

Most Obvious Yet Ignored Concept About Programmer's Concentration - brupm2
http://blog.brunomiranda.com/post/5085184979/most-obvious-yet-ignored-concept-about-concentration

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forensic
His comments are provably false. There are countless scientific studies
showing the benefits of various strategies for increasing productivity as well
as increasing your enjoyment of your work. (e.g. how to make masturbation feel
better, how to make programming more addictive, how to enjoy yourself while
doing the dishes, etc etc)

He even suggests time-boxing, a very popular strategy for countering
procrastination.

Suffice to say, he is yet another unqualified non-expert giving opinions on
stuff he doesn't know anything about.

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tzs
For those who like to have music playing while they work, I've found that
albums can be a nice way to pace the work day, and to account for time.

Open up my editor, start an album that fits in with my current mood so it will
service its purpose of covering up outside noise but will not distract me, and
start hacking away.

When the album ends, I get to a good pause point, and take a break to plan my
next move, and pick the next album. Good time for a stretch, or a snack, or a
check of HN. Then start the next album and back to work.

This naturally breaks my day up into the kind of concentrate/break cycles that
many recommend. At the end of the day, if I need to account for my time, It's
easy to check iTunes and see how long each album was, and therefore how much
time I spent on that phase of my coding.

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sayemm
On the other hand, here are some organic ways that I've found useful for
strengthening my level of concentration, independent of my programmming focus:

\- working out regularly, especially running long distance

\- playing games competitively (eg: chess, bridge, go)

\- training your mind/memory or practicing mental arithmetic

\- eat blueberries daily (random tip from Nelson Dellis, the current US Memory
Champ: [http://climbformemory.com/2011/01/05/blueberries-rock-my-
bra...](http://climbformemory.com/2011/01/05/blueberries-rock-my-brain/))

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tsotha
This is just wrong. Sometimes you run into a knotty problem that requires you
to hold a lot of things in your head while you try to fit them together. A
conversation in the next cubicle can prevent that from happening.

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KSS42
The post reminds very much of the "Back to Work" podcast by Dan Benjamin and
Merlin Mann:

<http://5by5.tv/b2w/10>

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analyst74
off topic: I like the fact the content renders perfectly on my phone, as
opposed to most others with tiny font and fixed width.

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georgieporgie
Inflammatory stuff by someone who seems to have never dealt with burn-out near
the end of a project, or the fact that sometimes work is work, and you just
have to push through it to get back to the things you find exciting.

~~~
ctide
I didn't really interpret it like that. While there's certainly situations
where one feels burned out and lacking motivation, I think his point was more
about entire fields of work that you find demoralizing.

For me, this is mostly doing design work. It's a necessary evil on small
projects, but I really struggle with it a lot of the time because I'm not
especially good at it, while I think I have a pretty good eye for what looks
like shit and what doesn't. With programming, even the most menial tasks I can
get lost in much easier.

