3 ms·
My view is as a coder if there is real hard work needed, essentially debugging something vexing or a large re-architecting, it needs to be done in an undisturb
by lordnacho 5y ago
My view is as a coder if there is real hard work needed, essentially debugging something vexing or a large re-architecting, it needs to be done in an undisturbed 3 hour window, of which I can realistically fit two in a day.
Minor coding tasks like documenting and preparing a commit can be done in any amount of time, but crucially it is time that is allowed to be broken up by meals or meetings. Casual skimming over the code for ideas is also in this category, eg scanning for random TODOs that can be checked off.
I try to gather all my regular calls on the same day, that way I get it out of the way with the least amount of context switching.
- alex952 5y ago2 3 hour long windows in a day? That’s impressive. Most weeks I can fit one of those in. Workings consultancy is not the best for focus work.
- lordnacho 5y agoI don't normally have two long things to do in a day, I just have a max capacity of 2x hard things, if that day is not broken up by something. Long term doing 2 hard things a day for a whole week would probably not be sustainable, either you run out of motivation or you run out of hard tasks. One of the things you do under "hard tasks" is simplify your code so that subsequent tasks fall under "easy tasks". You trade your "must not disturb" time for "can be stopped and started".