopefully induce th…

I will first offer you a cliche from a movie that I saw in my pre-adolescence in the '70s from a much older era, the title of which I do not recall:

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

How I obey this rule at the end of the day is to continue my code in the necessary points, interspersed with "blahs" if I am feeling verbose (and necessary means that nothing critical is left out, and nothing irrelevant is included in reminding tomorrow).

How I disobey this rule is to verbally say (out loud) the idea that comes to mind in odd moments, as they are prone, followed by "note this" (at which point everyone around you admires your incomprehensible spontaneous demeanor). This imposes a tag on the inspirational memory of perspective and involvement, and I find that I retain it until no longer needed.

This works for me.

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