3 ms·

Fire And Motion (2002)

80 points by joebaf 9y ago

marsRoverDev 9y ago
I find it so valuable when people in this kind of position within the software industry admit their human faults. It is so easy to fall into the trap of impostor syndrome. We all have these problems, and coupled with the potential complexity of some programming tasks it can feel overwhelming.
- aerique 9y ago
  Yes, last week Ken Perlin's post and now this one (even though it is from 2002) really came at the right time for me. I had been struggling a bit at work with precisely these issues and now I don't feel too bad about myself anymore thanks to these articles.
- greenshackle2 9y ago
  Yes, definitely. Early in my career I had a coach, a very impressive, productive person. I started using the pomodoro technique, and I brought up the fact that I felt unproductive because I was having a lot of trouble achieving my goal of 11-12 pomodoros per day. She was like, "you realize 11 is a very hard goal, right? When I was using pomodoros I was usually doing 8 per days. Most people struggle to do a single one when they start." It was illuminating. In grad school my adviser was seen as the most productive, intense person in my department. We got on pretty good terms, and when I was struggling he started telling me about how much time he spends doing e-mail and reading random books (if you paid attention you might notice the arts and philosophy books laying around on his desk; he's an engineering prof.)
- beagle3 9y ago
  Along the same lines, http://journal.kennethreitz.org/ http://journal.kennethreitz.org/ is highly recommended.
amelius 9y ago
> There’s something incredible heavy in my brain that is extremely hard to get up to speed, but once it’s rolling at full speed, it takes no effort to keep it going. I noticed that too. I could be wrong, but I believe the painful part is loading everything you need into short-term memory.
mercer 9y ago
I've definitely found that if I can trick myself into getting started, I often end up looking back on a productive day. The Pomodoro approach has been somewhat successful in making this happen. Another approach that works well for me is the 'Final Version' productivity 'system' by Mark Forster [1]. The key trick is that it's okay to just do 'a bit' of something on your list and then mark it as completed (and re-add it to the end of the list). In the past I've been a heavy GTD user. I abandoned GTD mostly because I feel it doesn't really fit my kind of work, but I still apply two GTD principles because they're also primarily about lowering the barrier to getting started: 1) turn big tasks into small steps that are easier to get started with, and 2) the 'two minute rule' where if you can do something in two minutes time or less, just do it immediately and don't bother adding it to your system. I've come to the conclusion that for me, the 'getting started' part is so important to optimize for that everything else feels like little more productivity porn, at least until I get that part somewhat working. [1]: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-version-perfected-fvp.html http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-...
s_kilk 9y ago
> The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and keeping up, time that they can’t spend writing new features. Look closely at the software landscape. The companies that do well are the ones who rely least on big companies and don’t have to spend all their cycles catching up and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on Windows XP. It's interesting to read this essay again in the context of 2017 Javascript Fatigue, and especially the seemingly endless froth in the React ecosystem.
drawkbox 9y ago
Here's a getting started hack from Ernest Hemingway, since programming can be like writing in that work is more independent for much of it: The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start. Leave something almost complete, at a compile fix state or with less cognitive loading steps to start up the next day with the ball rolling.

80 points by joebaf 9y ago

I find it so valuable when people in this kind of position within the software industry admit their human faults. It is so easy to fall into the trap of impostor syndrome. We all have these problems, and coupled with the potential complexity of some programming tasks it can feel overwhelming.

aerique 9y ago
Yes, last week Ken Perlin's post and now this one (even though it is from 2002) really came at the right time for me. I had been struggling a bit at work with precisely these issues and now I don't feel too bad about myself anymore thanks to these articles.
greenshackle2 9y ago
Yes, definitely. Early in my career I had a coach, a very impressive, productive person. I started using the pomodoro technique, and I brought up the fact that I felt unproductive because I was having a lot of trouble achieving my goal of 11-12 pomodoros per day. She was like, "you realize 11 is a very hard goal, right? When I was using pomodoros I was usually doing 8 per days. Most people struggle to do a single one when they start." It was illuminating. In grad school my adviser was seen as the most productive, intense person in my department. We got on pretty good terms, and when I was struggling he started telling me about how much time he spends doing e-mail and reading random books (if you paid attention you might notice the arts and philosophy books laying around on his desk; he's an engineering prof.)
beagle3 9y ago
Along the same lines, http://journal.kennethreitz.org/ http://journal.kennethreitz.org/ is highly recommended.

amelius 9y ago

> There’s something incredible heavy in my brain that is extremely hard to get up to speed, but once it’s rolling at full speed, it takes no effort to keep it going. I noticed that too. I could be wrong, but I believe the painful part is loading everything you need into short-term memory.

mercer 9y ago

I've definitely found that if I can trick myself into getting started, I often end up looking back on a productive day. The Pomodoro approach has been somewhat successful in making this happen. Another approach that works well for me is the 'Final Version' productivity 'system' by Mark Forster [1]. The key trick is that it's okay to just do 'a bit' of something on your list and then mark it as completed (and re-add it to the end of the list). In the past I've been a heavy GTD user. I abandoned GTD mostly because I feel it doesn't really fit my kind of work, but I still apply two GTD principles because they're also primarily about lowering the barrier to getting started: 1) turn big tasks into small steps that are easier to get started with, and 2) the 'two minute rule' where if you can do something in two minutes time or less, just do it immediately and don't bother adding it to your system. I've come to the conclusion that for me, the 'getting started' part is so important to optimize for that everything else feels like little more productivity porn, at least until I get that part somewhat working. [1]: http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-version-perfected-fvp.html http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-...

s_kilk 9y ago

> The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and keeping up, time that they can’t spend writing new features. Look closely at the software landscape. The companies that do well are the ones who rely least on big companies and don’t have to spend all their cycles catching up and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on Windows XP. It's interesting to read this essay again in the context of 2017 Javascript Fatigue, and especially the seemingly endless froth in the React ecosystem.

drawkbox 9y ago

Here's a getting started hack from Ernest Hemingway, since programming can be like writing in that work is more independent for much of it: The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck. Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start. Leave something almost complete, at a compile fix state or with less cognitive loading steps to start up the next day with the ball rolling.