A bit over fifteen years ago, developer Joel Spolsky wrote:
It makes me think of those researchers who say that basically people can't control what they eat, so any attempt to diet is bound to be short term and they will always yoyo back to their natural weight. Maybe as a software developer I really can't control when I'm productive, and I just have to take the slow times with the fast times and hope that they average out to enough lines of code to make me employable.
What drives me crazy is that ever since my first job I've realized that as a developer, I usually average about two or three hours a day of productive coding. When I had a summer internship at Microsoft, a fellow intern told me he was actually only going into work from 12 to 5 every day. Five hours, minus lunch, and his team loved him because he still managed to get a lot more done than average. I've found the same thing to be true. I feel a little bit guilty when I see how hard everybody else seems to be working, and I get about two or three quality hours in a day, and still I've always been one of the most productive members of the team. That's probably why when Peopleware and XP insist on eliminating overtime and working strictly 40 hour weeks, they do so secure in the knowledge that this won't reduce a team's output.
But it's not the days when I "only" get two hours of work done that worry me. It's the days when I can't do anything.
The writer reckons the key to a productive day of writing software lies most in just getting started at the beginning of it. Do Soylentils have tried-and-true tricks to getting into the flow of writing code, or is it always catch-as-catch-can?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:11AM (1 child)
The remainder of the word day is for meetings and grinding out more hours to make the others look bad.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by rob_on_earth on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:17AM
yep, meetings, email, ticket triage and random "my PC is broke" messages from people that know you are techie and will not shrug them off like the real IT support team.
(Score: 2, Informative) by riT-k0MA on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:18AM (1 child)
Strict Workflow [google.com].
I block all the distracting sites for 25 minutes while I get started on coding. Combined with earphones, there are fewer distractions. Once in the flow, distractions don't matter so much as I'm concentrating.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:38PM
I Resist the Urge to Code.
Seriously, most people start way too soon. Just don't go there.
Draw diagrams, rough chicken-scratched flow-charts (that may never see the light of day), write in the dev-book, compile lists of
programs that need to be adjusted, anything. Just don't write a line of code too soon.
Your initial understanding of the project or even a single algorithm is almost certainly flawed and incomplete. So don't work on it.
Some less critical projects ruminate in the back of my head for weeks or months before I start.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:28AM (6 children)
2) Don't visit supposedly work-related sites till you have started on the work and need to visit those sites
3) Have a decent but not too heavy meal (too heavy = sleepy).
4) Find a quiet place (or use headphones - whatever works for you). Open scheme offices are a distraction to many.
5) Breathe in and out slowly and deeply a few times to get relaxed
6) Force yourself to start on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:05AM (3 children)
Awesome list. Worth pinning to the wall.
Find a quiet place? In an open plan office? No.
A colleague now has $400 noise cancelling earphones muff things. Overkill?
(Score: 4, Funny) by deimtee on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:43PM
The main way to increase productivity with those earphones is when someone walks up and starts talking, you don't take them off
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by SecurityGuy on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:35PM (1 child)
Yes. Noise cancelling headphones actually don't work that well. Get a pair of in-ear headphones with triple flange inserts. They're basically earplugs with speakers in them. My cheap pair WITH the inserts set me back around $60, and there have been tons of times people walk in and start talking to me and I don't realize until I either see them or they tap me on the shoulder. My *good* pair was almost $400, but I'd be lying to you if I said they were good enough to be worth another $300. They sound better, sure, but $300 better? Nah.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:48PM
Clearly you're not enough of a hard-core audiophile. you should have been using them only with oxygen-free wires and white-gold plated jacks. :-D
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:15PM
My list:
1: make a list of all the crap I need to do.
2: do all the stuff on the list.
3: screw around on Soylent for the remainder while looking busy.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Friday July 28 2017, @05:43PM
7) Never, EVER go nowhere near that cursed place [bloodrizer.ru].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @09:55AM
Work on the current task to delay doing those stuff... :)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:42AM (18 children)
Personally, I don't mind a 5-10% allowance for fucking off or general grabassery but the rest of the time you need to be producing useful work for the company. If you don't have any good code left in you for the day, fine; comment and document code, proofread already written code, update yourself on language errata, tidy up the place, take out the trash, clean the coffee maker, or whatever if everything related to your actual job is done or your brain is burnt. Just do something. It's something I expect of employees and something I demand of myself.
Why? A) You're being paid for work; not working is cheating your employer. B) It forcibly creates a good work ethic in you.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:03AM (2 children)
I agree, if paid by the hour (yes salaried are too), then anything to progress the workplace can be work. Brain powered work is not something most people can keep up for 8 full hours, or even the 5-6 expected of cage chickens in a workday. Elitests who only eant to contribut a few good hours should be paid for such.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:44AM (1 child)
Well if the elitests weren't so mind-numbingly idiotic, the elitists wouldn't get so mind-numbingly bored fixing their shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:05PM
I sea what you did their.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:13PM (12 children)
Only an idiot employer would think like this. You're being paid to add value to the business. You're not (unless you're a receptionist or similar), being paid to sit there. Anything that increases the productivity of your employees makes more money for you. If your employees are as productive working 20 hours a week as they are working 40, then you can save other associated costs by having them only come in half the time.
Forcing people to be present but not contributing is not a great work ethic, it's idiocy.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:27PM (11 children)
Sure, I have no problem paying for 20 hours instead of 40. You want to be paid by the job, be a contractor. You want paid by the hour, get paid for the hours you work.
Jobs aren't there to provide you a living. They're an exchange of an agreed upon amount of work for an agreed amount of money. Violate the terms of the agreement and you are a cheat and a thief.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @05:51PM (1 child)
If jobs aren't there to provide me with a living, then why am I not literally a slave? That would surely make more profit for the profit gods.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:40PM
You are a slave though. A slave to the authoritarian fuckwads who "teach" you to think the world owes you something just for being born. They have thoroughly enslaved your mind and forever secured your vote.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:57PM (2 children)
The thing is, if you're salaried, you are *by law* not paid by the hour. That's the flip side of not getting paid anything extra when you have to work longer hours to get something done - you also don't get paid any less if you work fewer hours.
It's down to the culture of the individual business whether they try to "encourage" a 20, 40, 60, 80, or 100 hour week - you get paid the same regardless of how many hours you put in. A smart business will pay you based on the value you provide - a dumb one (aka most of the big ones) will tend to instead preferentially reward the employees who put in regular 60-80 hour weeks, despite the fact that copious evidence shows that they are almost certainly accomplishing less per week than if they were only working 30-40 hours.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 28 2017, @02:08AM (1 child)
Untrue. I've seen those studies too and that's not what they say. They say productivity drops after a normal work week, not that it goes negative.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday July 28 2017, @02:01PM
Check again - I've seen several claiming that *weekly* productivity consistently drops as the number of hours *normally* worked climbs beyond 40. Occasional pushes don't have the same effect - you still get diminishing returns, but you don't have burnout reducing your baseline productivity.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 28 2017, @12:02AM (5 children)
And if I can get that amount of work done in half the time as my coworkers, that's my business. If you expect me to stay and do twice as much, you should double my pay.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 28 2017, @02:05AM (4 children)
What part of the difference between paid by the hour and paid by their job do you fail to grok?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 28 2017, @09:53AM (3 children)
You speaking about jobs that are typically salaried positions as if they were hourly work.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 28 2017, @10:41AM (2 children)
You say salaried like it really means salaried in the US. Regardless, unless you make up short days with as many long days, you're still a lazy cheat.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Friday July 28 2017, @11:35AM (1 child)
And here you prove my point. You seem deeply fearful that someone might "cheat you" by giving you average performance for average pay.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday July 28 2017, @11:55AM
Insert the word "below" before the first "average" and you're correct. Also bear in mind that I apply this to myself. Even when my employer is myself. If I'm being paid for 40 hours, I work 40 hours. If I have to work over, I take comp time later.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:23PM (1 child)
That's what I like about contracting, when I'm done I'm "working with another client" see ya. Of course my other client might be playing baseball with my kids. There are contractors that F over clients, but not me. Sometimes I am burned out completely on topic A for client A but I can put in good hours on topic B with client B, sometimes "working with another client" really is true LOL.
Working precisely 8 hours and not a minute more or less worked pretty well in the assembly line and hand calculated bookkeeping era, but now a days extreme flex time makes more sense given modern highly variable mental workload.
Anecdotally I've incinerated my brain a couple times in the morning, then taken a couple unpaid hours of family time or minecraft or whatever and then squirted out a couple more hours in the afternoon or evening. I believe this is the origin of the famous "midnight engineering" phenomena where old fashioned 9-5ers get fried sometime between 11 and 5 then stop working, they recharge at home for a couple hours, and hit the workbench or lab bench or computer desk or whatever when the kids go to sleep at 8 and then put in several hours of high quality work till midnight. I think everyone's been there at midnight one time or another, if they're old enough. Historically some of my best work has been around 11pm. Obviously this doesn't work if you recreationally drink, which I don't.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:32PM
Absolutely. As long as you live up to your contractual obligations, they can go piss up a flagpole where ordering you around is concerned.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:18PM (14 children)
Is the workplace really designed to make people work, I mean productively?
* Open space plans
* Phones
* Meetings
* Efficient tools.... or tools that don't do what you want, crashes and isn't permitted to be replace because.. because!
* Duplicating "IT-support"
* Obligatory social events with pricks
* Work hours vs circadian rhythm, aligned?
* Shit salary compared to housing prices so you feel stored between workdays and sit in commuter hell. Good prep for productivity.
There's some insane idea that thinking is linear and more hours means more productive code. And not something cobbled together during a drug rush only to generate customer reports and long debugging to fix it.
I'll guess some even get people that knock on their shoulders because they have something important to say..
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:24PM (13 children)
Agree and extend your remarks with the false belief "Every employee is an extreme extrovert, right?"
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:07PM (11 children)
The boss and the receptionist is a extrovert so of course everybody else are like them! :-)
Many workplaces with qualified jobs should sometimes have the option to say "FUCK OFF!!", even to the boss ;-)
Can just imagine the new plan with "loan desks" and open landscape. You put on the nice new noise cancelling headphones and get in the zone just to be IRL knock-knock interrupted by some less intelligent life form..
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:01PM (10 children)
In my experience, when it comes to the BS social interaction crap you absolutely can do that, even to the boss's boss. I say no to the "Friday Frolicks" (they go outside and play games for a half hour every friday afternoon...I prefer to have that half hour of peace and quiet to actually get some work done); I say no to the release parties; I say no to the holiday parties; I say no to the random team lunches....fuck it all. The boss grabs me in the hallway and asks if I'm coming and I say "uh...nope" and walk away. If they want someone to come to parties they can hire a DJ or something...they hired me as a software engineer, and that's all they're gonna get.
Actually though, it's not the boss but my fellow teammembers' invitations that are the hardest to avoid. Last time I gave a flat-out no, the guy I have to sit beside and work with on a daily basis stopped talking to me for two days, so that made things pretty fuckin difficult...So usually I give some excuse and that satisfies 'em but once or twice a year they start giving me the "Oh, you're busy? No problem, we'll reschedule, just let me know when you're free" and at that point you're pretty much fucked, lol
The new plan with loan desks and open landscape would be you get nice new noise cancelling headphones, leave them on your desk with your laptop while you get lunch, and when you come back they're gone. I buy phone chargers literally by the dozen because of that shit (although the theft rate dropped significantly once I started buying the cheapest ones I could find...nobody wants a 500mA charger I guess!)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:08PM (4 children)
Thats... actually kinda nice. I'm just saying that my first impression of "Friday Frolicks" was the usual BS come out of a mgmt meeting at 3:30pm on the way to the golf course "Oh BTW here is a weeks worth of work to accomplish before 8am Monday, it's super important and best of luck I got a 4pm tee time"
Flex time companies are where its at... when its enough of a miracle to get everyone in core hours noon-3, they don't waste time BSing around.
Big company/remote/distributed is also nice. If the guy I sit next to stops talking to me, that doesn't matter because my closest coworker in terms of responsibility is 500 miles away and the data center where my server images reside isn't even in this state. And for awhile my bosses office was over 90 miles away from mine...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:16PM (2 children)
If all people that are really relevant for you are far away. Why are you not telecommuting?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday July 28 2017, @01:06PM (1 child)
Elderly micromanaging boomer executives, the bane of business productivity. Whats worse, having software development procedures and standards stop in 1985, or following every weekly magazine fad?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @07:24PM
At least boomer executives will go out of style (best-before) not too soon :-)
Unless you decide to make your own business.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:37PM
Yeah I do sometimes feel kinda bad about skipping those all the time, 'cause it's a decent enough idea I guess. Usually it's some kind of low-effort "sport" (the only one I ever went to was a "humans vs. zombies" type game, although basically slow motion 'cause nobody cared all that much...last week they did some kind of paper airplane contest...although sometimes it's just ice cream too) But it's an open plan office where I sit in a giant ten person cubicle, so when that thing empties out and the office goes quiet and I'm all alone and can focus and really dig into whatever I want with nobody breathing down my neck...that's often the best part of my whole week. Usually I try to use that time to expand my personal toolbox type scripts...although it's often right at the start of my shift so sometimes I'm just bracing myself when I see all hell about to break loose :)
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:25PM (4 children)
Interesting parties have a surplus of attractive females, good music, good food and intelligent crowd. Otherwise it's a waste of attention. So if the "Friday Frolicks" (what is that?), holiday parties, team lunches etc don't contain that well F--- O-- ;)
Team members invitations are the same.
The tricky shit is regular breaks and lunches where giving a shit is seen as anti-social despite that 95% is rubbish information exchange but you are kind of obliged to listen in.
Try replacing them with an identical looking that self destructs, beep at 100 dB or have cow dung inside. Whatever make the thief suffer.
Charger.. well who says it must output 5V.. 50V is "faster". :->
Same, use your own. Replace it with identical one, go for lunch, listen for screams..
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday July 27 2017, @11:53PM (3 children)
Yeah I considered such approaches...my thoughts were more along the lines of break the case apart so when they try to pull it out, the prongs stay in the wall...or add some conductive something between the prongs and leave it on the desk, when they plug it in it goes boom...but I figure it's probably not the best idea to be leaving booby traps laying around if I want to keep my job. Especially ones that may burn down the office :)
Oh god. Don't even get me started on lunch. My problem around here is I much prefer to eat alone in the office cafeteria (open plan office, I treasure my alone time), but apparently that confuses the fuck out of people so you get everything from the boss coming over "Why are you eating all by yourself? Where's your team?" to the people who will just show up and sit with you without saying a word. And I'm just sitting there going "Fuck, I don't even remember this guy's name, why is he sitting here, now I've gotta pretend to be interested or come up with a polite way to tell him to fuck off..."
(Score: 2) by DutchUncle on Friday July 28 2017, @12:42AM (1 child)
Read something. Preferably on paper. That helps keep people away.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday July 28 2017, @01:51AM
Yeah I don't really use paper much, but I'm always reading something on my phone in those situations and it doesn't help.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday July 30 2017, @03:28PM
I think this is where you got to establish some new habits. Ignoring people even if they are nearby in IRL. Your presence doesn't equals the right to engage with you.
"Why are you eating all by yourself?" - I got rabies. Questions? (I think my co-workers are retards and wish to have some off time from the zoo)
"Where's your team?" - No comment.
No comment.
No comment.
*silence*
*silence*
;-)
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 27 2017, @04:26PM
Agree and extend with "Make critical decisions based on which buzzwords non-technical people have heard recently."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by inertnet on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:46PM
Nowadays my productivity is low because for many years, people have been bothering me with stupid questions, which sometimes take hours of help by phone to get rid of.
But when I was a lot younger I discovered that whenever I severely slowed down while coding, it usually was due to a bug I had introduced somewhere. So when I realized that I had slowed down to almost nothing, I just went over the code I had written in the past hour or so until I found the bug that was bugging me subconsciously.
So in my experience, you subconsciously can be 'aware' of mistakes without actually being aware you made them. The slowing down is just a symptom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @12:46PM
After work, and since it is unavoidable anyway, I think of what to program/fix next. And that's what I start with the next day. I could at least be debugging the whole day to make that happen. If I get lucky, I have a day to keep improving it. I also refuse the urge to do it on the night, just after thinking about it, so next day, the eagerness is even greater. But that's likely to depend on what you're doing and how intersting you think it is.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:08PM (4 children)
That dude is smart and I have great respect for him, but he's ignorant. If you want to see an extreme example look at a site like hackernews, holy shit those kids have high IQs and low life experience, pretty funny to watch sometimes. The problem is, Joel just doesn't understand habit. Only slightly tongue in cheek, he should start smoking and then quit, that would be an interesting way to learn. Or heroin or meth or booze. Or, as he mentions diet, try an addiction to high fructose corn syrup or high carb diet in general, thats pretty addictive.
What works for me is habit, almost military style. Wake up eat breakfast while Fing around and/or removing obstacles to progress, hit the gym, get my two or so hours of daily productivity in, then F around looking busy like everyone else. The discipline is the habit that I come home from the gym refreshed and hyper energized and pound out a couple hours of productivity, before and/or after which I F off.
Another point to make is much like weight lifting, I can be done in two hours door-to-door if I focus and put in high effort, or I can put in 10% effort for 12 hours of low intensity yard work outdoor projects or light housework projects. You accomplish more by working extremely hard for two hours and Fing off for the other 22 hours, in my experience of programming and IT type stuff. But there will be jobs and lifestyles where half assing it for 12 hours and Fing off for the other 12 hours works. What I'm getting at is I can accomplish "more" in some abstract sense doing two hours of really hard core system development than half assing feature punchlists or fixing typo bug tickets for twelve hours.
Writing is like that too, at least from memory I could write some damn good term papers in a couple hours of extremely concentrated effort after which I'll be utterly exhausted, but I can shitpost on SN or 4chan or HN or whatever for an entire day if I'm sick with a cold or just uninspired. More recently I got stuck doing the technical documentation on a system at work, did like 30 pages of technical documentation, of an engineering app note of complexity, in about half a day after which I was mentally wasted and did nothing but F off until I went home and got a good nights sleep.
Possibly its the mental equivalent of some people being better sprinters and some people being better marathon runners. I feel WAY more comfortable and measurably more productive doing high intensity mental sprints rather than plodding along in a endless marathon, although I suspect there are intellects out there optimized for the reverse, have fun with that....
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:12PM (3 children)
Actually I had hints that mental marathon people can't muster the peak IQ needed for many complex things.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:13PM (2 children)
That may be generally true, but I would not agree that it is always true. I've met mental marathon type folks who accomplish some fairly impressive and complex projects but they do it on their own timeline and often in their own unique way.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:56PM (1 child)
Point is some people are genius some days and retards others. Some people are quite good all the time but never genius or retards. Work environment is tailored around standardized work units not people that are uneven in performance.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday July 27 2017, @10:31PM
Probably varies day to day among some people (and workloads, too)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by TheRaven on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:11PM (5 children)
During my PhD, I typically worked 3-4 hour days. People kept asking me 'how are you so much more productive than me when I work much longer hours than you?' completely ignoring the fact that the answer was in the question. A study came out about 2/3 of my way through which showed that, for knowledge worker activities, productivity peaks at 20 hours a week. Up to 40, it plateaus, so you get roughly the same output for 20 and 40 hour weeks. Above 40, you lose more time fixing mistakes than you gain from doing more work.
If you stop being productive, the best thing to do is go and do something completely unrelated. Trying to keep working, even on something similar but with a lower cognitive load (such as TMB's suggestion earlier up) will just keep your productivity low.
Since I finished my PhD, I've always worked in places that judge you by your outputs, not by your inputs. This discourages working too long hours.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by microtodd on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:02PM (3 children)
Maybe I'm misinterpreting the quote, but I've read this many times and it doesn't align with my (anecdotal) evidence. Sure, your efficiency% goes way down, but if I work 50 hours, I still accomplished more than if I worked 40, even accounting for my efficiency during that +10 is worse. Maybe if you can track all the bugs found during that +10 and calc the time spent fixing them way down the line?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:52PM (1 child)
If the experiment lasts one day, sure. But the next day productivity will be lower the whole day. I've worked 70 hour weeks, and by the end I could barely function. My health also deteriorates.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:22PM
One of the aspects of "death march" projects is that the managers panic and press the "EVERYBODY WORK OVERTIME!" button. And the result is that the developers are tired. Which means they make more mistakes, and get slower. So the bosses, unaware of their mistake, say, "EVERYBODY WORK MORE OVERTIME!". This cycle can get to the point where the entire development and QA team is sleeping in the office because they can't drive safely.
Eventually, of course, developers start quitting. And the project often doesn't get finished, which managers chalk up to those lazy developers who weren't willing to work 120 hours per week (for those keeping score at home, that means they sleep about 5-6 hours a night, eat, and work, and have no time for anything else such as showering).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday July 28 2017, @08:06AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:17PM
This key. And of course to be allowed 20 hour weeks at all.
Maybe that's why there are so many clever people in academia....
(Score: 1) by metarox on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:20PM
I come in at 5 am and I'm out at 1pm and eat lunch at my desk. No one is around here before 9-10 am anyways. I have access to all the labs and servers that are idling and get no distractions for a straight 4-5 hours. I get to enjoy the rest of the day, avoid traffic completely (even with winter storms) and spend more time with the kids and wife.
(Score: 1) by YeaWhatevs on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:33PM (1 child)
As if maximizing productive output (if we can even define that) ever had anything to do with the work environment. It's all about control, baby. Ok, according to legend the 40 hours came from Ford research, but really, since this is only ever cited as a reason to work MORE hours, that hasn't much to do with optimization.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @04:09PM
Actually, the Ford research picking the 40 hour week caused them to reduce hours to 40 (before that everyone demanded more work from workers).
(Score: 2) by microtodd on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:07PM
Compare this to mowing the lawn, or washing your car. I can sit on the couch all Saturday and not want to get up and go mow the lawn. But if I actually force myself to do it, then once I'm mowing the lawn (although it may still suck) at least I'm doing it and getting it done. Its harder to get off the couch than it is to finish the lawn once you've started.
For me what really helps is, take the first 15 minutes and write down things for the day. What do I want to accomplish? What tasks can I do right now, even if they are small ones? What are my priorities? Pick one task, and then do it, without any multitasking or email/slack up or slashdot open or anything. Get that one task done. When done, take a few minutes to go read slashdot. Usually that's enough for me to get in the zone and get going. If not, then pick another task and get going again.
Sometimes after 3 or 4 tasks I can't get started. Those days I switch to "backup power" and start on housekeeping chores, like editing the wiki or studying something new. And sometimes after finishing 4-5 important tasks, I'm mentally blown and either need a break, or I can recognize I'd better just stop for the day and switch over to watching youtube tech talks about a new language paradigm or something.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:50PM (5 children)
Headline could use a little context.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Funny) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:13PM (3 children)
Headline could use a little context.
I think that's what all the little text under it is for. Not that I read it, too busy working!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:02PM (2 children)
None of it explains what "Fire and motion" means.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)
Gee your ass in motion or else you're fired?
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:22PM
What is this, Wheel of Fortune?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:19PM
Winter is coming!