[HN Gopher] Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the n...
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Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day
Author : engineercodex
Score : 120 points
Date : 2023-12-15 20:13 UTC (2 hours ago)
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| ssalka wrote:
| The part about finding a "sticking point" is really important -
| if you know what's next, you can pick up the context rather
| easily and get going. If you end the day feeling confused or not
| sure how to approach the next problem, it's going to be rough
| coming back to it.
| prepostertron wrote:
| On the other hand, leaving the day feeling confused and
| sleeping on the problem is often times more helpful than
| pushing through when you're not getting anywhere in the moment.
| It gives time for those "aha" moments when you're not actively
| problem solving.
| skerit wrote:
| Agreed. Leaving work unfinished, knowing what to do next, is
| for me the best way to be unable to fall asleep at night.
| That code just has to get out.
|
| I have no problem stopping something when I feel stuck
| though.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Write it out then, quickly, before you stop. On paper, that
| is, with a pen/pencil. Write in pseudo-code if it helps get
| it on paper faster. Stick that to your monitor or under
| your keyboard, it'll be there the next morning. If you got
| it right, typing it in will be easy. If, the next day, you
| see things differently, you will be past the first draft.
| dcow wrote:
| Passive processing is real. Very often it's not others that
| need convincing, it's yourself.
| TideAd wrote:
| After many years of learning this lesson over and over again,
| that much my subconscious works on problems, I've finally
| learned to trust myself to step away when I feel like I'm
| grinding.
| stouset wrote:
| Yep. I am my most valuable asleep. Day-me just does data
| entry on the solutions to hard problems night-me figures
| out.
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I think the best thing in that situation is usually to empty
| your brain of the seemingly important observations you've made
| and _then_ sleep on it.
| gowld wrote:
| Unless emptying your brain helps you forget.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| I interpret "emptying your brain" to mean "writing things
| down so you don't have to remember them tomorrow". This
| probably helps you remember, but without the stress of
| worrying about forgetting.
| Kagerjay wrote:
| I normally write uncommitted comments of what I need to work on
| next, e.g. a to-do for the next day
| smallmouth wrote:
| I've done this, in a way, for years!
|
| My biggest problem in the morning is just getting going. I work
| better late in the afternoon and into the evening. So often, I've
| left a final compile or commit undone so I can just "quickly" do
| it in the morning out of necessity or, at times, sheer anxiety.
|
| When I get this done in the morning, then I'm in the game so to
| speak.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Productivity should always be to fulfill a terminal goal that
| ideally should excite and benefit you. If you are being
| productive just for the sake of it, or to get an employer off
| your back, you're doing something wrong. I made this mistake in
| my early 20s.
|
| If you do the above you don't need any tricks. You just follow
| your curiosity, excitement, and obsession.
|
| If you're not excited by the end goals then you will never be
| able to bandaid that over with productivity tricks.
| jebarker wrote:
| Does "pay mortgage and feed family" qualify as a terminal goal
| that is exciting and beneficial?
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| It could if you cut costs and increase your net worth by
| 20-50% over the next year. Otherwise, no, not very exciting.
| jebarker wrote:
| I was obviously being obtuse. But I honestly feel like the
| attitude that work has to be exciting or meaningful for you
| to be productive is a bourgeoisie luxury. I get paid well
| by my employer and therefore I feel a responsibility to be
| productive for them to an appropriate level.
|
| EDIT: in fact, I feel like I made _that_ mistake in my 20s
| and 30s - looking to work for too much of the meaning and
| fulfillment in my life.
| itishappy wrote:
| I disagree pretty strongly with this. Who gets excited about
| data entry, invoices, warehouses and shipments, documentation,
| sanitation, etc.?
|
| Games designed purely for excitement hold my attention for a
| month or two before I need a break. After about 8 years of
| playing more Factorio than anything else I am at 1800 hours.
| How on earth can anybody maintain excitement on a single thing
| for 2000 hours a year, every year? Don't get me wrong, I'm
| excited by things my company does, but my day job involves a
| lot of boring necessities. I strongly suspect this is true of
| most jobs.
|
| I obsessively chase my curiosity and excitement in my spare
| time, and I have a pile of unfinished projects to show for it.
|
| I love the sentiment, I just feel it's not reality for most.
| onionisafruit wrote:
| A variant I've been using for a while is leaving a failing test.
| When I get started again I can focus on getting that test to
| pass. In the process I build the bigger context.
| floydnoel wrote:
| Actual title is "4 simple software engineering habits that
| transformed my productivity"
|
| Using keyboard shortcuts is one of the four. I've been using
| keyboard shortcuts since I was a child! I can scarcely imagine
| programming without them. It would be like removing half my
| fingers or something in terms of detrimental effects.
|
| Could somebody even get to a high level in software engineering
| skills without them? I'm curious. How would you interact with the
| terminal? Could you completely avoid it?
| gowld wrote:
| Sure you can, it's just less efficient so you get less done.
| wharvle wrote:
| I get by with what's probably about a mid-tier-power-user level
| of keyboard shortcut knowledge. 50ish? Counting some Mac
| special-character chord (like em-dash)?
|
| I can't really think faster than I can mouse, anyway. I forget
| any shortcut I don't use more-or-less _daily_.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Of course they could. The bottleneck in programming is not how
| quickly you can enter text.
| msingh_5 wrote:
| I do this. I leave my code in a state where it wont compile. So
| the next day just hitting build will highlight where i left off -
| which makes it easy to get started, which makes it easier to move
| to the next thing.
| k__ wrote:
| For me, this only leads to sleepless nights.
| QuercusMax wrote:
| Do you leave yourself enough breadcrumbs that you can pick
| things back up in the morning? What's causing you sleepless
| nights? I find it helps me sleep better as I know I've dumped
| the context out of my brain and don't need to put effort into
| retaining it until I can get back to the task at hand.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| If I do have a problem then I write down every thought so
| it's out of my head for sleep. Nothing worse for me than
| trying to solve the problem mentally when trying to sleep.
| PreachSoup wrote:
| It really depends. This is just one of the tools that might or
| might not for you. I think it's more important to know your goal
| and yourself. In this case, you want to increase your
| productivity. As long as you can reach your goal, it's good
| enough.
|
| Personally it doesn't work well for me because I need clean
| separations from work and be in the prolonged work mode would
| cause burnout. I have no problem to get started in the next
| morning with my own routine. It's more important for me to put
| things down and rest everyday.
|
| On a meta level, experiment with what might work for you and
| iterate on your own work flow - it's exactly like TDD programming
| but for yourself
| gowld wrote:
| Do you have trouble putting work down if it's unfinished?
| PreachSoup wrote:
| Depends. But I would actively put it down and mentally block
| it and go to sleep when the time comes.
| alentred wrote:
| I am with you on this one. I, for my part, cannot stop unless I
| finish some logical subset of the work. Leaving the work
| incomplete or with bugs would make me sleep worse, and I would
| spend lots of time the next day trying to understand what I was
| trying to achieve. Even more so in hobby projects, where I
| might come back in a couple of days or weeks.
|
| What I do, though, is leaving a TODO where I think I need to
| continue the next time. Works wonders for me.
|
| In the end, I think it is about leaving some kind of an
| "anchor", but the exact kind depends on your personality I
| guess.
| notatoad wrote:
| this is great productivity hack, but personally i'd rather
| sacrifice the productivity and finish the workday (or even just
| go for lunch) feeling like i've finished something.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| It feels like a reward mechanism for a different type of
| person.
|
| Long-term, I can't comprehend how this could possibly increase
| productivity unless it makes you more satisfied / happy and,
| coincidentally, more productive.
|
| For some it might work, for others - definitely not.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| This is me. I finish the day with a success so I don't go home
| and continue thinking of a problem. I leave work at work
| nowadays.
| l1ambda wrote:
| Similarly, don't start or end sprints on Mondays or Fridays
| (Wednesday is best?), to make it easier to get back into flow
| after weekends.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Was trying to remember where I'd heard this earlier in the year.
| Someone back then I think called it "park facing downhill".
| Resonated.
|
| _An On-Ramp to Flow - One Weird Trick: Leave Your Work Broken_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35456059
| neosat wrote:
| One tip that I (and many others here ;) ) are going to find
| pretty easy to do :) That's the kind of research I can get
| behind.
| Atrine wrote:
| > I said no to low-impact tasks.
|
| This oversimplification is terrible advice.
|
| I've seen many people refuse "low impact" work that's just flat
| out required for things to operate. Talking about keeping systems
| stable, working on tickets while they are on-call, and generally
| doing things that make work easily transferrable to others. These
| people that "refuse low impact work" end up being terrible
| teammates a lot of the time.
| maximinus_thrax wrote:
| > people that "refuse low impact work" end up being terrible
| teammates a lot of the time.
|
| yes, but there's a high chance they'll climb the corporate
| ladder while not caring about being great teammates because
| this is not a requirement for advancement. Actually, dumping
| this on someone else's lap [0] should be on the list of things
| to do if you want to move up from loser to sociopath [1].
|
| [0] https://hedgehoglibrarian.com/2023/08/14/executive-
| function-...
|
| [1] https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-
| principle-...
| Atrine wrote:
| > Leave work slightly unfinished for easier flow the next day
|
| Years ago a sr. eng on my team would find root causes to bugs
| late in the afternoon and then just go home. When asked why, they
| said that they knew exactly what they were going to do first
| thing in the morning and that it got them straight into the flow
| state for the rest of the day.
|
| I like this example better because understanding a root cause and
| not having it fixed is more concrete than "slightly unfinished"
| which is too vague for me to measure.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| I like this, too. "Slightly unfinished, but fully understood"
| is a great place to pick up. A "slightly unfinished
| understanding" of the problem or task at hand is a great way to
| nuke one's mental model and end up stuck trying to recreate it
| in the morning.
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| But how do you really know if the problem is fully
| understood? I often think I've understood a problem multiple
| times, and only reach a true understanding through repeated
| testing and fixes.
| atsuzaki wrote:
| A professor I worked with liked to stop work in the middle of
| typing something. "As if I fell asleep or passed out while
| working on it", he said. And the next morning, kickstart the
| flow state by doing the very simple task of typing the rest of
| the unfinished word. Followed by the less simple but still
| straightforward task of finishing the sentence/line of code.
| And so on.
| MatthiasWandel wrote:
| I have done something like that at times. I find the bug in the
| afternoon. Now I have the satisfaction of having found it and
| don't want to risk the frustration of it not actually being the
| actual bug I found. So I saved it for the next day, to milk the
| satisfaction again, but also to be more fresh at it to fix it
| right and test it, or to better be able to deal with it not
| being the actual bug! Though my boss at some point was puzzled
| "why don't you just fix it now?"
| pulse7 wrote:
| Leave work completely finished and fully tested for easier
| switching to another work the next day.
| al_borland wrote:
| This was something Hemingway did. He'd stop writing mid-sentence
| when he knew where things were going, so he could pick up and
| continue on the next day.
|
| "Learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to
| stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the
| well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it. I
| always worked until I had something done, and I always stopped
| when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be
| sure of going on the next day." -- Ernest Hemingway
| betenoire wrote:
| I don't like this tip at all. I get the sentiment, getting
| started is the HARDEST part of the day for me. But if I can
| finish something now, why wait until tomorrow?
|
| It's a golden rule sort of thing. I'm imagining the HR person
| saying, "It will only take a few minutes to fix this for you, so
| I'm going to wait until tomorrow". Examples are endless.
|
| There are better ways to get myself going in the morning, than to
| leave myself softballs from the previous day. Learning to make
| myself a realistic and attainable plan for the day works better
| for me.
| campbel wrote:
| I like the closure so I can take my mind off the task and onto
| home life. Leaving stuff hanging just means I'll be performing
| the task mentally all night.
| spaceywilly wrote:
| I've had good luck as well with the practice of leaving myself
| a "head start" to pick up in the morning. It seems like it
| wouldn't help that much, but in practice it makes the task of
| getting back into the programming zone much easier. Seems like
| just one of those ways to trick our brains into working a
| little better.
| ryanwaggoner wrote:
| I think it's different if someone is waiting on the immediate
| output of your work.
|
| But in your example, if the HR person needs to process 1000
| documents this month and mine is one of them, I'd much prefer
| they use this process to help them actually get through all
| that, rather than struggle to start every day and get less done
| over the course of the month.
| namuol wrote:
| > if I can finish something now, why wait until tomorrow?
|
| The end-of-day-just-one-more fix is likely to be lower-quality
| than the fresh-start-after-a-good-night's-sleep fix.
| user568439 wrote:
| Doesn't work for me. There are chances that I will be trying
| multiple ways to finish it in my head while attempting to fall
| asleep. Causing insomnia some days and therefore very tired the
| next day.
|
| If I can, I avoid this situation.
| exabrial wrote:
| I actually write everything I was working on down on a sticky
| note and stick it to my track pad. Then I write down everything
| outstanding.
|
| After a stiff cup of coffee and closing out communications and
| 1min tasks, super easy to jump back in.
| chucklenorris wrote:
| If i did that i would think the rest of the day at what i have to
| do next. I have days when I am completely absorbed by a problem
| so my family, kids, healthy habbits fall into the background
| noise as i think about it. A lot of times i can't properly sleep,
| or i have exhausting dreams trying to work out my next steps. It
| might work for people that can shut off ther brains on command,
| unfortunately i'm not one of those people.
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