

Ask HN: what do you do when you're unstimulated at work? - imcnally

Say, for instance, you feel unchallenged at work, and there isn&#x27;t much in the way of new feature or project work?
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natch
One of my favorite things is to automate something. I feel like I'm giving
away a personal productivity secret here. I suspect many people do this but
not to the extent I do.

I can spend, for example, an hour automating something that would take ten
minutes to do manually. To some people who don't think it through, this would
seem like a waste. But that ten minute task might get repeated, so it's often
a net win.

But taking a devil's advocate position, let's say the task only gets repeated
three times, ever. So (ignoring off by one errors in my accounting) let's say
when all is said and done I end up spending 30 more minutes, total, over the
course of my lifetime, on that task. Sounds like a losing proposition, right?

I would argue even if the tasks are never repeated enough times to make up the
time spent automating them (though many are), this expenditure of time is
still worth it in a whole-picture assessment because at the end I have:

\- New code snippets I can use for other things

\- Increased understanding of the problem space and how to model it.

\- Learned and refreshed knowledge of some coding techniques.

\- A new tool under my control, which I can tweak and extend in any way I
want.

\- A good productive feeling and a clear conscience about my time.

\- Fewer mistakes, and no learning curve, when I repeat the task.

And then... if not that, there's always refactoring legacy code ;-).

~~~
imcnally
Great idea, especially since everyone always seems too busy to fix an easily
automatible task!

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lsiebert
I would develop skills, or look for opportunities to gain additional training.

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zatkin
I try and solve a problem or two on Project Euler.

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icedchai
Have you heard of this thing called the Internet?

