61–70 of 105 posts
He phrased it as "park facing downhill" -- so you can roll-start your engine with ease in the mornings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this, too. “Slightly unfinished, but fully understood” is a great place to pick up. A “slightly unfinished understanding” of the problem or task at hand is a great way to nuke one’s mental model and end up stuck trying to recreate it in the morning.
But how do you really know if the problem is fully understood? I often think I’ve understood a problem multiple times, and only reach a true understanding through repeated testing and fixes.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this, too. “Slightly unfinished, but fully understood” is a great place to pick up. A “slightly unfinished understanding” of the problem or task at hand is a great way to nuke one’s mental model and end up stuck trying to recreate it in the morning.
Often, I find a good rest gives me greater understanding of a difficult problem or complex bug. Sometimes you get lost in the weeds. I also work much faster in the mornings, which helps.
For me, this only leads to sleepless nights.
Do you leave yourself enough breadcrumbs that you can pick things back up in the morning? What's causing you sleepless nights? I find it helps me sleep better as I know I've dumped the context out of my brain and don't need to put effort into retaining it until I can get back to the task at hand.
A long time ago I started leaving a trivial compile error (I was doing C++ at the time) in the code when I left for the day as a little bookmark, so the next day I'd just kick off a compile and see right where I was working.
> Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day Years ago a sr. eng on my team would find root causes to bugs late in the afternoon and then just go home. When asked why, they said that they knew exactly what they were going to do first thing in the morning and that it got them straight into the flow state for the rest of the day. I like this example better because understanding a root cause and not hav…
I have done something like that at times. I find the bug in the afternoon. Now I have the satisfaction of having found it and don't want to risk the frustration of it not actually being the actual bug I found. So I saved it for the next day, to milk the satisfaction again, but also to be more fresh at it to fix it right and test it, or to better be able to deal with it not being the actual bug! Though my boss at some…
> Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day Years ago a sr. eng on my team would find root causes to bugs late in the afternoon and then just go home. When asked why, they said that they knew exactly what they were going to do first thing in the morning and that it got them straight into the flow state for the rest of the day. I like this example better because understanding a root cause and not hav…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like this, too. “Slightly unfinished, but fully understood” is a great place to pick up. A “slightly unfinished understanding” of the problem or task at hand is a great way to nuke one’s mental model and end up stuck trying to recreate it in the morning.
Often, I find a good rest gives me greater understanding of a difficult problem or complex bug. Sometimes you get lost in the weeds. I also work much faster in the mornings, which helps.
Often you realize sometime in the night that the first fix would have had other subtle issues.
And you’re less likely to throw a quick fix on in the morning.
I don't like this tip at all. I get the sentiment, getting started is the HARDEST part of the day for me. But if I can finish something now, why wait until tomorrow? It's a golden rule sort of thing. I'm imagining the HR person saying, "It will only take a few minutes to fix this for you, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow". Examples are endless. There are better ways to get myself going in the morning, than to leav…
For you, yes. But remember not everyone is a night owl, nor is everyone an early bird. I start work at 930am, we have our stand up, then I warm up with 30-45 mins of coffee, reading some techy stuff etc, and then I'm ready to roll.
> why wait until tomorrow?
Because it's the end of the "working day"() and my mind isn't at its peak performance.
> I'm imagining the HR person saying, "It will only take a few minutes to fix this for you, so I'm going to wait until tomorrow". Examples are endless.
A whole heap of things aren't that time critical at the end of the working day. If I've had a problem with my salary or some revision to my contract it can wait until the morning.
But if you want to go ahead and knock yourself out with another 2-4 hours of work on top of your working day (and contractually obligated hours) then beware of burnout. Pace yourself.
depending on when you start your working day, which doesn't need to be 9am. Personally I used to start at 10am because of flexitime and work on until maybe 7pm or until there's at natural cut off