Productivity

Software development happens in your head. Not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. You’re well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware—our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it’s all in your head. In this book by Andy Hunt, you’ll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain’s architecture. You’ll learn new tricks and tips to learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn. You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware.

Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy

like the pixels that give your words form are precious and rare

a reversal of the disintegration into the one-liners

Consulter de nombreux sites apporte finalement très peu de connaissances. Je me force maintenant à résumer tous les documents lus en utilisant un schéma type brainstorming en mettant les concepts abordés et les liens entre eux. C'est un essai. et pour l'instant ça marche, je retiens les sites consultés et les informations apportées de manière durable et assez précise.

Je me souviens d’un prof de marketing qui en début d’année nous avait expliqué que l’excuse « je n’ai pas le temps » ne devait plus faire parti de notre vocabulaire. « Nous avons toujours le temps, il faut simplement décider des priorités. Vous n’avez pas fait votre devoir ; ne me dites pas que c’est par manque de temps ; dites moi plutôt que ce n’était pas votre priorité ! »

We live in a world that is go-go-go 24×7x365

my computer slows to a crawl because of memory leaks or whatever. The only way I can get it to work faster again is to reboot.

When I first started to take 5 minutes, it seemed useless because my mind only raced with what to do

But what about those measures?  Well the problem is that either you get very complex and specific to the job with the not-entirely-useful metrics like number of articles written or lines of code written.  Or you step back and look at the evidence of effective and productive work.  Combining my thoughts with those from Matt's article you have things like: Time spent on activities directly related to your objectives and those of the company. Previously-read mail in the inbox (awaiting some action).  Ideally, kept to a minimum Amount of incoming / outgoing email.  There is no specific number here, but I think the flow of email indicates something.  Too much flow and you are spending all your time reading and responding - there is probably a better way to spend your time. Similarly, outside of email, there is time spent looking for things: files, information, people.  Can you organize your own information in ways that make sense for you?  Can you work with the company to provide better access to information that is otherwise hard to get? Time spent on interruptions: colleagues, phone calls, IM's, etc.  This should also be kept to a reasonable minimum.  Learn how to tune out that co-worker who always talks over the cubes.