I'd never heard of the pomodoro technique, but a quick google showed it to me. Sounds like a great way to make sure you're productive in a day! Thanks for suggesting!
I think we all have both of those, but I haven't found a good solution to them other than making myself move forward, "making one to throw away." The illusion of motion can be comforting, and often you don't have to throw away the thing you talked yourself into starting with that intention.
I get stuck on uncertainty when I need to make a choice about a direction to move in, but don't know which path to pick, or all the paths in front of me appear to be bad choices. For that, I find that making those choices explicit is quite helpful. I write the choices out, list their attributes, what I like about them, and what I don't like about them, and commit to one for a defined period of time. ("I'm going to do this for an hour and see how it goes") I find that just being explicit makes everything more clear - brains are terrible at this sort of "I don't like both things" judgement because that sentiment is based on fear, and fear tends to cause brains to get stuck in loops. Writing them down takes this process out of your brain and moves it onto the paper.
One thing I got stuck with in the past: picking the best option, e.g. which job to apply for or take. Absolute measures were misleading for this, at least for me. Lately I have been happy making a 'good enough' decision for things rather than seeking the best. It's a much more reasonable bar.
I've been inspired by your work and am actually putting together a few small videos that have some overlap with this one here - what a coincidence! I worked as a solo dev at my last job and needed to really dial in my processes in order to actually deliver anything. I think my number one thing here is taking notes. They 1. Help you organize your thoughts 2. Help others understand your thoughts now and I'm the future and 3. Provide great material for your next performance evaluation.
Agree 100%! Good luck with your videos, let me know if you want any tips? I'm no expert on this stuff but happy to tell you things I found that I think mattered / didn't matter / were a complete waste of time and money :)
I really aspire to eventually be like John, however I figured software engineering is not really fulfilling me anymore. Luckily these advices can applied anywhere.
Hello John, thank you for your videos they're very helpful. Recently I blew way past a deadline. This wasn't due to mistakes or poor time management but due to a bad deadline. I continually felt like I was 1 week away from finishing off the feature but problems kept popping up (this was working with a legacy system I had no familiarity with). I wish I had watched this video 2 months ago since it's almost like you made this specifically for me. But I was wondering if you'd consider (or if you've already made) a video about how to estimate timelines and identify potential blockers before they occur.
Thanks for watching! A video about estimating and keeping a project on track is a great idea, but off the top of my head I have no idea how to do it generally enough to be useful. I'll keep thinking about it, though. thanks again!
Appreciate you sharing all your wisdom John! I'd love to contrast my own personal experiences with what you've covered: - Limiting and/or lowering context switches has been THE BEST way to improve productivity, plain and simple! Love that you dove deep to explain how important it is. - Forcing myself to sit and focus on an unpleasant task hasn't worked well for me. I instead purposely started doing something completely opposite of that, like going for a short walk to not only mentally prepare, but think about the problem "in the background" - Tracking time has always felt counter-productive to me, but there was definitely a point in my career where I felt I don't have a solid grip on where my times goes, so I guess there's a time and place for that. - Taking rough notes after acomplishing something meaningful has been the KEY to establishing a solid understanding of the value I bring to the table. It's not only great to measure your productivity, but it immensly helps during performance/annual reviews. I really enjoy your content, and hope to see more of you in 2023 :)
Thank you for watching, and for sharing your experiences. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with tracking my time, but I learned things about my habits that were surprising and couldn't have come any other way. I do it for a month or so every couple years when I start getting worried again, and then I stop :) I'm with you on the 'something different to prepare for unpleasant work', but I also have a history of doing that, and then promptly coming back and not doing the thing I swore I would when I took my walk / had my ice cream / whatever. So I had to resort to mentally chaining myself to a chair to make progress.
Hi John great video as always. potential topic for you: managing your career in a legacy system environment. A lot of what we do nowadays is tweak and fix existing systems, but career incentives push us to build new things. Do you have any tips for managing that environment and finding opportunities?
Thanks for watching! This is a great idea and I have some examples from my own background. I'll add this to the list of videos to make. Short answer is, balance your primary mission (maint work) with looking for new ways to speed up existing work / features, and more dangerously, identifying new features.
Nice video! I'll be starting a new job as a Senior Software Engineer in May and will be responsible for leading small engineering teams and individual projects. Do you have any particular advice for this? Also, do you have any tips for taking notes and collecting (personal) knowledge at work?
Thanks for watching, and congrats on your new gig! For note mechanisms, OneNote was popular at my last couple gigs, as were wikis. Find the right terminology, see if someone else has written about it, and if not and it's useful, write it up yourself. When someone has a question and you explain it to them, task them with adding to the wiki / knowledge base, if there's not already good docs. Especially for docs useful for new joiners. For taking notes, I usually kept a stickie-pad with me and wrote a couple words that would remind me of what I either thought was noteworthy, or had questions about. I'd translate those sticky notes to questions and tasks that I kept in my own wiki / one-note as time allowed and appropriate. For leading, listen, have opinions, but be willing to change them if you're wrong. Understand how well current process works and why it's how it is before changing it. Be a strong communicator.
Sit and do "nothing" or "the pending work" does work! Thank you!!!
I'm glad it helped! Thanks for letting me know!
Most useful tips I got in years, Thanks!
Very generous and kind of you, thank you! I'm glad the tips are useful!
I found that pomodoro technique works well. Especially if the breaks are used for some physical activity. Doing a pull-up or sit-ups helps.
I'd never heard of the pomodoro technique, but a quick google showed it to me. Sounds like a great way to make sure you're productive in a day! Thanks for suggesting!
Documenting and adding notes when you are learning new things is the ultimate lifehack and productivity hack, others are kind of second nature .
Thanks for sharing!
I appreciate your insightful advise John!
Thank you for watching, I'm glad it was helpful!
I found that my biggest producitvity blocker is anxiety and uncertainty, would like to see those touched on
I think we all have both of those, but I haven't found a good solution to them other than making myself move forward, "making one to throw away." The illusion of motion can be comforting, and often you don't have to throw away the thing you talked yourself into starting with that intention.
One great step to solve this for me was to understand that more experienced engineers ask more questions, not less.
I get stuck on uncertainty when I need to make a choice about a direction to move in, but don't know which path to pick, or all the paths in front of me appear to be bad choices.
For that, I find that making those choices explicit is quite helpful. I write the choices out, list their attributes, what I like about them, and what I don't like about them, and commit to one for a defined period of time. ("I'm going to do this for an hour and see how it goes")
I find that just being explicit makes everything more clear - brains are terrible at this sort of "I don't like both things" judgement because that sentiment is based on fear, and fear tends to cause brains to get stuck in loops. Writing them down takes this process out of your brain and moves it onto the paper.
One thing I got stuck with in the past: picking the best option, e.g. which job to apply for or take. Absolute measures were misleading for this, at least for me. Lately I have been happy making a 'good enough' decision for things rather than seeking the best. It's a much more reasonable bar.
I've been inspired by your work and am actually putting together a few small videos that have some overlap with this one here - what a coincidence!
I worked as a solo dev at my last job and needed to really dial in my processes in order to actually deliver anything.
I think my number one thing here is taking notes. They 1. Help you organize your thoughts 2. Help others understand your thoughts now and I'm the future and 3. Provide great material for your next performance evaluation.
Agree 100%! Good luck with your videos, let me know if you want any tips? I'm no expert on this stuff but happy to tell you things I found that I think mattered / didn't matter / were a complete waste of time and money :)
That would be great! You can find my website listed in my profile description, and you can find my email on there. Looking forward to your email!
@@11704187 Didn't see an email, just a domain. My email is DeliberateEngineer@gmail.com
you are such a gem, really appreciate it over the videos
I really aspire to eventually be like John, however I figured software engineering is not really fulfilling me anymore. Luckily these advices can applied anywhere.
Sorry to hear software engineering isn't doing it for you anymore. :(
Truly shows the dedication to your craft that you made this video after donating 3 litres of blood
Hello John, thank you for your videos they're very helpful.
Recently I blew way past a deadline. This wasn't due to mistakes or poor time management but due to a bad deadline. I continually felt like I was 1 week away from finishing off the feature but problems kept popping up (this was working with a legacy system I had no familiarity with).
I wish I had watched this video 2 months ago since it's almost like you made this specifically for me. But I was wondering if you'd consider (or if you've already made) a video about how to estimate timelines and identify potential blockers before they occur.
Thanks for watching! A video about estimating and keeping a project on track is a great idea, but off the top of my head I have no idea how to do it generally enough to be useful. I'll keep thinking about it, though. thanks again!
@@TheDeliberateEngineer No problem. Thank you for the videos!
Some gold in this, thank you!
Thanks for watching!
Appreciate you sharing all your wisdom John! I'd love to contrast my own personal experiences with what you've covered:
- Limiting and/or lowering context switches has been THE BEST way to improve productivity, plain and simple! Love that you dove deep to explain how important it is.
- Forcing myself to sit and focus on an unpleasant task hasn't worked well for me. I instead purposely started doing something completely opposite of that, like going for a short walk to not only mentally prepare, but think about the problem "in the background"
- Tracking time has always felt counter-productive to me, but there was definitely a point in my career where I felt I don't have a solid grip on where my times goes, so I guess there's a time and place for that.
- Taking rough notes after acomplishing something meaningful has been the KEY to establishing a solid understanding of the value I bring to the table. It's not only great to measure your productivity, but it immensly helps during performance/annual reviews.
I really enjoy your content, and hope to see more of you in 2023 :)
Thank you for watching, and for sharing your experiences. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with tracking my time, but I learned things about my habits that were surprising and couldn't have come any other way. I do it for a month or so every couple years when I start getting worried again, and then I stop :)
I'm with you on the 'something different to prepare for unpleasant work', but I also have a history of doing that, and then promptly coming back and not doing the thing I swore I would when I took my walk / had my ice cream / whatever. So I had to resort to mentally chaining myself to a chair to make progress.
Hi John great video as always.
potential topic for you: managing your career in a legacy system environment. A lot of what we do nowadays is tweak and fix existing systems, but career incentives push us to build new things. Do you have any tips for managing that environment and finding opportunities?
Thanks for watching! This is a great idea and I have some examples from my own background. I'll add this to the list of videos to make. Short answer is, balance your primary mission (maint work) with looking for new ways to speed up existing work / features, and more dangerously, identifying new features.
These are all very valuable videos
Nice video! I'll be starting a new job as a Senior Software Engineer in May and will be responsible for leading small engineering teams and individual projects. Do you have any particular advice for this? Also, do you have any tips for taking notes and collecting (personal) knowledge at work?
Thanks for watching, and congrats on your new gig!
For note mechanisms, OneNote was popular at my last couple gigs, as were wikis. Find the right terminology, see if someone else has written about it, and if not and it's useful, write it up yourself. When someone has a question and you explain it to them, task them with adding to the wiki / knowledge base, if there's not already good docs. Especially for docs useful for new joiners.
For taking notes, I usually kept a stickie-pad with me and wrote a couple words that would remind me of what I either thought was noteworthy, or had questions about. I'd translate those sticky notes to questions and tasks that I kept in my own wiki / one-note as time allowed and appropriate.
For leading, listen, have opinions, but be willing to change them if you're wrong. Understand how well current process works and why it's how it is before changing it. Be a strong communicator.
Wow, he got a PhD while working
Dumb decision
where are you working now?
I'm closing on two years of retirement, so nowhere!
He used to work at Microsoft and/or Google, iirc
Sounds awful - you can summarize everything into 'absolute isolation'