3 ms·

I find the thing that most kills my concentration is lag. For example, right now I'm at work and we're facing a crucial deadline, but I'm not working. Why? B

by anelson 17y ago

I find the thing that most kills my concentration is lag. For example, right now I'm at work and we're facing a crucial deadline, but I'm not working. Why? Because I just made a change that requires re-running an integration test, which takes several minutes to run. I'm not about to sit there staring at the test, so I switch over to my feed reader and catch up on news. Logically, I know this is devastating for my productivity, but so is staring at a progress bar for 10 minutes after every change. After the iteration, I focus on fixing the one or two serious lags that hurt productivity. It's not always possible (I've no idea how I'll speed up this integration test), but it's a worthwhile effort. It is for this same reason that my company spares no expense on dev workstations. When a build takes 10 minutes, the productivity hit is at least twice that, and it's a recurring penalty.

Poiesis 17y ago
This. I suspect this is not an uncommon problem. I have found a solution that works pretty well, though (though it's nothing fancy): don't do that. By that I mean, when you find yourself faced by one of those waits, and are about to switch to some time-sucking activity, ask yourself, "will I really stop this before the wait is over, or I lose track of time?" I've lost so much time to these sorts of things that I do one of two things during the wait. 1) I just stare at that progress bar. Boring, but at least I won't find myself reading Wikipedia in an hour or something. I know that I'll only waste 10 minutes instead of an hour. Alternatively, I 2) spend a few seconds thinking of a task that won't suck me in but needs to be done. For example, I go through my code and see that everything's formatted well, or commented well. Or answer a few emails (I don't tend to get sucked into emails, I know some do). You have to train yourself to respond right when you feel that tug of "what can I look at next?" You end up telling yourself "no" hundreds of times a day. It's a challenge, but it's worth it.

by anelson 17y ago

Poiesis 17y ago

This. I suspect this is not an uncommon problem. I have found a solution that works pretty well, though (though it's nothing fancy): don't do that. By that I mean, when you find yourself faced by one of those waits, and are about to switch to some time-sucking activity, ask yourself, "will I really stop this before the wait is over, or I lose track of time?" I've lost so much time to these sorts of things that I do one of two things during the wait. 1) I just stare at that progress bar. Boring, but at least I won't find myself reading Wikipedia in an hour or something. I know that I'll only waste 10 minutes instead of an hour. Alternatively, I 2) spend a few seconds thinking of a task that won't suck me in but needs to be done. For example, I go through my code and see that everything's formatted well, or commented well. Or answer a few emails (I don't tend to get sucked into emails, I know some do). You have to train yourself to respond right when you feel that tug of "what can I look at next?" You end up telling yourself "no" hundreds of times a day. It's a challenge, but it's worth it.