
Fire And Motion (2002) - joebaf
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
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mercer
I've definitely found that if I can trick myself into getting started, I often
end up looking back on a productive day.

The Pomodoro approach has been somewhat successful in making this happen.
Another approach that works well for me is the 'Final Version' productivity
'system' by Mark Forster [1]. The key trick is that it's okay to just do 'a
bit' of something on your list and then mark it as completed (and re-add it to
the end of the list).

In the past I've been a heavy GTD user. I abandoned GTD mostly because I feel
it doesn't really fit my kind of work, but I still apply two GTD principles
because they're also primarily about lowering the barrier to getting started:
1) turn big tasks into small steps that are easier to get started with, and 2)
the 'two minute rule' where if you can do something in two minutes time or
less, just do it immediately and don't bother adding it to your system.

I've come to the conclusion that for me, the 'getting started' part is so
important to optimize for that everything else feels like little more
productivity porn, at least until I get that part somewhat working.

[1]: [http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-
final-...](http://markforster.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/the-final-
version-perfected-fvp.html)

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drawkbox
Here's a getting started hack from Ernest Hemingway, since programming can be
like writing in that work is more independent for much of it:

 _The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know
what will happen next. If you do that every day … you will never be stuck.
Always stop while you are going good and don’t think about it or worry about
it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work
on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it
you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start._

Leave something almost complete, at a compile fix state or with less cognitive
loading steps to start up the next day with the ball rolling.

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marsRoverDev
I find it so valuable when people in this kind of position within the software
industry admit their human faults.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of impostor syndrome. We all have these
problems, and coupled with the potential complexity of some programming tasks
it can feel overwhelming.

~~~
greenshackle2
Yes, definitely. Early in my career I had a coach, a very impressive,
productive person.

I started using the pomodoro technique, and I brought up the fact that I felt
unproductive because I was having a lot of trouble achieving my goal of 11-12
pomodoros per day.

She was like, "you realize 11 is a very hard goal, right? When I was using
pomodoros I was usually doing 8 per days. Most people struggle to do a single
one when they start."

It was illuminating.

In grad school my adviser was seen as the most productive, intense person in
my department. We got on pretty good terms, and when I was struggling he
started telling me about how much time he spends doing e-mail and reading
random books (if you paid attention you might notice the arts and philosophy
books laying around on his desk; he's an engineering prof.)

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amelius
> There’s something incredible heavy in my brain that is extremely hard to get
> up to speed, but once it’s rolling at full speed, it takes no effort to keep
> it going.

I noticed that too. I could be wrong, but I believe the painful part is
loading everything you need into short-term memory.

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s_kilk
> The competition has no choice but to spend all their time porting and
> keeping up, time that they can’t spend writing new features. Look closely at
> the software landscape. The companies that do well are the ones who rely
> least on big companies and don’t have to spend all their cycles catching up
> and reimplementing and fixing bugs that crop up only on Windows XP.

It's interesting to read this essay again in the context of 2017 Javascript
Fatigue, and especially the seemingly endless froth in the React ecosystem.

