Engineering Fantasy

Productivity Tricks

2015-04-17T11:05:00+06:00

Table of Contents

Measuring Productivity
- The Checklist
- Time-Boxing
  - Pomodoro
Planning
Will Power
- Peanuts
- Green Tea
Conclusion

Productivity is an arbitrary metric that (tries to) measure how much work we get done per unit time. To some, it's not even a metric, but a feeling. For example, we could actually be doing a lot of work, but feel as though we're doing nothing at all. On the other hand, we could actually be making a lot of progress in one particular task and feel as though we've been highly productive. In this post, I will try to share a few tips and tricks that have boosted my own productivity in a holistic approach.

Measuring Productivity

In order to "boost" productivity, we must define the standard by which we measure it. For most people (and initially for me), productivity is not measured but rather felt. The consequences of this is that we either feel productive or we don't. As such this feeling is not very helpful in determining what we can do about it. So is there a better way? Short answer, yes. Long answer, probably.

The Checklist

I'm pretty sure that we all have used or attempted to use a checklist at one point in our lives. Its a simple tool and it serves its purpose quite well. Simply planning out what you want to get out in the day can go a long way to boosting your productivity. Instead of having a seemingly infinite list of things, you have a finite list of known tasks that you need to get done. However this poses a very fundamental problem, are all tasks created equal?

Time-Boxing

Turns out, all tasks are not created equal. Some tasks can take half a day, and some tasks require only half an hour. Its not about how many tasks we complete, but rather how many hours we spend working productively that really matters. This is where time-boxing comes into play. Time-Boxing is essentially allocating a fixed amount of time to work on a task or group of tasks. There are two advantages of doing this:

You get a lower and upper limit of how much time you actually end up working in a day
You can estimate what tasks are going to take longer, and therefore get a realistic picture of how much you can accomplish in a day.
It will allow you to break down large monolithic tasks into smaller sub-tasks and distribute the workload over days instead of trying to do everything in one day and then failing miserably when that doesn't work out.

Pomodoro

The pomodoro is a unit of time, and is a specific method of time-boxing. Here's how it works:

Get a task that you want to complete
Estimate the number of pomodori (plural of a pomodoro) it will take (A pomodoro is 25 minutes of time)
After each pomodoro, take a 5 to 10 minute break.
After four pomodori, take a longer break (usually 15 to 30 minutes)

Now the above is the standard way of doing things. My own method is to assign 25 minutes to each pomodoro, take 5-minute short breaks and take a longer break (30) minutes after three pomodori. This way, I work 3/4th of the time in a 2-hour time slot. My

Planning

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Alan Lakein

Too much productivity is actually bad for you since you might end up burning out.[1] Its better to prevent burnout than trying to cure it and the best prevention tool at our disposal is planning. The plan does not have to be overly elaborate, but rather makes sure that there are breaks in your work schedule. When it comes to planning, I have a few basic rules.

Don't Work Everyday

There should be one day of the week where you just sit back, relax and read an interesting book or watch a movie. I take a break on Friday, and so throughout the week, if there's something that I wanted to do or something that I wanted to watch, I add that to my "Friday list". What this basically means is that I end up watching tons of movies and finishing blog posts on a Friday.

Two Transition Days

I have two transition days, one before and one after Friday. On a transition day, I do 40% less work than I do on a regular day. On a normal day, I end up doing around 12 pomodori. On a transition day, I work 8 pomodori. This way, there's less anxiety when it comes to getting back to work after a Friday.

Good Estimation

Being able to estimate how long something will take is key to making sure that you don't end up with too little or too much in a day. I try to get this right by making sure that I've broken down a task to atomic levels. So for example, if I have a chapter to write, I'm going to break that chapter down to the features or skills that I want to teach. I further breakdown the features or skills into sub-sections, like why a feature is useful, how to use the feature and gotchas to watch out for. Most tasks can be broken down into pretty small bits that are easier to estimate.

Will Power

Motivation is heavily talked about, and everyone has their own way of motivating themselves. However, I've picked up a few unconventional tips over the years. A lot of these tips come from some of the books and blog posts I've read. The most prominent of these is "The Will Power Instinct" by Kelly McGonigal. I highly recommend it as a read, but here are a couple of things that I found very useful.

Peanuts

Have a small bag of peanuts with you on your desk, enough to last you 2 hours and eat them sparingly. As you finish mini tasks within the task,[2] reward yourself with a peanut. The rationale behind this is that, our brains need a steady stream of energy to keep working. Peanuts are ideal since they're small, and provide enough energy. Sugar is not a viable solution since it provides too much energy.

Green Tea

Green Tea helps me concentrate better. Apparently, there's a bit of science backing this too.[3] I generally tend to drink green tea in my long breaks (basically once every two hours). Green tea is great because although it does have caffeine, the content is quite low.[4] This means that you won't have to worry about sleep if you drink green tea at night.

Conclusion

There are plenty of ways to stay productive, but these are the ones I find most useful. I've read a lot about productivity over the years, but the pomodoro, and Green Tea are probably the best tools at my disposal.

[1]	Burnout is when we lose interest in the work that we do. This can have terrible consequences and is frequently talked about. Forbes article on burnout

[2]	When I write, I reward myself after every paragraph. In code, I reward myself when I finish writing a function or method.

[3]	http://alifeofproductivity.com/9-brain-foods-that-will-boost-your-ability-to-focus/

[4]	http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/caffeine/art-20049372

A note about Twitter

2014-07-11T17:54:00+06:00

Table of Contents

A few points
The Pulse
Trends
Getting Help
Hashtags

So, I've been using Twitter for some time now. I think its rather useful, especially if you understand how it can benefit you.

A few points

I think, if you want to take full advantage of twitter for learning and networking, there are a few things you need to know:

Twitter is a tool. Its neither the solution to all your problems nor the end of humanity as we know it.
Don't care about global trends, care about relevant ones.
Spending time on it is good, even if its about a few hours a day, just make sure that you're getting useful information out of it.
Don't get dogmatic about following people. Follow anyone and everyone that is relevant to what you're learning.

The Pulse

One of the first things I did when I started using Twitter is that I started following the people relevant to what I was learning. In the Python community, there are plenty of people who are relevant like Guido Van Rossum or Alex Martelli. What's more important is these people also followed people who were relevant in their own communities. So, I started learning about guys like Raymond Hettinger and Donald Stufft. So by following Raymond Hettinger I knew about Wesley Chun, who wrote "Core Python Applications", a book that I never knew about before.

Trends

The reason I'm talking about all of this is that Twitter can be an excellent tool when it comes to understanding and exploring a community, as well as the hierarchy of the community. But there's more.

If you know all the hotshots of a community, it doesn't take much to realize that their collective voice is pretty much the pulse of the community and that tells you about how its doing. Recently, there have been a lot of people in the python community avidly following the happenings in the go community as well. Top programmers have started following Rob Pike and go specific twitter accounts.

So, that tells you something. Golang is going places.

Getting Help

People respond more willingly on twitter. It takes very little effort (compared to an email) to send a tweet. Its short and sweet, so if you want help with something, ask on Twitter.

Hashtags

Don't abuse them. People will start blocking and ignoring all the crap you're talking about. Make connections, and do so earnestly; don't waste other people's time and screen real-estate.

Being Productive while sick

2014-05-03T16:49:00+06:00

I hate being sick. I'm pretty sure you do too, but it wasn't always like this. When I was seven, I used to take super cold showers at the dead of night so that I'd get sick (and bunk!). Even if I didn't I'd do my best to act convincingly enough.

But now nearing 20, I find that being sick is probably the worst thing that can happen to me. I have a ton of work to do and more work keeps being added to be ever growing backlog. So, this time I forced myself to do at least some of work that I was capable of doing.

Getting in touch with old friends

Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold

-- Some Wise Person

I often do this, but as of late I've been doing it very infrequently (tons of work). But over the last few days, I've gotten in touch with some of the people who've helped me a lot, and some people I used to be very close with. A simple call doesn't take much time or effort, and stuff like this is always somewhere on my backlog. The funny thing is, a lot of people were genuinely concerned about how I was doing. Maybe you think its not much, but a gentle "Hey, hows it goin'?" can often make someone's day a lot brighter.

Audio Books

I had trouble reading or looking at a screen for that matter; my head started aching (its aching right now). So, I just closed my eyes and listened to a couple of audio books. This was great, since I managed to learn a lot of stuff while laying down in bed.

Planning

I made tons of lists about the things I wanted to do and then sorted my list with regard to priority. Now, as soon as my head stops aching I can get back to work with a clear idea of what needs to be done.

I'm still recovering, but I thought I write this down so that I can take a look back at what this when I need to.