1) Earplugs underneath Bose QC-35s playing foreign-language or instrumental music (Currently: The Free Raisins [1]) 2) A target shooting cap with side-blinders

1) Earplugs underneath Bose QC-35s playing foreign-language or instrumental music (Currently: The Free Raisins [1]) 2) A target shooting cap with side-blinders to block visual noise. [2] 3) 9 hours of sleep a night. 4) 15 minutes run, 20 squats, 15 pull-ups, 50 push-ups in the morning. 5) A big dot-ruled notepad (like a bullet journal, but larger) to take notes/diagrams on. This is like swap space to augment Working Memory. 6) The app Bear to take notes in, also to augment my Working Memory. 7) 12 minutes of breath meditation when I get frazzled, to de-allocate working memory. 8) A silly 3-second physical ritual when I start or finish a subtask where I slowly bring my hands together or apart and hum very quietly and picture myself allocating or de-allocating memory. 9) Two external monitors side-by-side, so I can see interrelated code all at once. 10) A convention for where on my monitors I tend to put things (roughly: db-ish code to the left, browser-ish code to the right.) so I don’t have to store that in working memory. 11) The app Anki to store flashcards to use Spaced Repetition more quickly cement php knowledge into my long-term memory so that it is more effectively “chunked” when I need to manipulate it in working memory. 12) The app SelfControl to block distracting websites from my laptop, which I might otherwise reflecively visit to escape from the discomfort of dealing with a frustrating task. 13) The self-narrative, “this is frustrating. This is uncomfortable. This is worth it and I’m stronger than I think” to say to myself when I run into an inscrutable php error. 14) An attitude of insisting on a clear why for any task so that I know that it actually matters to the people I work with. 15) Pushing meetings and interviews to beginning and end of day. My team does its “standup” by posting {yesterday, today, blockers} to slack by 10:30am. 16) A team that is used to a clean, modular, and well-tested ruby codebase and so is committed to incrementally chipping away at the mess of this externally-acquired one. 17) Humor from team members in dealing with the um...interesting Developer Experience design choices of this php web framework. 18) Occasional pair programming [1] https://www.amazon.com/Out-Box-Free-Raisins/dp/B00MHX16PQ https://www.amazon.com/Out-Box-Free-Raisins/dp/B00MHX16PQ [2] https://www.intershoot.co.uk/acatalog/ahg-Anschutz-Hat-325C-294.html https://www.intershoot.co.uk/acatalog/ahg-Anschutz-Hat-325C-...