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Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tehsauce 6y agoI understand the frustration with badly asked questions, but not sure I’d want to work with someone who views conversations with coworkers as “offering little value”
- quickthrower2 6y agoHe didn't say that he views conversations with coworkers as “offering little value”
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- graton 6y agoThe article says: > Not Important and Urgent tasks are nasty attention thieves. They shout out to you in immediacy, but offer little value in return. Nothing about co-workers.
- m463 6y agoI think he tried to prioritize it correctly: Important and Not Urgent tasks ... Also included are building relationships with others and planning ahead. Not Important and Urgent tasks ... and over-talkative coworkers.
- ThePadawan 6y agoI've had jobs where I would 100% agree with you and jobs where I would 100% disagree. In that sense, I sort of want to congratulate you to only have encountered productive, collaborative work environments, and not backstabbing, infighting, untrusting ones.
- redis_mlc 6y agoIf you stay in a software career long enough, you will reach a level where this will become a daily reality. I don't have an answer for what to say to "software engineers" who don't know what an RFC is, or what EXPLAIN is, or what a database transaction is.
- zwbetz 6y agoI should clarify. I mean badly asked questions, to mean that someone has asked a lazy question, and not done their due diligence before asking for a hand-hold. I am all for helping someone with a good question. I do it daily.
- hoka-one-one 6y agoIf I had a penny for every hacker who did Starting Strength for a year and now preaches deadlifts to anyone who will listen...
- throwaway815190 6y agoI played American football for 8 years and I have lifted weights for 20+ years. I preach deadlifts to any male hacker and/or office worker who will listen. To the women, I preach kettlebell swings.
- hoka-one-one 6y agoI played football too. I remember sacking a guy named throwaway815190 once, it was super easy. He cried and they had to sub him out.
- Olreich 6y agoWhy don’t you preach the same thing to both genders? If kettle bells work for women and deadlifts work for men, why not preach both to both genders based on current capacity?
- hvis 6y agoMuscles are different between genders, on average. A woman's 1RM is a lower percentage of her body weight than a man's (on any exercise, on average), but she will usually be able to do more reps at e.g. 70% of 1RM. So it makes sense to exercise that higher endurance, and kettlebells are very nice for their mix of strength/endurance work. (I'm male and love both the barbell and the kettlebell).
- allthemcodes 6y agoHey man, us runners could benefit from a little bit of weight lifting too :)
- inscionent 6y agoPilates.
- xwdv 6y agoI have found that an Apple Watch or an android equivalent makes a good dumb smartphone, and regularly leave my phone far away or at home if I need to focus.
- redisman 6y agoFrom my anecdotal evidence it seems worse - but that might be down to how many notifications you've enabled on it.
- galaxyLogic 6y agoAttention is extremely important but other things are too like knowing the language and libraries you use and knowing the domain and design patterns that are useful in your domain. What I found to my surprise is that to increase my attention, noise-cancelling headphones are extremely helpful, even when I'm working with no other people around me.
- deviation 6y agoEx-professional weightlifter of about 10 years here, checking in to add a note. The whole section on physical health and deadlifting is borderline redundant. Don't get me wrong... It's an alpha exercise and you feel amazing doing it. But the only physical reward you get from deadlifting is the ability to deadlift more and alongside it have a severely higher risk of injury. If you want a correlation between sitting at a desk and building strength to offset that, look at squats in all it's forms, and hamstring and quad dominant exercises. Your lower body is in much more trouble than your lower back from sitting at a computer. Hipflexer stretches with resistance bands will also do you wonders. Trust me folks. Doing deadlifts because you see the gym-bros on youtube doing them is a big mistake. Take a book out of Eddie Hall's playbook who says the exact same thing... And he's literally the strongest man in the world.
- redis_mlc 6y agoYes, I saw some of the strongmen interviews on either deadlifts or squats. What they said was to look at the probability of injury, and avoid anything that was high-risk. Something to keep in mind when you see men and women doing squats in Silicon Valley gyms is that often they're staff, so they know what they're doing, and you may not. When you do recruit larger muscles, you get better strength gains overall - the "one weird trick" about weightlifting. Strongmen also only spend time on high-reward exercises, so some like Robert Oberst don't do shoulder shrugs, as he found it be a waste of time compared to other exercises (for the time period he was interviewed for.) Overall for an office worker, walking, stretching and gym are good ideas for a routine. Professional chess players have worked out for the past 4 decades, so that should tell you something. (They do it for overall fitness to handle crippling stress levels during tournaments.) I was thinking about doing the Thomas Inch dumbbell lift back in the day, but I probably would have pulled an abdominal muscle, so no big regret: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Inch#The_'Thomas_Inch'_dumbbell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Inch#The_'Thomas_Inch'_...
- coldtea 6y ago>Trust me folks. Doing deadlifts because you see the gym-bros on youtube doing them is a big mistake. A lof of gymnast / psycisian's advice I've read says the opposite. That deadlifts are a great exercize, and should not be restrained to the weight lifting / body builder types.
- redis_mlc 6y agoThe article is pretty accurate, based on my experience of writing almost 1 million LOC over the decades. Build physical strength. The damage done by sitting 8+ hours a day is underrated. - Right, also being folded up in a sitting position affects your organs (chi). Certainly go for a walk for at least a mile per day. Deadlifts, dunno about that specifically. Make your place of work boring and tidy. - Yes, I use a dedicated desk with almost no clutter. Make your smart phone dumb. - I use a Blackberry 8700g which has no current apps, so no distractions. 2 week standby battery. Be an OS minimalist. - NA. Other - I should use more terminal windows to have different apps open at the same time (editor, SQL client, etc.) but I usually don't.
- zwbetz 6y agoAgreed on talking walks as well. I'll usually fetch with my dogs on lunch break.
- redis_mlc 6y agoSteve Jobs and other Silicon Valley luminaries used to literally "walk around the block" near their house with a guest and hold walking meetings. I think the San Jose Mercury News had an article on that. I discovered that habit independently after moving to SV, since the weather is almost always good enough for a walk. Plus walking alone after finishing a feature lets your subconscious queue up the next priority.
- micropoet 6y agoThese days putting attention is harder than ever with so many browsers tab open.
- loosetypes 6y agoI feel like part of this is just a result of how hostile a web-based work experience can be. On my work computer, to do a simple task it often requires logging in to myriad services that need to be finagled in concert. Each with a different password that expires regularly, but of course also MFA. Often more “work” than the “work” itself. And that’s often the happy path rather than multiple attempts to the same service, vpn woes, etc. Oh you just updated your computer? Now re-log in to your vpn, atlassian, GitLab, slack, zoom, outlook, aws, and others. Want to watch a slack recording? You’re logged into the desktop application but now enter your credentials, again, this time in the browser.. it never ends.
- fyhn 6y agoOne one hand I agree. But my experience is that an okay password manager makes the process of logging into things, creating new accounts, updating passwords, etc. so streamlined that it rarely bothers me anymore.
- leobakerhytch 6y agoI highly recommend the browser extension Session Buddy [0], if you, like me, regularly find you’ve opened tens to hundreds of tabs. It’s quite cathartic to save out my tabs into topic-based sessions, close everything, then reopen just one session on whatever I want to focus on after an exploratory phase. [0]: https://sessionbuddy.com/ https://sessionbuddy.com/
- kqr 6y agoBell[1] ran a study to find out what the most productive engineers did differently from their peers. The answer was communication. They did a lot more of it. They bounced ideas with co-workers, they validated solutions with customers, they did their own research, and so on. While I have no doubt attention is important (much like a luck stat, it affects everything you do), it might be a bit premature to declare it the most valuable asset without additional evidence than personal anecdote! [1]: Or some other phone giant -- I keep misplacing this citation so if someone knows what I'm talking about please hand me a reference.
- Aeolun 6y agoI feel like this is mostly related to eliminating miscommunications. A lot of people just jump right into developing without asking the right questions first. Especially when given ambiguous orders.
- brtkdotse 6y agoFor real. I’m a contractor that bills by the hour which means I have a pretty good understanding of cost of features. At a previous client I got a ticket that would mean rewriting a large part of the application, to the tune of €10k. Something didn’t sit right with me and I started sleuthing around the org chart, asking relevant people questions. The €10k ticket became €0.5k in research and two-line css fix + different copy in the UI
- mpfundstein 6y agoso how did they reward you for the cost savings you helped them to yield?
- brtkdotse 6y agoBy renewing my contract for 6 more months. I am a contractor, I get paid for hours spent. If I got paid by money saved I’d be a consultant. Small but important difference and wildly different business models.
- asimjalis 6y ago“My high-level workflow looks something like this: identify the problem to solve; think on the problem and let ideas percolate; research, discuss, and experiment with these ideas; implement and test the solution; deliver and maintain the solution.” I find talking to people really helpful in pinning down the first step: defining the problem.
- bvcvbuiy 6y agoI am not a FAANG SV top notch developer, just a data scientist in a successful but still small European start up so my experience must be very different from the one of crowd here. I have noticed that most of my time is spent finding what to do, get their opinion about new projects from my team members (who are nice people I enjoy working with), and most of the time I find that I am not the person qualified for the job and the problem can be solved in a way that does not involve data work. Finding what to do and how to minimize the effort in implementing a solution is 90% of my job. There are days I write SQL as well and those day I am very focused. The days I am not focused it's mostly because There is no go from A to B job to do.
- Olreich 6y agoThat sounds pretty common for good data scientists in America too. Software engineering is much more likely to solve business problems, so the work available and definition of what the customer wants is generally less amorphous from my experience.
- forest_dweller 6y ago> My office is a spare bedroom. The walls are blank. There’s no tv. There’s a desk, chair, laptop, laptop stand, keyboard, mouse, and mouse pad. No no no. This is terrible for your self-esteem over a long period. I understand being in a tidy workspace but having things bare is demoralising. Funishings have their place in any office. I have some nice art on the wall and I have a hifi setup with podcasts / music on.
- flemhans 6y agoThat's an individual choice. I prefer things bare and simple too.
- forest_dweller 6y agoOf course. However stating this as an absolute is what I am taking umbridge with.
- codeisawesome 6y agoThe centaurs took away Umbridge a while ago :P Umbrage is probably what you are wanting to take ;D
- xs83 6y agoHaving a nice view to look at while working through problems works wonders - couldn't do the "no window" thing
- mrmuagi 6y agoI would not underestimate the minimalism philosophy in reducing clutter. It gets to a point where doodads and clutter is demoralising, and often materialistic and distracting.
- forest_dweller 6y agoThere is a difference between clutter and having some decoration. Proponents of minimalism seem to conflate the two. Also whenever someone complains about something being materialistic that automatically sets off my BS detector.
- ElHacker 6y agoI've recently started using VS Code and my favorite feature by far is Zen Mode. It allows me to focus a lot more, takes away a lot of the distractions I get from my million open browser tabs and other apps trying to get my attention.
- magerleagues 6y agoJust discovered this! You can enable this feature with Command + K, then Z (same command to disable).
- qwerty456127 6y agoA software developer? It's the only real thing any human has.
- diegocg 6y agoI recommend the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport. It makes a very compelling case about why the ability to concentrate during long periods of time is critical to create meaningful work, and it gives more detailed (and better) advice than this post
- lordgrenville 6y agoCounterpoint: I really hated this book, which padded some really obvious advice (better to focus and be productive than waste time) with anecdotes and some vague, unsubstantiated predictions about the future of work.
- helmholtz 6y agoIndeed. Cal Newport is a classic example of modern "authors" who take 20 of their most popular blogposts and combine them into a barely-coherent rambling mess and publish it. Then they appear on Joe Rogan, Rich Roll, Tim Ferriss and every other podcast they can manage, and talk at length about 'paradigm-shifts' and other nonsense. On their website, they beg you to subscribe to their newsletter. They might start their _own_ shitty podcast. Through it all, very little in the way of insight is provided, and the little that exists is padded to within an inch of its life in the name of weekly 'content'. Ryan Holiday, Seth Godin, Mark Manson, Tim Ferriss himself are other perpetrators of this stuff and I fucking hate all of it. The internet is shittier because of this trend, and has caused me to largely forego reading things on it. To the OP, if you want a good book on attention, Nicholas Carr's 'The Shallows' is my recommendation. It is written with clarity and vision. He gets to the heart of the matter by focussing on two things: neuroplasticity and 'how the medium is the message'. His argument is presented logically, cogently and convincingly.
- bananaface 6y agoRyan Holiday's debut book was called Trust Me, I'm Lying and it pretty much outlines his early internet marketing career and all the nutty tactics they used. He's very blunt and the stories he tells should be required reading. I respect him for being honest. He doesn't address the weird Timarkothy Newmanson metamorphosis into esoteric actualization guru that coincidentally seems to occur to all of these guys once their hack-the-system-to-print-money tactics stop working, but you don't need that outlined. It's the only book from these guys I can stomach.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rawoke083600 6y agoTL;DR - The older I get and experiment the more I realised: a "BALANCED" approach(philosophy) is the best in all things health. For long term vitality(fitness-function). Ignore short-term gains (fitness function) from "extreme views" or choices - they either don't last or is not sustainable. I see a lot of anecdotes and recommendations for health and exercise regime etc. Allow me to cite my own experience and armchair-opinions. I'm in no way an expert or special(physiology) - although my mom thinks I'm super ! I think many of the HN community can relate to my experience. I'm 38 male generally healthy (minus some sport/exercise injuries). CompSci and BioChem background+education I'm sort of an extremest in all things and especially health ! This include taking a "somewhat" extreme view (and implementation) where I will usually for a few months focus on one thing exclusively as the new gospel. This Includes The following: -Supplementation(vitamins,fish/krill oils, minerals, timing,brands, protocols etc) -Diets(all sorts) --keto --elimination, --lowcarb,high-card --Paleo --Carnivore --Vegetarian(this one really sucked for me) -Diet Regimes --Fasting --OMAD --Juicing --monotone (eat the same meals most days) -Nootropics(What a rabbit-hole ! - Too many to list) -Exercise --P90x --Crossfit --Cardio --Strength --kettle bells --BodyCombat(like Tae Bo but with better music and prettier girls) --Hiking -Life --Mediation --Relationships --Business --Sleep Most of the items on the list had some sort of short-term benefit, but it either didn't last or was really not sustainable. a Balanced approach to diet(a little of everything that is considered not terrible, meat,fish,veggies,chocolate,carbs etc) a Balanced approach to exercise ( strength + cardio + Lots of REST) I can't stress rest enough. I went from working out 5 days a week, to 3 days a week and I feel better ! Less injuries, my two big health issues and 5 operations over a decade was because of exercise injuries. Maybe I'm just getting older or my DNA is not correct for too many physiology stresses. Or hell maybe I'm just doing all the exercises wrong !? (I don't think I am though) YMMV :)
- rosshemsley 6y agoProtip: On OS X you can set it so no icons appear on your Desktop. For me at least, having that "new laptop" clean slate at all times helps me maintain focus :)
- lbj 6y agoI totally agree - Deleted Facebook and Twitter, dumbed down my phone and keep it out of sight for these reasons. Also, the more you can bundle into Emacs, the faster you go.
- daptaq 6y agoI second the Emacs point. I have Mail and IRC configured in Emacs, and they are my favorite ways to be contacted. Most other protocols/sites require me to go out of my way to check if I have a message (either by visiting the site or checking my phone), which is an unnecessary context switch. Email and IRC are a simply indicated in my mode line, when they arive, no further distractions. I would have gotten rid of my smartphone a long time ago, if I weren't bound to it because of Whatsapp. Even at this moment, I'm distracting myself because of it :(
- secondcoming 6y agoI did two things once it became clear that working for home was going to drag on for months: - bought a really good office chair. Herman Miller Aeron. Incredibly expensive but also no regrets at all. I sit in this thing for 10+ hours a day with zero issues. - bought a pull-up bar. Great for either an exercise regime, or just for something to do when you're pondering a work related issue.
- magerleagues 6y agoI second buying the chair... if you spend any significant portion of your day with a specific piece of furniture (chair, bed), it's worth spending a little more on it.
- redisman 6y agoI got the Steelcase Leap from some kind of office liquidation store for 50% off. There are some great deals and these are very sturdy and well made chairs so second hand is often just as good.
- cordaciu 6y ago> bought a really good office chair. Herman Miller Aeron Can you please give a link where you bought , what model? Thank you!
- mark_l_watson 6y agoI would like to add some different advice to what I just read here. I meditate and in addition to helping me know my connectedness to the universe, all people, and nature here on earth, meditation is exercise to improve the ability to concentrate on work, art, cooking, really listening to people, etc. In my experience meditation == super power. I also believe that what we eat strongly affects our lives. For myself, I avoid processed foods. I simply suggest paying attention to what you eat and how you feel, and act accordingly. I also think that taking many short work breaks during the day helps productivity, especially if you are stuck on something. I live a 90 second walk from a trailhead leading to national forest land. Amazing how 15 minutes in nature will bust through solving technical problems. Five minute breaks to play ping pong or racket ball on an Oculus Quest is also a good way for me to pause work and sometimes return with new ideas of perspectives.
- smichael 6y agoLove it! Thanks.
- ayroblu 6y agoI find productivity is a false metric to measure yourself against. The most productive person is the person who writes the most code / features, but usually the most important people don't write code, they help others, whether that's understanding problems or giving direction. I still agree with the title, I give my attention to as much as I can handle, and no more. I have (restricted) notifications turned on, I try have interesting things around me, I tackle as many problems as reasonable at the same time, but slowly because I find the best solutions are where I've had a while to think about while in the shower for example, and how they interact with other problems. PS: if you're trying to learn something, disregard everything I said, focus is so important when learning
- kbd 6y agoI’ve also realized lately that just being able to maintain my focus (and quiet the anxiety that causes context switching) would be a bigger productivity boost than any methodology, tool, or programming language. It’s worth more than 10 years more experience. I’ve been diagnosed with ADHD in the past, so it’s always been a struggle. What’s the secret? Meditation? Drugs?
- sushshshsh 6y agoA relentless desire to be better despite all odds
- michaelcampbell 6y agoI think the "willpower" argument vs ADHD falls kind of flat, although I have no studies to back that up. But it smacks of the same sort of "victim shaming" that dieters face when told, "just do it" or equivalent.
- sushshshsh 6y agoThen don't be surprised when you don't fix the problem. You can try drugs but it may not work and may have side effects. You might end up worse off just because you tried. However attempting to summon some focus and willpower from within is completely free and may even work. All you need to do is try it. You won't give yourself a stroke by trying it, but adderall might. The real victim blamer is the one who solicits advice and then discredits and insults the person who took time to give advice for free out of the kindness of their heart.
- ernahrung 6y agoSounds like someone who hasn't had to to deal with ADD/ADHD before lol. This is the dumbest take I've ever heard, you should feel bad. "just focus harder dumbass"
- sushshshsh 6y ago
- davidn20 6y agoI like the author touch on physical activity. Whether it's deadlift or not, it's not important. What's important is being active. Your brain just works better after good work out. Try it, stick to a good workout plan for a week and you'll notice the difference.
- Jkol 6y agoAttention is your most valuable asset as a human
- momento 6y agoI find the language in this article conflicting. People have a tendency to relay advice on what has worked best for them; with little regard for whether or not it will work best for others. On one hand the auther uses a lot of "my" language to convey what works best for him. That's great and I am happy to read what works best for others, but what makes it a bit short-sighted is the shift in language from: >The more attention I can devote, the more cycles I can complete, and the more productive I am. to: >Make your place of work boring and tidy. >Make your smart phone dumb. >Be an OS minimalist. etc. This shift from "here's what works best for me" to "here's what will work best for you" is quite imposing and presumptuous.
- munro 6y agoAgreed. I don't want to work somewhere that's boring. I've been doing the OS minimalist thing, it's cool being able to become productive on a new Mac in 45 minutes, but lately I've been missing how customized my old Arch+XMonad setup was. Marking this as "not a culture fit". :)
- zwbetz 6y agoFair critique.
- j45 6y agoIt's very true that everyone's ideal formula and variables are different. Narrative and anecdotal writing allows one to take from it what you like, as trying things out works better for some than understanding it all to begin with and it shouldn't be discounted just because it may not work for all. Conversely, it might be worth considering the importance of the reader to learn to extract what's good for them out of any reading and not expect everything to be curated just for them. Getting hung up on how a piece of writing is not perfectly catered for acceptance by the reader is likely going to leave a lot of nuggets, value and insights missed. The comment above could be taken as merely a counteract of pushing another interpretation of it being imposing and presumptuous. Still there's many folks who don't take this writing style as imposing and presumptuous.
- iainctduncan 6y agoThis is a topic I'm somewhat obsessed over. I think it's a real problem these days, we are bombarded with things competing to make us into short-attention-spanned dopamine addicts and it screws up our lives badly. The Matthew Crawford books "The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction" and "Shopcraft as Soulcraft" are super interesting reads on this topic. I'm biased, being a musician, but my experience and many of my colleagues is that musicians are often excellent coders, and I credit this to the fact that you need to master your attention to become a good musician. There is no other way than getting good at putting yourself alone in a room with no distractions and practicing in a focused manner. I remember when I hired a friend of mine (pro bass player) as a junior coder and it was so obvious watching him learn. Personally my top tips for getting better at attention management would be: - Take up an instrument or some other hobby involving regular, quiet, uninterrupted, solo deliberate practice. Do it daily. It becomes your rinse cycle. - Adopt the pomorodoro or other similar technique of doing 20-30 minutes of completely focused, uninterrupted work at a time and then taking a real break for a few minutes. This is both how I work and practice. - Read a lot, on paper. - Run - IMHO way better than lifting for overall mental effects and mental focus - Get enough sleep, religiously my two cents Canadian. :-)
- CoffeePython 6y agoI’m a fellow musician and also obsessed with the idea of how music and specifically, deliberate practice, play into programming. It’s a super power. I’ve also noticed musicians are usually terrific coders. A big part of being a great musician is years of learning HOW to practice. Glad to see others interested in the space.
- iainctduncan 6y agoNot just a big part, THE big part. :-)
- allthemcodes 6y agoWhat is your opinion on reading on the Kindle? Is it as effective as reading a physical book? I own tons of physical books but am completely out of shelf space for new books.
- x87678r 6y agoOne thing I've discovered is that I can't sit in front of the computer and write code all day. Actually scheduling time for meetings and talking with people seems like a distraction but realistically I can only code up to 4 hours a day anyway so no point avoiding users/teammates/bosses thinking you'd be more productive coding.
- ta1234567890 6y agoAttention is our most valuable asset as human beings in general. What we put our attention on, is what becomes our life experience and our memories. In many religions/practices, a very big part of the path to enlightenment is to "take back control" of your attention, so you can consciously direct it to "what matters".
- known 6y agoMihaly Csikszentmihályi and others began researching flow after Csikszentmihályi became fascinated by artists who would essentially get lost in their work. Artists, especially painters, got so immersed in their work that they would disregard their need for food, water and even sleep. The theory of flow came about when Csikszentmihályi tried to understand the phenomenon experienced by these artists. Flow research became prevalent in the 1980s and 1990s, with Csikszentmihályi and his colleagues in Italy still at the forefront. Researchers interested in optimal experiences and emphasizing positive experiences, especially in places such as schools and the business world, also began studying the theory of flow at this time.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)
- redisman 6y agoAchieving flow is a lot easier when you're painting what's in your soul than being a software dev for the top 3 accounting software developer in the greater Wichita metropolitan area.
- wbharding 6y agoMuch truth to these tactics for maximizing attention, esp exercise. Not mentioned is the #1 attention killer in my experience: working on boring tasks. I’ve found productivity maximized when I make time to work on an interesting project every day or two. Making progress on enjoyable tasks gets me started with the momentum to tackle the nasty, boring ones. My conclusion is ironic in that I’m the CEO of Amplenote, a note taking/todo list app built to ensure “urgent” or “important” tasks get scheduled to the calendar. I consider myself more disciplined than the average bear, but I’ll be damned if I can focus my attention for more than half the day on tedious tasks. Meanwhile, when running down a feature or bug fix that will directly help me as a user, I can often focus for 12 hours of programming. I think dogfooding is central to the best products because it begets genuine interest, thus attention, from its developer/users.
- luord 6y agoI use the pomodoro technique not just because it actually helps me get started—the best way I've found, for me, to combat procrastination—and get things done, but also to combat the sitting problem he mentions. Standing up and walking around the house for five minutes periodically helps me at least stretch my legs. That aside, I find pretty much all of his advice pretty useful and a lot of it I already at least try to follow. Good to know it doesn't work just for me.
- nolaspring 6y agoI have to use Ping ID quite a bit to log into customers' systems. I also live in south Louisiana. The last 5 months have been extremely difficult to maintain focus because, for me at least, it's really difficult for my brain to not check tropical forecasts every time I look at my phone. I've noticed that my productivity triples when there are no storms in the gulf due to the fact that it's much easier to maintain my attention on engineering tasks. I've thought of setting up a second phone that I have with ONLY ping on it, but I feel that it's the stress driving me to check the tropics, and if I took the time to create a 'just ping' device my mind would find another way to compulsively check.
- bobbob1921 6y agoThis is part of why I prefer text messages over phone calls, but for the very few exceptions when a phone call is more efficient or required. (Ie when multiple steps / detailed interaction is needed). With phone calls, I specifically don’t like how I have to immediately stop what I’m working on and focus my attention upon answering the call, as opposed to a text message where almost nothing is lost if I wait 60 seconds before looking at it. I’m still surprised that many find this offensive when I make this request of them; or when they disregard my request and I’m forced to ignore their calls until they text. I have one client who would called me anywhere from 1 to 10+ times a day with small tasks I needed to do , which were much more efficiently communicated over text. (Things such as “check access point of unit 302 of the Westside building , user can’t connect”). The phone calls would never be less than five minutes in length, each, and of mostly small talk and other irrelevant info to the original purpose of the call. I strongly considered stopping work for this client, but for the fact that I so much enjoyed the work he brought me. This work was all remote/from behind my computer (not onsite work).
- elliotec 6y agoI would argue that attention is the most valuable asset for productivity in every case, period. I guess I sort of thought this went without saying. The details in this article are great, I'm a productivity geek despite never really getting to a point where I "always feel productive" - and each point here is definitely relevant specifically for focus as a software developer. I'm a manager so minimizing meetings is out of the question to some degree, but my "OS minimalism" is much more extreme so maybe that balances out. Ultimately this article is great from the POV of a software dev, but the point of it applies to everything in life.
- alexashka 6y agoOver the last 100 years, humans' lifespan has only increased by ~5 years, if you lived to be a teenager. Think of all the 'productivity' we've had in the past 100 years, that's +5 years when you're already old and finished. Great. Can we do the math on how we've nearly blown ourselves up many times over, are destroying the environment, working 40+ hours/week and so on? Worth it for everyone to be 'productive' for a collective increase of 1 or 2 years within your lifetime, assuming we don't destroy the planet or blow ourselves up? You decide, keep your productivity if you wish, I'm going for a walk and enjoying my life :)
- zwbetz 6y agoYou read too far. I included the assumption "sustainable productivity is desired". You did not meet that condition, and should have stopped reading ;)
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- the_arun 6y agoAttending to competing priorities is a nightmare. They do more distraction if we do not prioritize further (finer grain) on already prioritized items. Mostly somewhat related to this is the context switch. Not only we need finer prioritization, but also grouping them to minimize context switch.
- tomerbd 6y agoSorry just got a slack message have to leave.
- iaabtpbtpnn 6y agoMy attention is so valuable I'm wasting it on Hacker News when I should be working!
- john4532452 6y agoRegarding the Cal Newport i was surprised to find he is very much pro religion.
- tall 6y agoDoesn’t this regiment render the subject rather dull? Trapped in a loop with little in the way of new inspiration this sounds like the life of a drone not a man.