It's better for us to remove deadlines wherever possible. We won't be able to get rid of the external ones where folks are waiting on our contributions (though we may want to renegotiate those if they're not hard deadlines) but we can let go of the desires to hit arbitrary productivity and meet arbitrary deadlines.
-Arbitrary goals may work for some tasks. Some game contests only run for a week which makes teams focus on the critical pieces of the game in order to release it in the allotted time. But if you continually feel guilty and unworthy because you can't seem to meet the goals you set for yourself then you'll want to reconsider using them at all.
+Arbitrary goals may work for some tasks. Some examples of this are game programming contests that only run for a week which makes teams focus on the critical pieces of the design and implementation of their game in order to release it in the allotted time. These can be a fun exercise for focusing your efforts, but they also incur a lot of pressure before the contest's deadline. If you continually feel guilty and unworthy because you can't seem to meet the goals you set for yourself then you'll want to reconsider whether it's useful to use them at all.
-One thing that I have found is to narrow the focus to the present moment using containers.
+One trick that has helped me is creating small spaces of concentrated focus. That trick is described in the next section.
## Containers
-We should replace soft deadlines (deadlines that aren't externally imposed on us) with a commitment to work on a particular project for a given length of time. One trick I've found useful is the idea of a timed focus container. When I do a timed focus container I start by choosing what will be focused on during the container. Once the task is chosen I set a timer at my work-space and then focus on that task with my full attention for the remainder of the time on the timer. I've had the best luck with using 10 minutes but a session as small as 5 minutes or as large as 25 minutes can be useful. The work selected at the beginning of the container is the only thing I work on and I do my best to make sure there are no interruptions (whether internal or external) until the container is complete. When the work is done I wrap up wherever I landed and then take a quick break (about 5 minutes) before starting the next container. The next container can continue with the same task, or I can select another task. But the idea is simple: I only focus on the thing in front of me for the allotted time. When my mind tries to wander or I get the temptation to "just check this one thing" I pause for a moment and see if it is indeed important. Most of the time it isn't important and I can make a quick note to check in on that after the container.
+We should replace soft deadlines (deadlines that aren't externally imposed on us) with a commitment to work on a particular project for a given length of time. One trick I've found useful is the idea of a *timed focus container*. When I do a timed focus container I start by choosing what will be focused on during the container. Once the task is chosen I set a timer at my work-space and then focus on that task with my full attention for the remainder of the time on the timer. I've had the best luck with using 10 minutes but a session as small as 5 minutes or as large as 30 minutes can be useful. The work selected at the beginning of the container is the only thing I work on and I do my best to make sure there are no interruptions (whether internal or external) until the container is complete. When the work is done I wrap up wherever I landed and then take a quick break (about 5 minutes) before starting the next container. The next container can continue with the same task, or I can select another task. But the idea is simple: I only focus on the thing in front of me for the allotted time. When my mind tries to wander or I get the temptation to "just check this one thing" I pause for a moment and see if it is indeed important. Most of the time it isn't important and I can make a quick note to check in on that after the container.
We can use these containers to overcome our desires to multitask. We only focus on one thing at a time. We can also use containers to just let the session go where it wants to take us. When we start the container we don't start off with trying to finish a particular task; instead we see where the session takes us. There is no judgment of the quality of the work in the container, just the expectation that we will work for the duration of the container. There's no expectation for what work we will accomplish, just that we will work on it until the container is finished. If we complete the task before the container ends then that's awesome! We can then figure out what out next task will be. If the container ends and we're still in the middle of a task we can then write down where we left off and what steps we took in order to get there. We can then work on something else, or we can take a quick break and then come back to the work with a focus container.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / commitdiff