

Two i's - mh_
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3534-two-is

======
drcode
I alternate my work days:

On even days I ask "What can I do today that advances my work as much as
possible?" and work long hours with little breaks and no frivolous web
browsing, etc.

On odd days I ask "What seems like the most interesting and anxiety reducing
things I can do?" and allow any music and frivolous web browsing I want.

Some of the benefits I find with this approach are (1) it weens you off of
habitual web browsing, so even when you allow web browsing it's moderate and
(2) I find even on my "off" days I end up usually being productive, though at
a lower stress level, since luckily much of my work is genuinely interesting.

~~~
someperson
How long have you been doing this for?

~~~
drcode
Not long, admittedly... about 3 weeks.

------
skore
In a conversation with another developer, we debated a development that could
be "a project" of some form. We disagreed on one thing, though: My conclusion
was "might be interesting, but I'm not sure if this would be useful to others"
while the other concluded "this is pointless, would be a waste of time to even
start".

This post rang very true in that light. It's all very nice to only do deeply
logical and important things, but it drains the brain dry because you arrive
in a headspace where you are incapable of surprising yourself. Sure, you make
a lot of progress - but only on existing, known problems. Those solutions you
build are often useless once you get a new set of problems or the entire
domain shifts and your very concept of what a problem is, in itself, is
shaken. And, of course, sometimes you need to develop solutions to problems
that aren't even seen as problems in the first place.

Usually, I do my best work whenever I act on a hunch, compelled by curiosity.

Screw all the tricks about how to get yourself "into the flow" and the whining
about productivity. If you need motivation, do something that is interesting.
Usually, it's so incredibly compelling that your brain doesn't even work in
the "motivated vs. not motivated" dichotomy anymore.

And finally: If you need to do something that is not interesting, work hard on
finding a part of it that is, first. That might be your entrance to finding it
interesting again (or at least you get that part solved).

If you can't find anything like that, try redefining your entire approach
(like "I should try to write code that in turn writes my program" or "I am now
forced to code this in LOLscript"). It might end up seeming as just
technological wanking (the usual "engineer takes 12 hours to program software
that solves a problem he could have done by hand in 3"), but, heck, I'd rather
do that than bore myself out of my mind.

------
mfenniak
I think this advice is correct, but if I follow it I'm going to have a hard
time ever getting the most important thing done. Why would I want to work on
that, when I can work on the most interested thing instead? :-)

I guess at some point one needs some discipline... but that's not very fun.

------
gohrt
Jason Fried just invented 20% Time.

------
kenoh
Should there be an apostrophe in this title?

~~~
samatman
Yes, that is the correct plural of a single lowercase letter.

Mind your p's and q's.

~~~
kenoh
Great. I thought, after 35 years with this language, I would have finally
would gotten to the end of inconsistent rules that favor what
looks/sounds/feels right.

~~~
Stratoscope
> I thought, after 35 years with this language, I would have finally would
> gotten to the end of inconsistent rules that favor what looks/sounds/feels
> right.

That's your mistake: You're looking for consistent rules, instead of looking
for what communicates.

In the "Two i's" title, if you leave out the apostrophe, all you're left with
is capitalization. So you can try:

Two is

Two Is

Two IS

All of those are clearly wrong; they beg the question [1], "Two is _what_?"

The problem is, "is" is already a word. You can't possibly use it as a plural
of "I", because there's no way in the world that anyone could tell that that's
what you meant.

So, you _have_ to use the apostrophe here.

It's really fairly simple if you forget about looking for consistent rules.

Of course, this is not important, but with any luck it's interesting.

[1] This applies to "beg the question" too. Forget the rules, and instead
communicate with people the way they do in the real world.

~~~
gohrt
"i's" _solves_ a communication problem, by resolving ambiguity.

redefining "beg the question" _creates_ a communication problem, by
introducing ambiguity.

Inventing new words like "blog" is progress. Confusing existing words is like
solar flares flipping bits in RAM, causing unrecoverable damage to our shared
system.

