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For me a few things - Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor, cut down notifications on my phone and carved out time in my diary to do focu

For me a few things - Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor, cut down notifications on my phone and carved out time in my diary to do focused deep work. Constant task switching has always been bad for burnout for me. - Was much more intentional about how I presented my work to others. I used to think that if I needed to focus on how I communicated my work upwards, that was somehow a reflection on the quality of the work itself. Instead I learned that taking time out to focus on how you present your ideas acts as a force multiplier on them. - Get out of toxic environments. Often I’ve found that the cause of burnout is not hard work, I am capable of hard work for sustained periods, but hard work with an expectation or repeated experience of failure in forms of projects being scrapped or canceled. Success isn’t always its own reward, but it does seem to help ward off against burnout. - I also spend a couple of hours in the gym nearly every day. It’s a high end gym and this is my splurge for myself. For other people, their release may be family.

malnourish 7y ago
I am currently trying to learn how best to present my ideas and reach people who don't necessarily see problems as a large network of pictures and concepts in their heads. It's a process that I struggle with, but I truly want to improve. Do you have any suggestions or resources?
- kristianc 7y ago
  Thank you for asking. I’ve had success using the Challenger Sale model, otherwise known as Insight Selling. This gives a logical framework for presenting people with new information - starting with a 10,000 foot view of how ‘the world has changed’ and gradually going into more detail about how this change will impact them before providing a solution. [1] Where it really excels is enabling you to ‘bundle’ ideas into a larger trend, which others may not have seen as connected in the past. Depending on your background, using a sales framework may seem ‘icky’ but it’s a fairly tried and true method of presenting information. In terms of books, other than Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer I can recommend To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and How to Deliver a Ted Talk. An area where you can get a huge leg up over others is in use of PowerPoint / Google Slides. Most people are terrible at it, so if you can deliver a presentation which is 15% better than most you will be at a huge advantage also. The key here is not to see PowerPoint as a tool for conveying information, but as a tool for creating pitches. If you treat every new idea you present as a ‘pitch’ it will transform your effectiveness. In the same way as gift wrapping a gift ‘elevates’ the gift, wrapping an idea or proposal in a presentation means it’s automatically taken more seriously. [1] https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch
- noman-land 7y ago
  One problem I see people make is to present the solution before the problem. Nerds often have a tendency to be hyper focused on the details of the solution because that's the most fun part and the part they have directly thought about intensely. Many people "up the chain", or in general who don't have intimate details of the problem space may not grasp why such a solution is needed. So starting off with it doesn't resonate with them. I've found its better to first tell the story of "what got us here", that led to this solution. If you do it right, you'll see the "a ha" moment go off in people's faces and they're right with you.
- lsinger 7y ago
  This simple framework helps me format my thoughts for presentation: - What is the problem? - Why is it a problem? (Eg, Business impact, impact on customers, etc.) - What are we doing about it? - What consequences do we expect (or do we already see)? Depending on the medium, do a sentence, a paragraph, or a page for each.
ggregoire 7y ago
> Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor For me it's the opposite. Working on a single monitor means hundreds of alt-tab a day. That's a lot of distraction that is avoidable by using multiple monitors. Recently switched from a two to a triple monitors setup (mainly for IDE/terminal/browser). I feel like it reduced how much tired I am at the end of the day.
- jader201 7y ago
  Agreed, it’s impossible to do my job on a single window — or a single screen’s worth of windows — and I can’t imagine how constant alt-tabbing helps prevent burnout/fatigue. Having multiple monitors means being able to switch between windows without constantly changing what’s on my screens. I currently have three that I use for IDE, browser, terminal(s), Slack, and SQL. Often one or more of these aren’t needed often, and/or I can share two on a single monitor. But I am able to carry out most of my day without having to change windows around. I occasionally have two browsers that I will be working in simultaneously so will split those across monitors, but that’s rare.
- eikenberry 7y ago
  I'm curious how you find alt-tab is distracting. I use one monitor and switch between windows using keyboard shortcuts, like alt-tab, and don't even notice. Does your alt-tab do something visually fancy that is distracting (animations, thumbnails, etc), instead of just switching to the other window?

malnourish 7y ago

I am currently trying to learn how best to present my ideas and reach people who don't necessarily see problems as a large network of pictures and concepts in their heads. It's a process that I struggle with, but I truly want to improve. Do you have any suggestions or resources?

kristianc 7y ago
Thank you for asking. I’ve had success using the Challenger Sale model, otherwise known as Insight Selling. This gives a logical framework for presenting people with new information - starting with a 10,000 foot view of how ‘the world has changed’ and gradually going into more detail about how this change will impact them before providing a solution. [1] Where it really excels is enabling you to ‘bundle’ ideas into a larger trend, which others may not have seen as connected in the past. Depending on your background, using a sales framework may seem ‘icky’ but it’s a fairly tried and true method of presenting information. In terms of books, other than Challenger Sale and Challenger Customer I can recommend To Sell is Human by Dan Pink, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath and How to Deliver a Ted Talk. An area where you can get a huge leg up over others is in use of PowerPoint / Google Slides. Most people are terrible at it, so if you can deliver a presentation which is 15% better than most you will be at a huge advantage also. The key here is not to see PowerPoint as a tool for conveying information, but as a tool for creating pitches. If you treat every new idea you present as a ‘pitch’ it will transform your effectiveness. In the same way as gift wrapping a gift ‘elevates’ the gift, wrapping an idea or proposal in a presentation means it’s automatically taken more seriously. [1] https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/insight-selling-better-pitch
noman-land 7y ago
One problem I see people make is to present the solution before the problem. Nerds often have a tendency to be hyper focused on the details of the solution because that's the most fun part and the part they have directly thought about intensely. Many people "up the chain", or in general who don't have intimate details of the problem space may not grasp why such a solution is needed. So starting off with it doesn't resonate with them. I've found its better to first tell the story of "what got us here", that led to this solution. If you do it right, you'll see the "a ha" moment go off in people's faces and they're right with you.
lsinger 7y ago
This simple framework helps me format my thoughts for presentation: - What is the problem? - Why is it a problem? (Eg, Business impact, impact on customers, etc.) - What are we doing about it? - What consequences do we expect (or do we already see)? Depending on the medium, do a sentence, a paragraph, or a page for each.

ggregoire 7y ago

> Doubled down on focus. Went back to using a single monitor For me it's the opposite. Working on a single monitor means hundreds of alt-tab a day. That's a lot of distraction that is avoidable by using multiple monitors. Recently switched from a two to a triple monitors setup (mainly for IDE/terminal/browser). I feel like it reduced how much tired I am at the end of the day.

jader201 7y ago
Agreed, it’s impossible to do my job on a single window — or a single screen’s worth of windows — and I can’t imagine how constant alt-tabbing helps prevent burnout/fatigue. Having multiple monitors means being able to switch between windows without constantly changing what’s on my screens. I currently have three that I use for IDE, browser, terminal(s), Slack, and SQL. Often one or more of these aren’t needed often, and/or I can share two on a single monitor. But I am able to carry out most of my day without having to change windows around. I occasionally have two browsers that I will be working in simultaneously so will split those across monitors, but that’s rare.
eikenberry 7y ago
I'm curious how you find alt-tab is distracting. I use one monitor and switch between windows using keyboard shortcuts, like alt-tab, and don't even notice. Does your alt-tab do something visually fancy that is distracting (animations, thumbnails, etc), instead of just switching to the other window?