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Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

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Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#91

Post by 4death4 »

Atrine wrote: post #31

> 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…

What if you're not working on a bug? If you're proficient, you should be able to measure the amount of work left in something so that it's "easily finish-able in the morning."

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#92

Post by 4death4 »

betenoire wrote: post #44

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…

Yes, completely agree. A colleague left a PR hanging one day. A customer wrote the next day saying the missing functionality that would have been fulfilled by that PR wasted an hour of their time last night.

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#93

Post by k__ »

QuercusMax wrote: post #33
k__ wrote: post #14

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.

I don't know.

Could be the ADHD. Over the day I have the meds, but they are bad for sleeping, so I can't use them at night.

The meds calm my thoughts, so I don't have too much competing ones over the course of a day.

On the other hand, there specific kinds of thoughts that don't prevent sleeping. When I think about loved ones for example, I sleep better.

But without meds, I can't control that. When I have unfinished business, it will override everything else.

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#94

Post by averageRoyalty »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #75
betenoire wrote: post #44

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…

I think the point is that it's much harder to start something new then it is to just complete something that you already know exactly what to do. Kinda like how it's harder to start writing from a blank page.

Interesting. I am the polar opposite of this. New things invigorate me, and I can often slam through a project to 90% but it takes me days or sometimes weeks to motivate myself to do the last 10%.

Once I can convince myself and start just doing it, I can usually get that done quick too, but there's a mental barrier of high difficulty to overcome first, and I'm compelled to be doing something new instead.

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#95

Post by ItsBob »

I do something similar I suppose: I deliberately add an error (if one doesn't exist) into the code I'm working on. Usually the method I last worked on.

So when I start in the morning, or especially after the weekend, I hit F5 and it shows me the exact line where it broke... and that's where I start from.

It's mega simple but it works for me as I do my utmost to forget about work when I'm not there.

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#97

Post by Shorel »

Atrine wrote: post #31

> 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…

Well, you can't always have something that specific to fall back.

In fact, it is better not to have bugs every day =)

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#98

Post by crazygringo »

crazygringo wrote: post #85
namuol wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I can finish something now, why wait until tomorrow? The end-of-day-just-one-more fix is likely to be lower-quality than the fresh-start-after-a-good-night’s-sleep fix.

I'm exactly the opposite. All the functions and data structures are fresh in my head. The end-of-the-code is high quality. First-code-of-the-day is much more likely to be buggy for me because I still haven't reloaded all the content into my brain. (Unless I'm starting something from scratch, in which case start-of-the-day is great, but how often is that happening?)

* end-of-the-day-code, haven't reloaded all the context

Apparently I couldn't proofread yesterday

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#99

Post by sametmax »

betenoire wrote: post #44

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…

It's not about not finishing as much as it is about letting something in unfinished state.

You can finish what you are doing right now, and start something else to get a clear view of the next step. Or take something you want to fix, and put a breakpoint it it and plenty of print, to make it sure nothing works and the day after you know where to start.

It's all about breaking the inertia.

But if you want your win, you can have your win.

Re: Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day

#100

Post by m463 »

MatthiasWandel wrote: post #48
Atrine wrote: post #31

> 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…

> Though my boss at some point was puzzled "why don't you just fix it now?"

Unfortunately this also leaves your boss's job slightly unfinished, ready to jump start the manageering in your cube the next morning :)

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