How to Be a Rocket Ship: Be More Productive One Minute at a Time(medium.com)
medium.com
How to Be a Rocket Ship: Be More Productive One Minute at a Time
https://medium.com/@edouard_harris/how-to-be-a-rocket-ship-b348df5351c
29 comments
I am doing pomodoros (30min increment) without timing my breaks works for me as well and is easier to implement. So, I can do long break or no break depending where I am.
Honestly, I do that a lot too. Five minutes is an ideal I try for, but it's just as likely that I'll find something in Slack that I need to deal with right away and it'll turn into 15-20 minutes.
Yes, I never found forcing break time being effective. However, forcing work for a set amount of time is working for me marvelously.
Has anyone considered that maybe the human biology is actually smart enough to figure out whether you should/shouldn't be focusing on something at a given time and that there might be negative effects to trying to scam it into doing what you (your boss) want (wants) all the time?
I don't like the notion of "hacking my brain".
First, it can create long term unwanted needs, such as requiring you to treat yourself for every little achievement. This could lead to a lot of things - weight gain, guilt, or all kinds of addictions (coffee, games..)
Second, I think that improvement is achieved by slow and consistent practice. "Hacks" are... well, hacks. They aren't supposed to be used over and over again.
First, it can create long term unwanted needs, such as requiring you to treat yourself for every little achievement. This could lead to a lot of things - weight gain, guilt, or all kinds of addictions (coffee, games..)
Second, I think that improvement is achieved by slow and consistent practice. "Hacks" are... well, hacks. They aren't supposed to be used over and over again.
“You should sit in meditation for twenty minutes every day — unless you’re too busy. Then you should sit for an hour.”
-Zen proverb
Let's not forget the most important thing that I personally resisted for over a decade of my working life before legitimately giving it a try: allow yourself the opportunity to get 8 hours of sleep per night. You won't always get it, especially if you're a parent, on-call, or a thousand other reasons. But I went from being a person who "only needs 5-6 hours of sleep" but was always running out of time in the workday to someone actively seeking out new challenges because my work (and personal) time were spent so much more efficiently and pleasantly by default. Seriously, if I could go back in time and slap my mid-twenties self for ignoring this, I would.
Also hundred times this when you have kids. Sleep is important. It is much easier to get angry when you are tired.
I sometimes wonder what good is there in not going to sleep when you are tired. Sometimes I sleep after lunch for twenty minutes. Sometimes even full cycle - one hour and half, but this is rare. It makes a difference - you are more fresh and although it may seem like a loss of time, it actually pays back quickly as you are not struggling with tiredness during your whole afternoon.
Taking sips of coffee throughout the day is actually an awful idea, btw. You should drink it with meals or at least drink the cup at once, otherwise you're gonna be exposing your teeth continuously to an acidic beverage without giving them time to remineralize.
Better separately. Coffee blocks digestion of nutrients.
For some reason I get the most done when I decide to do nothing. It's like I relax, get in the flow and can really work. On the other hand the faster I try to run the further behind I get.
> Choosing to work instead of goofing off for 5 minutes every day adds up to 3 more full days of work per year. That’s a big deal.
You know what else rocket ships do? They burn out.
You know what else rocket ships do? They burn out.
The previous sentence makes it more egregious
>Suppose you’ve been working all day at your startup, and someone gives you one tiny choice: for the next five minutes you can either (1) keep working, or (2) goof off on Netflix or Hacker News. Which one do you choose?
Suppose you've been working all day
If you've been working all day then one of two things is true:
* You're tired and the quality of your work is decreasing (as well as the risk being introduced increasing)
* You're not tired and can continue
The only real answer here is to judge yourself and do quality, risk-conscious work.
If you've burned hard for six hours and know you're not going to be writing quality code for the last hour or two, maybe you're doing admin work, maybe documentation, or maybe you're goofing off.
The idea that each minute is equal to each other minute is ridiculous, and it's entirely likely that average programmer gets five good hours a day of intelligent, aware, quality programming, and using tricks to turn that into 8 or 10 or 14 hours of coding only sacrifices quality and increases risk.
But then again, he also says "start-up" so I guess concepts like work/life balance, healthy work environments, healthy work habits, responsible coding practices, real risk analysis, commitment to quality, etc are heavily selected against (or maybe I'm too much of a cynic)
>Suppose you’ve been working all day at your startup, and someone gives you one tiny choice: for the next five minutes you can either (1) keep working, or (2) goof off on Netflix or Hacker News. Which one do you choose?
Suppose you've been working all day
If you've been working all day then one of two things is true:
* You're tired and the quality of your work is decreasing (as well as the risk being introduced increasing)
* You're not tired and can continue
The only real answer here is to judge yourself and do quality, risk-conscious work.
If you've burned hard for six hours and know you're not going to be writing quality code for the last hour or two, maybe you're doing admin work, maybe documentation, or maybe you're goofing off.
The idea that each minute is equal to each other minute is ridiculous, and it's entirely likely that average programmer gets five good hours a day of intelligent, aware, quality programming, and using tricks to turn that into 8 or 10 or 14 hours of coding only sacrifices quality and increases risk.
But then again, he also says "start-up" so I guess concepts like work/life balance, healthy work environments, healthy work habits, responsible coding practices, real risk analysis, commitment to quality, etc are heavily selected against (or maybe I'm too much of a cynic)
Not if they are spacex :)...they come back and recover
yea, you can do it if you keep just enough fuel to get back on the ground and take a good break and some spa and refueling afterwards
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Doesn't anyone else shudder at how honestly they express productivity as a simple brain chemistry hack? Is work supposed to be a Skinner Box?
It's non-trivial to calibrate your work habits and psychology for maximum sustainable productivity for different tasks. "But but flow!" someone might say. To which I'd respond: even flow has its weaknesses. Get flow-greedy for writing software, and you'll find yourself working late, eating crap, and not exercising.
And it's different for different work. The mentality you need to be a good student is different than the one to be a good salesman, which is different from that required to be a good husband, etc.
What I can say with confidence, though, is that it makes a notable difference. A long time ago I read an article linked here that talked about "stacking wins." Consistent success can deliver crazy rewards, because so many (more than in the past, I feel) areas of our lives are subject to vicious/virtuous cycles.
And it's different for different work. The mentality you need to be a good student is different than the one to be a good salesman, which is different from that required to be a good husband, etc.
What I can say with confidence, though, is that it makes a notable difference. A long time ago I read an article linked here that talked about "stacking wins." Consistent success can deliver crazy rewards, because so many (more than in the past, I feel) areas of our lives are subject to vicious/virtuous cycles.
More worship at the altar of optimally-filled-time which misses a larger point - research consistently shows that the "goof-off" time is where our brain goes to work on the real hard problems.
Sure, if all your startup does is crank out CLs, optimize for that. But I'd wager that unless you're solving bigger problems than "more code!", your startup is not going anywhere. (Don't get me wrong, there is a phase when all you want is more code, but it's a very short moment in the life cycle)
Oddly, Knuth comes to mind: Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered
Sure, if all your startup does is crank out CLs, optimize for that. But I'd wager that unless you're solving bigger problems than "more code!", your startup is not going anywhere. (Don't get me wrong, there is a phase when all you want is more code, but it's a very short moment in the life cycle)
Oddly, Knuth comes to mind: Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about, or worrying about, the speed of noncritical parts of their programs, and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered
> hack your hamster brain and trick it into working harder
If you need to 'hack' and trick yourself into being productive, try find another line of work or just take a break.
I'm not knocking this approach - all of us are wired differently and this method may squeeze another line of code out of an under-stimulated brain - but there's something decidedly anti-'flow' about conditioning sips of coffee around how often you save your code.
Instead something like the Pomodoro method, 5 minutes of play at the end of every 25 minutes of work, might be more effective with less mental overhead: don't trick the hamster. Cede 15% of each hour to him/her while the rest of the time is work.
If you need to 'hack' and trick yourself into being productive, try find another line of work or just take a break.
I'm not knocking this approach - all of us are wired differently and this method may squeeze another line of code out of an under-stimulated brain - but there's something decidedly anti-'flow' about conditioning sips of coffee around how often you save your code.
Instead something like the Pomodoro method, 5 minutes of play at the end of every 25 minutes of work, might be more effective with less mental overhead: don't trick the hamster. Cede 15% of each hour to him/her while the rest of the time is work.
To the moon with you then, worker bee.
Well, tell you what, that's not the metaphor I was hoping to see. Rocket propulsion gets more efficient in flight because the rocket gets lighter as it burns its fuel: same punch, less mass to move. What I _figured_ I'd see here was the same notion applied to software work. Namely, building up small efficiencies in an organization will have compounding effects. What are those? Well, percentage point improvements to build systems, slow, careful work to cut down on resource consumption in software systems, etc etc.
This was... different. Achieving maximal time efficiency -- "goofing off for 5 minutes every day adds up to 3 more full days of work per year" -- is sacrificing long-term sustainability for short-term, uh, presence, I guess? It's certainly not that your work is better when you micro-manage your time, even in the immediate term. The mind needs play time to make associations between ideas, to keep up one's well-being. Three more full days of work a year don't mean anything to anyone if to _get_ those three days you're left a shambles.
In short, rockets don't work this way and neither should anyone else.
This was... different. Achieving maximal time efficiency -- "goofing off for 5 minutes every day adds up to 3 more full days of work per year" -- is sacrificing long-term sustainability for short-term, uh, presence, I guess? It's certainly not that your work is better when you micro-manage your time, even in the immediate term. The mind needs play time to make associations between ideas, to keep up one's well-being. Three more full days of work a year don't mean anything to anyone if to _get_ those three days you're left a shambles.
In short, rockets don't work this way and neither should anyone else.
You first paragraph describes an article I really want to read!
The blog proposes the diametric opposite of Pomodoro, and I would probably be able to sustain that slog for about two weeks before having a breakdown. I am highly skeptical that anyone can work like that regularly while maintaining high productivity.