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Unfortunately I realised that my brain just doesn't work that way. It seems that for any meaningful, productive work I need at least hour and half. On smaller b

Unfortunately I realised that my brain just doesn't work that way. It seems that for any meaningful, productive work I need at least hour and half. On smaller budget I can only do chores, i.e. pay an invoice or answer a trivial email. As if there was some weird rule stating "if you can't complete a thing in 15 mins, it will take you at least an hour" For harder work, I need 3 hours and quiet. 4 hours seem to be the most efficient time chunk anyway, and after that it starts sharply falling (usually there is little difference if I work for 6 or 10 hours straight)

jacobevelyn 9y ago
I am exactly the same.
mikekchar 9y ago
I think it's a matter of practice. I experimented with trying to do a long kata (the old Core Wars game) one pomodoro a day [0]. I didn't finish it, but I managed 66 pomodoros. I kept a detailed TODO list and I was really surprised that I could maintain a fairly decent pace. The link has Asciinema videos of every Pomodoro I did. It's painfully slow watching me type, but if you use the ">" key, you can speed up the video (3-4 times seems about right). At the beginning I had difficulty getting much done, but by the end it only took me about a minute to get into the zone. I think the other main problem I had (which culminated in me not continuing) is maintaining a regular schedule. 1 pomodoro a day doesn't seem that hard to do, but sustaining the pace over the long term was pretty difficult. I ended up skipping lots of days (sometimes going a week between pomodoros) and finally gave up. One of these days I'll learn how to overcome that problem :-) [0] - http://mikekchar.github.io/core-wars-kata/ http://mikekchar.github.io/core-wars-kata/
- travisjungroth 9y ago
  You spent 30 hours on a coding problem? How big was this thing?
  - mikekchar 9y ago
    Hmmm... It's a couple of thousand lines of code I think. I forget. If you go to the link, the code is there (I run everything through Github). Each pomodoro is in it's own branch and I kept them around so that I could study the diffs later (haven't gotten around to it yet). My original goal was to practice constant refactoring on a non-toy sized problem. Normal katas necessarily require you to work on toy problems. Because of this many interesting real world problems never come up. Frequently you can see people using techniques that aren't sustainable, for instance. In the end, while I did get some value from that, by far the most interesting thing I discovered was that you can write code 1 pomodoro a day! If you take this as being about 1 weeks worth of work, I think my productivity is a bit lower than normal. However, it's not off by that much. Even more interestingly, because I work in a timezone 9 hours separated from my colleagues I've always wanted to be able to hand over work. In other words, 2 people working on the same story. 1 person works during the night and the other person works during the day. They hand over the code in the morning and the evening. Using the TODO list techniques I was using in the kata (and making sure to end the day on a failing test), I've actually been able to accomplish this with like minded colleagues. It's actually quite incredible. Probably I should write a blog post about it ;-)
    - mattcanhack 9y ago
      > Even more interestingly, because I work in a timezone 9 hours separated from my colleagues I've always wanted to be able to hand over work. In other words, 2 people working on the same story. 1 person works during the night and the other person works during the day. They hand over the code in the morning and the evening. Using the TODO list techniques I was using in the kata (and making sure to end the day on a failing test), I've actually been able to accomplish this with like minded colleagues. It's actually quite incredible. Probably I should write a blog post about it ;-) I would definitely be very interested in this. Seems like a smart way to work remote or on personal projects.
      - mikekchar 9y ago
        OK. I'll do it. I've been resisting re-awakening my blog because I have too many other things to do, but it's probably time. Sometime in the nearish future (give me a week anyway ;-) ), take a look at http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio//index.html http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio//index.html. If you don't notice any changes since 2013, feel free to email me and kick my ass ;-)
- a-saleh 9y ago
  Thanks for the link, I would like to try something similar. Probably would take on some project for a new command line util at work that I wanted to create for some time :-) Having it work related would mean that sheduling would be easier. I would try to do that for first half hour of the day. If that really does improve the 'getting into the zone' so much, that would really be awesome.

jacobevelyn 9y ago

I am exactly the same.

mikekchar 9y ago

I think it's a matter of practice. I experimented with trying to do a long kata (the old Core Wars game) one pomodoro a day [0]. I didn't finish it, but I managed 66 pomodoros. I kept a detailed TODO list and I was really surprised that I could maintain a fairly decent pace. The link has Asciinema videos of every Pomodoro I did. It's painfully slow watching me type, but if you use the ">" key, you can speed up the video (3-4 times seems about right). At the beginning I had difficulty getting much done, but by the end it only took me about a minute to get into the zone. I think the other main problem I had (which culminated in me not continuing) is maintaining a regular schedule. 1 pomodoro a day doesn't seem that hard to do, but sustaining the pace over the long term was pretty difficult. I ended up skipping lots of days (sometimes going a week between pomodoros) and finally gave up. One of these days I'll learn how to overcome that problem :-) [0] - http://mikekchar.github.io/core-wars-kata/ http://mikekchar.github.io/core-wars-kata/

travisjungroth 9y ago
You spent 30 hours on a coding problem? How big was this thing?
- mikekchar 9y ago
  Hmmm... It's a couple of thousand lines of code I think. I forget. If you go to the link, the code is there (I run everything through Github). Each pomodoro is in it's own branch and I kept them around so that I could study the diffs later (haven't gotten around to it yet). My original goal was to practice constant refactoring on a non-toy sized problem. Normal katas necessarily require you to work on toy problems. Because of this many interesting real world problems never come up. Frequently you can see people using techniques that aren't sustainable, for instance. In the end, while I did get some value from that, by far the most interesting thing I discovered was that you can write code 1 pomodoro a day! If you take this as being about 1 weeks worth of work, I think my productivity is a bit lower than normal. However, it's not off by that much. Even more interestingly, because I work in a timezone 9 hours separated from my colleagues I've always wanted to be able to hand over work. In other words, 2 people working on the same story. 1 person works during the night and the other person works during the day. They hand over the code in the morning and the evening. Using the TODO list techniques I was using in the kata (and making sure to end the day on a failing test), I've actually been able to accomplish this with like minded colleagues. It's actually quite incredible. Probably I should write a blog post about it ;-)
  - mattcanhack 9y ago
    > Even more interestingly, because I work in a timezone 9 hours separated from my colleagues I've always wanted to be able to hand over work. In other words, 2 people working on the same story. 1 person works during the night and the other person works during the day. They hand over the code in the morning and the evening. Using the TODO list techniques I was using in the kata (and making sure to end the day on a failing test), I've actually been able to accomplish this with like minded colleagues. It's actually quite incredible. Probably I should write a blog post about it ;-) I would definitely be very interested in this. Seems like a smart way to work remote or on personal projects.
    - mikekchar 9y ago
      OK. I'll do it. I've been resisting re-awakening my blog because I have too many other things to do, but it's probably time. Sometime in the nearish future (give me a week anyway ;-) ), take a look at http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio//index.html http://mikekchar.github.io/portfolio//index.html. If you don't notice any changes since 2013, feel free to email me and kick my ass ;-)
a-saleh 9y ago
Thanks for the link, I would like to try something similar. Probably would take on some project for a new command line util at work that I wanted to create for some time :-) Having it work related would mean that sheduling would be easier. I would try to do that for first half hour of the day. If that really does improve the 'getting into the zone' so much, that would really be awesome.