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.
Unfortunately this also leaves your boss's job slightly unfinished, ready to jump start the manageering in your cube the next morning :)
This works, but also needs some notes with a "dump" (on the previous afternoon) of all relevant points. For some subtle bugs and complex codebases it's easy to forget some key point, even though you found what the main issue to fix is. So if you already know some subtle points/edge cases in the afternoon, write them down.
In fact, it is better not to have bugs every day =)
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.
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.
First-code-of-the-day is much more likely to be buggy for me because I still haven't reloaded all the content into my brain.
(Unless I'm starting something from scratch, in which case start-of-the-day is great, but how often is that happening?)
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.
I partially agree, something needs to be on fire or a complete showstopper for that to happen. My only other reason would be helping out a colleague who's trapped in a gravity well of fail and needs a bit of help and support.
You can finish what you are doing right now, and start something else to get a clear view of the next step. Or take something you want to fix, and put a breakpoint it it and plenty of print, to make it sure nothing works and the day after you know where to start.
It's all about breaking the inertia.
But if you want your win, you can have your win.
Kinda like how it's harder to start writing from a blank page.
Once I can convince myself and start just doing it, I can usually get that done quick too, but there's a mental barrier of high difficulty to overcome first, and I'm compelled to be doing something new instead.
For you, yes. But remember not everyone is a night owl, nor is everyone an early bird. I start work at 930am, we have our stand up, then I warm up with 30-45 mins of coffee, reading some techy stuff etc, and then I'm ready to roll.
> why wait until tomorrow?
Because it's the end of the "working day"() and my mind isn't at its peak performance.
> 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.
A whole heap of things aren't that time critical at the end of the working day. If I've had a problem with my salary or some revision to my contract it can wait until the morning.
But if you want to go ahead and knock yourself out with another 2-4 hours of work on top of your working day (and contractually obligated hours) then beware of burnout. Pace yourself.
depending on when you start your working day, which doesn't need to be 9am. Personally I used to start at 10am because of flexitime and work on until maybe 7pm or until there's at natural cut off
But I can't. I am still waking, slowly. And I am Ok with that. Because I believe I will when awoken move smoothly.
Leaving a bit at the end lights my lantern to tomorrow.
I have no problem stopping something when I feel stuck though.
He phrased it as "park facing downhill" -- so you can roll-start your engine with ease in the mornings.
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
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.
"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
An On-Ramp to Flow - One Weird Trick: Leave Your Work Broken
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.
That's why they call it "on-call", you only work if you get the call. If you're on-call and being expected to work on unrelated tickets then you're now adding many hours/days to your working week, and somewhere near and just over the horizon is burnout town.
yes, but there's a high chance they'll climb the corporate ladder way faster, 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-...
If I leave something “unfinished” intentionally when I could have finished it, I would likely not sleep right, eat with ease, talk to other people, so on and so forth.
However, I agree that if time is a constraint and the task is “lengthy,” I suggest keeping it to a stage of completion at a stage and then picking up the next day/time.
Many smart people want to keep something ready for tomorrow because they tend to be lost when there are no instructions on what is next. My suggestion would be to have a “Default,” which can be a simple set of instructions in plain text, something along the lines of, “If I’m stuck and have no clue what I have to do — then here are the defaults - do this, then this or that.” These can be bigger-picture goals or the “waypoints” for your daily/weekly tasks that you have to do.
I have been practicing the idea of the “Defaults” for a pretty long time but I got a lot more clarity and definitions from “The Power of Defaults.”[1][2] These are the things I keep on the top of my mind and return to when I’m stuck, confused, or doubtful.
If I have to be really prepared for the next day, I just keep it ready the night before.
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.
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?
I can't really think faster than I can mouse, anyway. I forget any shortcut I don't use more-or-less daily.
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.
> I never come back to a blank page; I always finish about halfway through. Hemingway taught me the finest trick : “When you are going good, stop writing.” You don’t go on writing and writing until you come to the end of it, because when you do, then you say, well, where am I going to go next? You make yourself stop and you walk away. And you can’t wait to get back because you know what you want to say next. > [1]
[1] https://www.writingforums.com/threads/hemingways-curious-tri...
If I can, I avoid this situation.
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.
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.
So when I start in the morning, or especially after the weekend, I hit F5 and it shows me the exact line where it broke... and that's where I start from.
It's mega simple but it works for me as I do my utmost to forget about work when I'm not there.
However note that nobody pays for you to work on it, or have your sub-conscious work on it on your own time. But if you really want to do a good job then that's the way to do it.
Could be the ADHD. Over the day I have the meds, but they are bad for sleeping, so I can't use them at night.
The meds calm my thoughts, so I don't have too much competing ones over the course of a day.
On the other hand, there specific kinds of thoughts that don't prevent sleeping. When I think about loved ones for example, I sleep better.
But without meds, I can't control that. When I have unfinished business, it will override everything else.
After a stiff cup of coffee and closing out communications and 1min tasks, super easy to jump back in.
Normal cycle is
1. Write test that will fail or not compile 2. Run it 3. Write code to make it pass 4. Refactor 5. Go to 1
When you are ready to go home, go after #2.
Now, if it’s later in the evening, well then it’s tomorrow’s work.
