

Work is Fascinating: The Metagame - moconnor
http://yieldthought.com/post/5862066767/work-is-fascinating-metagame

======
wccrawford
I think this is pretty much spot-on. I've always called it 'removing the pain-
points' because any time I get sick of something, I automate it. Sometimes
that's after 3 times, and sometimes it's 100. But if I start to hate it, I
automate it.

I do choose to remove some of the pain points differently, though.

I write things in the newest languages at home, rather than at work. Anything
I do at work should be re-usable by anyone on the team, and that's hard if
it's in some fancy new language that nobody else has looked into yet.

Rather than sort through email manually, I set up filters. Then I scan the
subjects of all the new emails in that tag, read the ones that are important,
and then mark the rest read all at once. (I don't have to archive because I
set my filtered email to never hit the in-box.) GMail has some nice shortcuts
as he noted. I use this to mark all unread messages as read: _UI_ N (Select
all unread, mark read, unselect.)

I also streamline anything I'm asked to do repeatedly, like add new fields to
a form. I know I'm going to be asked to do this constantly, so now it's just a
matter of adding a little metadata and the rest happens automatically.

And I also put everything I can into the hands of others, so long as it
doesn't involve changing code. If there's a list of Titles that change a lot,
I give the ability to change them to whoever requests it. (Business rules are
what stop them anyhow, not me.) Then I don't have to do that any more. (That's
rather simplistic, but I can't give more elaborate examples for fear of
breaking my NDA.)

~~~
lloeki
> _"I've always called it 'removing the pain-points'"_

I call it "removing friction".

Just like in physics theory a weight would fall according to f=m•a whereas in
real there is fluid friction, in an "ideal" world I'd just think only about
relevant information and my thoughts would command actions I want to do on the
computer instantly, but this world is not ideal and introduces friction. Which
produces an awful lot of drag.

Friction can be taken away, up to the point of reaching wizardry, at which
point one simply waves a hand at friction-inducing minute problems to move
them out of sight and concentrate on the _Real Problem At Hand_.

------
gbog
For those who have a longer procrastination time ahead, you might prefer
(re)reading <http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html> than elaborating on
definition loops. It strikes me how simple and yet deep are PG insights on
topics that seem to be outside his usual field. Here he just proposes to take
Aristotle in one hand, Wittgenstein in another, wrap all philosophy in between
and throw the thing over board. Then rebuild from scratch, changing the
partially wrong premisses from metaphysics (general useless ideas) to science
(general useful ideas).

Someone knows if this article had some echoes in the philosophy field? Or was
it completely ignored?

~~~
khafra
I don't know of any impact on academic philosophy from that essay in
particular. But in general, the Quinean school is much more friendly to
empirical considerations than historical philosophy. For example, Daniel
Dennett has said "AI makes philosophy honest," and people like the GAI
researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky do some damned good philosophy.

------
slewis
I believe doing stuff like this is one of the big contributors to making a
"10x-100x" programmer. The best programmers don't have to perform 20 clicks in
their browser every 10 minutes. Everything is streamlined so that real work
can get done.

Your multiplier also goes way up when you do work that makes everyone else in
the team more productive. The test automation improvements in the article
(automatic screenshots of the gui for failing tests) are good examples.

------
bad_user
Advice is good, but to escape boredom it's a lot better to work towards having
a passive revenue stream or fuck-you money, but I believe a steady/passive
revenue stream is more achievable for most people.

~~~
moconnor
Have you got any good advice on building passive revenue streams? I for one
would love to read more about this; the only people I know doing it are really
just putting out MFA pages. Actually creating software and selling it, well
that's not exactly passive either :-)

~~~
bad_user
My current passive revenue stream is low, as in I cannot afford to make a
living out of it and still have a day job, but it is continually improving ...
so I may not be the best source for such advices.

That said there are 3 advices that I've heard and that seem to work for me -
(1) it takes an awful lot of time for going from zero to making a living, as
in at least 3 years if you're lucky or really good, (2) whatever you do, it
needs to be a low-enough effort (as in a couple of hours per week tops),
otherwise it isn't sustainable and (3) you must not put your eggs inside a
single basket.

Building software and selling it is a great source of revenue. It is also
passive revenue. If you're good at building software, then do that. It doesn't
matter what you do much, as long as you're good at it. Some people earn
indecent amounts of money just by blogging.

~~~
thenomad
I'm also interested in this topic.

Who are your influences on the passive income front? Any blogs/sites/books
you'd recommend?

------
thenomad
Interesting stuff, but I'd really like to know the before-and-after numbers.
You've talked about a lot of optimisations, and metrics, but how much did the
optimisations actually optimise your workflow according to the metrics?

Lots of good advice, nonetheless - and an actual reason to look at using Vim!

~~~
moconnor
If there's any interest I'll happily do a more in-depth follow-up post with my
specific numbers and scripts. My metrics (bugs fixed, commits made, functions
changed) all jumped by roughly a factor of 10. Yes, really.

~~~
rquantz
There's definitely interest -- on my part anyway. I'd be especially interested
to see the scripts you used. I'd love to be doing this sort of thing, and more
specifically what others have done would be helpful.

------
cotsog
Other great blog post on the same subject:
<http://timothyfitz.wordpress.com/2009/02/11/cycle-eaters/>

~~~
thenomad
Heh - I wrote a post on the same subject a while ago, also, but I called them
"Time Vampires". "Cycle Eaters" is a great name.

(That post: [http://guerillashowrunner.com/2011/01/time-vampires-stop-
the...](http://guerillashowrunner.com/2011/01/time-vampires-stop-them-
draining-your-project-time-dry/))

~~~
moconnor
Both great reads, especially interesting to see the same effect crop up in
another field; I wonder if it's actually quite well known...

------
stcredzero
The real Metagame: (Louis Kauffman. Popularized by Raymond Smullyan)
[http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yWUkoenw47oJ:w...](http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:yWUkoenw47oJ:www.imprint.co.uk/C%26HK/vol6/Kauffman_6-4.PDF+smullyan+metagame&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESj8DpbJSJ5WaxX5ozmGxMIPBnMm4Bz87tR46Jl_vGePmoLJRDAnSqA7WdeB_kO77mkiaKRA7hj4y4IkXfpJmuHWnYq6-k9ATSiaEz6BZ89t9JABCi7zi9_3HR9Stqii95OkltJm&sig=AHIEtbQYPX_vZ1ZXCAX_IdrY2XcdUsMpEQ)

