DEV Community: Mark Nicol

How do people store their spare tech kit?

Mark Nicol — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 10:46:39 +0000

Hi All

I have a question. Over my time working with computers I seem to have accumulated quite a collection of odds and ends; Old cables of various types, power supplies and transformers, spare network and drive cards, spare or backup hard drives, other useful bits of old computers, multimeters, soldering irons, breadboards, and the like.

At the moment most of it is packaged up in zip lock bags in the drawers of an old desk - but I know this is a far from the ideal answer because even with labelling it takes ages to find things and I'm the only person in the house that can find the spares for things when something breaks.

I've already gone through and ditched everything that is dead, completely redundant or that hasn't proven to be useful in the last year.

How do other people cope? Please share your storage solutions and ideas.

Life is not a rehearsal

Mark Nicol — Wed, 05 Dec 2018 18:37:33 +0000

These notes are the consolidation of several different time management type courses that I've attended over the last few years.

Time Management is not about Time

The first bit is somewhat meta. Very little time management is about time. It is far more about managing the three components that contribute to the results you achieve:

Tasks are the actual things that need to be done. Managing these is about having a system for recording them, understanding them and breaking them down into smaller pieces if necessary.

Process is how you move tasks from not started to being done. Managing process splits down into:

What is the goal. How do I know when I'm finished. What are the time and quality constraints?
What is the sequence of events that has to happen here to complete this task?
Whose help do I need to get this completed?

Setting specific and measurable objectives, or negotiating timescales, is something you might do to manage the goal. Creating a plan, or a flowchart or writing some tests are all things you might do to help with the sequence of events. Setting up some time with a colleague might be part of whose help.

Tools is how the task gets achieved. So learning editor shortcuts, installing a linter, automating tests are all ways of managing tools. I have no measures or hard evidence to support this next rule of thumb, but any investment in tools that are reused is seldom wasted. Certainly, if it is a job that you've done twice it seems to be worth investing in optimizing the tools at least as much time as the job usually takes.

Results should be measurable. If not, you can't chart progress. Charting progress matters both for maintaining your own motivation and for deciding what worked and what could be improved next time round. Results tracking is like the unit tests for Time Management.

We interrupt this broadcast ...

Ok, so that's that chunk of context. Next is usually something about interruptions. This is something that the reading I did on attention had some helpful advice on, and I might write another article about later. What I'll say here is that from a managing your productivity perspective there is one distinction that counts.

Is this an interruption within my control or something out of my control?

Both the Covey/Eisenhower grid and the focus grid use this as one axis because the strategy for handling them is different.

Inside your control, your best strategy is to manage when and where it happens, who is involved and how much time and attention you give it. This is also where any self-management strategies come like switching off apps and alerts. This also includes any work where you can make changes for the next time.
- Time spent finding lost info could suggest improvements to your systems.
- Time spent on over-optimizing that didn't pay off could be a sign that you want to keep things simple next time - or at least ask more questions.
- Rework and quick fixes might show the sort of mistakes you tend to make where you want to put something in place as a check for next time.
Outside your control. This could be because there is a change in people or resources. The classic scenario here would be where a colleague phones in sick at a critical point. This also could be a crisis such as a hardware failure. Your best strategy here is to do what you need to to get through it. What you are juggling is when, where, how and who with all your other work happens.

Most productivity systems focus on the first of these because what you do here has the most leverage. Spending time and attention on things within your control means you can set what of all those things you make your priority. to the things within that which give you the best return.

The Pareto Principle

The next common point that a lot of time management advice makes is that the shift does not have to be large to have a big effect on your results. The Pareto Principle states that 80% of your results come from 20% of your efforts. The remaining 20% of your results we up the remaining 80% of your effort.

So, even if you only have control of 20% of your time and attention you could, make an 80% difference to your result. If, and this is the tricky one, you picked the right 20%.

The Event Horizon

Planning and managing events becomes easier the further away you can spot potential problems.

The further ahead you know what needs to happen and what the priorities are the easier it is to make adjustments when things change or to spot problems.
The better you understand what you are trying to achieve the easier it is to focus on the best use of your time at any instant.
If you work as part of any sort of team, the more your colleagues understand where you and what you are working on, and you understand where they are and what they are working on the easier it is to deal with any changes.

Focusing on any of these areas is like pushing out the distance you can see and react.

This can be divided up into a number of 'process' skill areas:

Influencing / Teamwork

This isn't about getting your way or forcing your decisions on others. One definition of teamwork is:

"Work done by one or more people for the good of the whole"

The goal here is both making sure the right people are doing the work - which may involve delegation, and making sure everyone understands what is expected of them. So clear verbally and written communication, clear shared priorities, and understanding what 'done' looks like.

Most importantly it is having the space for clear and open discussion. Listening to and respecting each other. Using the full experience and knowledge of the team to make shared decisions.

Logistics

This is about getting people and resources in the right place at the right time. Part of this is about planning out a sequence of events that is practical and then tracking it at each step adjusting as necessary. This links to the next area

Clear purpose and goals

This comes down to two questions. "What am I doing?" and "Why am I doing it" the more specific your answers the easier it is both to set goals and to convince others to help you with the resources or support you need. Sometimes you have to ask the questions several times before reaching the underlying reason.

If you don't know or can't find an answer to either question then chances are you either need to get someone else to clarify it for you, or you need to question why you are doing it at all.

Always Improving

Whatever you are doing there are probably ways to do it better. The key trick here is to avoid complacency and to be willing to adopt or to adapt to new ideas. The phrase 'mind like water' or 'mind like a sponge' is often used to describe this curiosity and openness about the world. Fixed patterns and routines could be masking better ways of doing things. Anything that is becoming 'business as usual' can probably be automated, or ditched or you can take to the next level.

Developing a Productivity System

Most of what I have picked up here is shaped by the approaches other people have found work for them like David Allen's Getting Things Done (GTD) or the Franklin Covey system. I'll try and outline these as general principles that can be adjusted to fit whatever works for you.

There are 5 general parts to a productivity system:

A way of organizing work by the time when you want or need to work on it. This should be something viewable at different levels of detail and at varying levels of timeframe from the next few hours to the next few years (i.e some form of calendar or planner)
A way of organizing information by people. Who do you need to talk to? What things do you need to talk to them about? Is there anything you are waiting for them to provide? How do you get in touch with them?
A store of notes. A referencable place that contains the current information about any work items you are working on.
A clutter pipeline for taking incoming information and organizing it into your system
A regular planning and review process for analyzing what is the most important work to do next on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. What does the work involve? Whose help do you need? and when makes sense to do it. This should also include tracking what has been achieved, what went well and what improvements you want to make for work taken on during the next period.

The master schedule

The aim here is to be able to add tasks to a particular timeslot, day in the next week, week in the next month or month in the next 12 months. this can be as high tech or as low tech as you want.

The important thing is that there is one master source. If other electronic calendars need to be kept up to date this information should either be pushed to the master schedule automatically or pulled from the master schedule automatically.

The communication planner

The aim here is to be able to have good conversations with those around you. Set up an entry set up for each of the people you communicate with on a regular basis:

peers and colleagues
customers
people in your network
family and friends
your boss

Into this will go any notes, contact details, things that they have asked you for or things that you've asked them for.

A place for storing notes

This is going to be indexable or searchable. (This means it is useful to be able to add tags or keywords to items added.)

It is going to be the place where any reference notes, the details of any work items, projects, plans, wider goals, and ambitions end up.

To keep it manageable if the information is already stored in another location what goes in the store is the link or reference to the original source.

The Clutter Pipeline

If this is not an existing system, the first place to start is will all the partial task lists, calendars, notes and other sources of information where your work might come from. Make a big pile. If you have electronic and physical sources of information start with all the physical pieces of paper.

Can I ditch it ? then it goes straight in the bin. This may include:

Any paper references you have in an accessible electronic form.
Any notes or other which are not likely to be referred to again.
Any mail that doesn't either require a response or contain any useful reference info.

Can I delegate it ? then you need to work out:

Who is the best person to do this task.
How are they going to do it,
What information and guidance will they need from you and
When is the best time to discuss it with them.

Once you have those answers:

Create in your people store some notes for the delegation including references to any other information that might be needed.
Create in your schedule a time slot for talking to the person about this. If you are going to have to handle this without face to face contact, either draft the communication or add into your schedule the time when you are going to draft and send the communication.

If you can't ditch or delegate it then it implies there is something you need to do with it.

If the item is:

something to be read Add it to the reading pile and make sure you have a reading slot in your schedule at some point in the next 24hrs.
a current work item Either create a new note or extend the note for this work item. Figure out the next action and if possible either add it directly into your schedule or put the note (with the next action highlighted) into your planning pile
a request for a reply Decide when and how to respond and whether it is better to respond face to face or via another channel. Find a suitable time for the conversation and mark off the time in your schedule. Before responding check your people file for that person and see if there is anything else you may need to talk to them about that can be done at the same time.
is something that requires action If it can be handled in less than 5 minutes than do it. Otherwise, create or update the relevant note with the new action and add it to the planning pile.
is information you may need later add it to your notes store. If it is already stored somewhere accessible and long-lived then add a reference into the appropriate place in the store.

All items should either end up filed somewhere in your system or in the bin. By the time you are finished your desk is clear. Rinse and repeat for all your electronic in-boxes, message sources, and information notes.

Once everything is in your system you are ready to start reviewing it for the first time.

The review process

This is the core of any productivity approach. The setting aside of some time every day to go through, review what has happened, update and prune the system and to plan any new activities.

Add into the system any actions or to do that are in your head. Find a slot in the schedule and write down the action that is needed, if it more complicated start a note and figure out what the next action is and schedule a time-slot for that. Record the results of any conversation or follow-up actions from any meetings.
Go through the system starting at the highest level and working down to the planning the activities for the next day.
- Strategy What do I hope to have achieved in the next few years or within the next year. Have I got notes relating to these? What is the next action, and when is a good time to plan it for? Write that in the system. At this stage making sure it is recorded in your 'monthly' or 'weekly' view is fine.
- Notes Go through all your 'active' notes and check what the next actions are and for each one make sure there is an action on the schedule at a suitable point to do it.
- People Go through all your communication planners and see if there is anything you need to talk to anyone about. If so figure out when where and how you want to have that conversation or are going to communicate with them and plan it into your schedule
- Check the next few months What actions need to be planned out or defined in more detail. Check that any next actions are planned into the schedule. If any deadlines or milestones are coming up are there any actions that need to be done first.
- Check the next month Is everything you want to achieve in the next month somewhere in the weekly or daily view for that month.
- Check the next week does everything in the next week have a clear next action and a timeslot.
Review the day just gone and move any incomplete actions to a new timeslot in the schedule. For anything completed check if there is a new next item for that work item or note that needs to be scheduled. What went well? What can be improved? Are there any new actions or work items to be recorded.
Look at _tomorrow. Does everything have a clear timeslot? Check for any conflicts. Pull together or tag any notes needed. Highlight the 3 most important things that need to be achieved and make sure you are not trying to tackle more than 9 in a day. (If you like to prioritize things order the 9 things by importance.)

Keep at it

The last piece of advice is to keep at it. At the start, it feels like a real faff and you may well find you need to tweak any or all of this to suit your own circumstances.

I'm still terrible at managing to do these steps as regularly as I should. However, especially when things are tough the more I do it the easier it becomes.

There is a reassurance to having a routine that captures things and gets them out of your head and somewhere safe. It frees a lot of mental energy to focus on the things that really deserve thought, and it saves that constant nagging doubt that there is something more important being missed.

Like any routine - remember to live and enjoy the moment when you need to. If you've organized well enough your system will still be there to catch you when you come back.

Growth Mindset Prompts

Mark Nicol — Tue, 27 Nov 2018 21:44:50 +0000

Some prompts I have in my notebook that I find handy, especially on the tough days.

What did I learn from today?
What steps did I take to be more successful, what can I do tomorrow?
What strategies did I use today, and how would I change them for tomorrow?
How did I keep going when things got tough?
What did I learn from others?

And then a few reminders to myself:

This is challenging, believe you can do it.
I might not have got there yet, but I will if I keep working and thinking about it
Appreciate you gave it a good shot - sometimes that's all you can do.
It is OK to take risks - this is sometimes how that feels.
If you surround yourself with smart people sometimes you will feel like the dumbest person in the room. Don't let it get to you.
Getting better takes time - and I can see myself improving
Learn and move on

Does anyone have any other good ones that work for them?

Thank you so much Dev.to

Mark Nicol — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 17:33:18 +0000

I've been wanting to say thanks for a couple of days but I don't have the right words. Today however seems to be an appropriate day to try.

Thank you for being the smartest, nicest, most friendly, accommodating, helpful, constructive and supportive community I've ever seen. Thanks for making me feel welcome.

I've been genuinely amazed that people have been willing to take me on, on everything from a quixotic attempt to write a post a day to answering my basic questions about technology.

I don't know where all the love and support has come from - but it makes this an awesome and unique place to hang out.

I've learnt so much from the conversations and pointers. Stuff like making portraits using wandering salesman is a thing that I can't imagine finding anywhere else.

You all rock - please keep doing what you are doing.

How do other people use gists?

Mark Nicol — Thu, 22 Nov 2018 06:55:12 +0000

Simple question for today, because I've just got round to looking at gists.

They seem a super useful idea but I'm not sure yet what I want to do with them. I could see they are a nice way of storing text and code snippets or useful for bookmarking. Some people have lovely looking book lists or to do lists.

I'm looking for inspiration. How are other people using them, has anyone seen any particularly fun or creative uses?

https://help.github.com/articles/about-gists/

Seventeen White dudes

Mark Nicol — Wed, 21 Nov 2018 07:31:59 +0000

This is quite a striking video. It's by a hero of mine Sarah Mei @sarahmei who writes all sorts of good stuff about agile and culture and software as well as other technical subjects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL-6RCTywbc

It is a keynote she did where among other things she raises the challenge that a lot of agile practices are at least unintentionally exclusive and that if we don't fix the problems we can see that becomes intentionally exclusive. She lays out some of the issues about motivation, access and power dynamics in the office.

I'd recommend watching the whole thing. However what I was pondering today was the key moment at about 18:16 when she puts up a slide of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto. It is literally seventeen white dudes, not that radically dissimilar looking in age or appearance.

I have wondered though how might Agile be different if a different, perhaps more diverse group of people had come together initially?

I don't have any answers to this one yet. The team I'm on are a small group of quite different people from different cultures, split by geography and still figuring out how to do things. We are learning to be Agile together and there is probably lots we could do better.

What are other people's ideas of what a different more diverse agile might have looked like?

It doesn't have to be based on reality. Creativity is fun. But it would be cheery to hear some stories of where people are either getting it right or getting it very wrong.

Why did you pick the avatar you use?

Mark Nicol — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 07:27:10 +0000

One of the things that fascinates me about social sites is the sheer variety and creativity of the images people use for their avatars.

I feel quite prosaic in having picked a photo that I hope feels friendly, shows people what I look like and reminds me of a happy day out walking with my family when I see it.

Does anyone want to share the story behind how they picked the picture they use?

Bloom's taxonomy - a way of thinking about learning.

Mark Nicol — Tue, 20 Nov 2018 06:04:32 +0000

I've been doing a bit of reading about Learning Domains. It is mildly fascinating how many ways there are to divide things up. This comes from Taxonomy of Learning Domains by Benjamin Bloom in 1956.

What is Bloom's Taxonomy

It is essentially a way of thinking about the different levels we go through when making some new experience or knowledge part of our understanding of the world.

First, there are three main categories or types of knowledge we have about the world. Bloom saw these as:

mental skills and knowledge (the cognitive domain),
our feelings and emotions (the affective)
being able to do a coordinated activity or make things (the psychomotive).

Within each of these Bloom identified a number of different levels. The ones towards the bottom of the list showing a greater level of understanding than the ones towards the top of the list.

Cognitive Domain

Knowledge: being able to recall or remember things
Comprehension: the ability to understand the meaning of the words, to rephrase learning in your own terms
Application: Taking facts learnt in one area and using them in a different type of situation
Analysis: the ability to distinguish between facts and opinions
Synthesis: bringing together facts and ideas from different areas
Evaluation: being able to decide which are the most relevant or important facts and being able to decide which facts to trust if sources disagree.

Affective Domain

Receiving Phenomena: being able to observe feelings and emotions - listening to a friend and understanding how they are feeling
Responding to Phenomena: being part of a conversation replying with appropriate feeling and emotion.
Valuing: being able to put a value or a measure on a feeling and how much it matters.
Organisation: ability to prioritise a value over another - for instance spending more time studying than watching TV.
Characterisation: the ability to internalise values and let them control the person`s behaviour.

Psychomotive Domain

Perception: the ability to apply sensory information to motor activity (adjusts the heat of stove to achieve the right temperature)
Set: the readiness to act - for instance deciding to sit down to study
Guided Response: the ability to imitate a displayed behaviour or to use trial and error - setting up new piece of technology by following the manual
Mechanism: the ability to convert learned responses into habitual actions - being able to cook a meal after practising the recipe
Complex Overt Response: the ability to skilfully perform complex patterns of action - typing a program while looking at the screen rather than the keyboard
Adaptation: the ability to modify learned skills to meet special events. - sewing a costume made out of plastic bottles
Origination: creating new movement patterns for a specific situation - for instance creating a new dance routine.

Where is this useful

The taxonomy is referenced a lot in teaching and learning resources. The idea being that when you are trying to teach something the clearer the aim you have and the better you understand the outcomes you want the more likely you are to succeed.

Bloom's is a helpful way of thinking about the outcomes part of this in specific and fairly measurable or testable ways. Each level can quite easily be turned into a check that can be used to gauge how well the teaching or coaching has gone.

As learners I can see it could be helpful to practice a form of Test Driven Learning by setting our own outcomes when trying to assimilate a new topic or skill. It's not a radical thought. What the taxonomy brings is an easy crib sheet for setting the tests.

It is certainly something I'm going to try more in my own reading and learning.

Notes on Hyperfocus

Mark Nicol — Mon, 19 Nov 2018 22:47:52 +0000

I picked up this book at the airport this week on my way to a meeting. It had a couple of ideas on how to focus better on complex tasks that I found quite useful.

Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More by Chris Bailey  
Paperback : 256 pages
Publisher : Macmillan
Language  : English
ISBN-13   : 978-1509866113

These are my condensed notes rather than a review. If the ideas sound useful the book is less than a tenner and even cheaper on kindle if you want to read it first hand.

We spend much of our life on Autopilot

The first challenge from the book is that we spend much or our life in what he calls Autopilot mode. When you stop to examine your thoughts what you are focusing on or thinking about has been selected by the environment or patterns of behavior rather than conscious choice.

Observation, and self distraction

The trick to stopping this happening as much is to start by observing what is going on. Stop, take a note of where your attention is and make a list of when you get distracted, what distracts you and if possible why.

The book talks about some of the sorts of self-distracting thoughts we have and the deep-rooted place they come from:

The tendency to relive past events and what went wrong would have served our ancestors well in improving performance, and so keeping them alive.
The tendency to establish automatic patterns helps us learn tasks it also is we end up going through the idle loop of checking our status updates.
Our mental aversion to difficult or hard tasks that cause discomfort, in favor of tasks like checking social media that give a quick dopamine hit of pleasure.

How attractive is this task

The next interesting shake-up was categorizing the work using something a bit different from the usual 4 quadrant chart.

The point here is to look at how much attention each type of work deserves. The level of attractiveness of the work is an indicator of something about the nature of the task. Unattractive work may need better defined, seem scary, or just be 'boring'. Boring is a sign that it isn't occupying your full attention.

	Unattractive	Attractive
Productive	Necessary	Purposeful
Unproductive	Unnecessary	Distracting

Necessary work: Is where you look carefully at how much attention you give it. Establishing routines or automating tasks, giving it limited time slots, defining very clear goals for what you want to achieve. Necessary and purposeful work can't be done out of habit. If can then that is a sign that we should be delegating minimizing effort or eliminating
Purposeful work: is where you want as much of your focus to be, but the key point here is that to give it focus you will need to remove distractions (see next section)
Unnecessary work: If it is both unproductive and you don't like it, then why are you doing it? Can this be delegated or ditched?
Distracting work: Is not bad. One of the points of hyperfocus is that it is tiring and it is important to take regular breaks. These are the sort of tasks that can be used as rewards.

Cherish your attention - it's a limited resource

The brain has a limited capacity for immediate attention. It is like a short-term working store.

As a general guide, there is an established limit of about seven items it can hold at one time. This explains the cultural preference for lists of 3 - 7 items, with most memorable lists having no more than 10 things on them.

This can be imagined as quite a small ellipse into which only so much stuff will fit:

Habitual tasks don't take conscious thought, or take very little (walking, driving, doing the dishes)
Some tasks take attention but not all our attention
Some tasks really require the whole of this space.

What this means for focus is that when we try to multitask - this space can hold :

A few small habitual tasks
1 Habitual + 1 attention
1 focused attention complex task

Task Switching and attention residue

Anything more than this and what the brain does is a task switch. Each task gets swapped in given some attention and then swapped out again. The brain is very efficient at this, but there is a fragmentation effect. Each time we swap tasks the area that can be used for focussed attention becomes smaller. It is like the brain is holding onto a little bit of the other tasks so that it can bring them back when needed. He calls this 'Attention Residue'.

This will happen naturally over time as we distract our selves or the mind drifts onto other topics, which is why it is important to check regularly what we are currently pay ing attention to. This has the fancy name 'metacognition' which just means thinking about our thinking.

There are a couple of counterintuitive points. These all follow from the idea that when we hyperfocus on a task it expands to fill the attention space available.

The more complex task demands we have on our time more important it is to do them one at a time. The productivity outweighs the seemingly more efficient switching between tasks.
Based on studies of people doing complex tasks the level to which task switching harms our attention is that tasks take 50% longer if done in parallel than if they are tackled one at a time. There is also evidence that it impacts how well information is stored and remembered. That task not given our full attention are not as well remembered or recalled later.
Hyperfocus is best reserved for most complex tasks or new tasks trying to learn. Performance actually suffers if we pay too much attention to a habitual task that the brain has automated. It can take you back from being unconsciously competent at a task to the level of a beginner struggling to learn how to do the skill.
If you spend most of your day doing busy but unproductive work take on more focused tasks. Work expands to fill the time so use that to your advantage by giving the busy work less time.

How to Hyperfocus

Chose something for attention and make a clear intention to focus on it. Making an intention specific triples the chance of success. It has to be something you care about. The harder the task the more important it is to have a specific goal.
Eliminate internal and external distractions (see below)
Focus on the object of attention and keep drawing the mind back to the task in hand
Keep the task simple - have no more than three things on the active list at any point in time.
Pick the most consequential tasks for setting priorities for the day
Hourly chime to check. Is your attention wandering? is mental space overloaded or on autopilot? Am I working on a productive task and is it the most consequential thing to do right now?

Start to feel how long makes sense for Hyperfocus session. You can start to see if it is working by tracking how much time spend intentionally. How long can you hold focus on one task and how long mind wanders before catching it.

Beyond that, the advice is to do it as often as possible, especially when need to work on a complex task. One interesting thought is that if you find you are resisting focusing on a task to reduce the time until the point where that resistance disappears. Complex tasks will require multiple slots.

Avoiding Distraction

The first bit of advice is to clear as many possible distractions as possible in advance, so to schedule focused times taking into account any existing time commitments or constraints of the job. It seems like common advice that switching off likely distractions (apps, email notifications etc) is worthwhile.

Apps and the internetPrune or hide the apps you tend to spend time on when trying to be productive. If you want to be in the moment, but still have access to features like a phone camera consider swapping phones with someone else (or having a second basic phone with all the distracting apps disabled).

Mind the gaps while waiting as these are the sort of times when there will be a tendency to idly browse. Instead, use that time to reflect on either the last or the next activity.

Email Start by monitoring how often you check email. Keep a tally during the day. Try to narrow it down to a few key time slots during which hyperfocus on the email. Keep your to-do list separate from your email, so that you're not tempted to check or answer emails while looking for your next task.

Practice writing 5 sentence emails in reply and drafting emails (with the recipient's name removed so you don't accidentally send it) and then waiting before sending it. This gives the brain a chance both to remember things you might have forgotten to say or to calm down and not saying the things you would regret saying.

Meetings no meetings without an agenda. Question any recurring meeting. Challenge who is included to keep the attendance at any meeting as small as possible. Most importantly if you do go hyperfocus on the meeting while you are there.

In general be thoughtful about the cues that surround you. Remove the ones that are likely to distract, but you can also surround yourself with cues that keep you on track such as having a fruit bowl by the desk if you want to eat more healthily.

In a noisy or open environment headphones and music work for many people - as long as the music is comfortably familiar enough that it doesn't itself act as a distraction.

I've previously seen similar advice presented as avoid triggering stimuli. What is presented as just as important is that we seek distraction.

Novelty bias drives us towards these things, rather than to concentrate on the task in hand. If we are trying to stop the mind actively slipping into a pattern of habit moving them further away helps.

What is also different is looking at interruptions in two dimensions. How annoying is the interruption vs how much control you have over when and where it happens.

If you have control then it is something that can be dealt with ahead of time so that it doesn't interfere with your focused time.
If it is annoying and you have no control over it then you deal with and get back to work
Most importantly, if it is fun and you have no control over it happening, then go with it and enjoy it.

There is however a balance to be struck between focus and collaborative work. Most work is a social activity. come at Focus time can have an associated social cost. Be thoughtful, and find a balance that doesn't under (or over) estimate it.

Thing to monitoring while doing

How frequently seek out a new object of attention
How often habitually overload
How frequently attention derailed by interruption and distractions
How many unresolved tasks in head
How frequently practice meta-attention

Final tips for fitting focused work into a routine

Balance working in complete distraction-free, hyperfocus mode with working with fewer general distractions for the rest of the time. Try to work at a slower more purposeful pace
Use both modes to train the brain
Simplify working environment to reduce the level of distraction and help focus
Clear head of open loops - have a place to capture tasks and commitments as they come up
Continually practice
Recharge

Advice on recharging

This goes back to the fragmentation effect. Taking regular rest is more productive in long run. The ideal balance is at least one good break in every 90 mins. Or alternatively 15 mins for every hour of work.

Refreshing work breaks are doing a low effort and habitual something you want to do. The should be something that isn't a chore. Something that you find pleasurably effortless.

Depending on who you are examples might include Taking a walk, running, reading, going to the gym, listening to music or podcast, or having a conversation with friends. Sleep is one of the best mental defragmentation techniques. Get more sleep.

Scatterfocus

The opposite of hyper-focus is scatterfocus. This is essentially letting your mind wander and see what thoughts emerge. It can also an important and useful mode. Scatterfocus allows us to:

Generate new ideas, set intentions and plan for the future
Recharge after periods of focused activity
helps foster creativity

In general, we are averse to letting the mind wander. It is seen as unproductive. Instead, we are more likely to seek a short term pleasure hit or try and do something focused because we see it as unproductive. There are three ways to try to foster it:

Capture mode. Deliberately scatter attention in a rich and stimulating environment. For instance wandering around the house with a notebook, taking notes of all the jobs or tasks that occur.
Problem focus mode. Trying to solve a particular problem, so write it down and keep writing as long as thoughts occur. Try going to sleep on a problem and letting the mind mull it over overnight. Stepping back from the block and leave a rough edge
Habitual mode. Do a repetitive task and see what creative thoughts emerge. Boredom gives us space to defrag our thoughts them and for So try to avoid jumping into the next activity or adding a distraction to fill up the attention.

The information we consume

The information we consume sits on a line. At one end is useful practical information and at the other is fun entertainment with low content. The suggestion here is to match the consumption of information to the energy available.

When you have high energy focus on the most useful. Save the fun and entertaining stuff for times when you have low energy. It is OK to veg out intentionally.

Consume information about things you care about especially if few others do. Eliminate some trash. Choose a few valuable things to read to focus on. Notice what things we consume on autopilot. Reevaluate what you are consuming as you are consuming it.

When working out what to consume, imagine that each one has to bid for your attention. Zoom out the timeframe and consider how it will make you feel in the future and whether it will matter. Invest in serendipity - and when you find something that works or is of value, double down on it.

Conclusions

I hope some of these ideas are helpful. This advice all seemed interesting and I'm looking forward to trying some of these out on my own tasks and seeing how well it works in the real world?

I'm interested what are other peoples tips for keeping focus?

A long-lasting love of Programming Metaphors

Mark Nicol — Fri, 09 Nov 2018 13:12:28 +0000

Picture Credit: The Evil Queen from Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Art Babbit (animation) Walt Disney & Joe Grant (design) via Wikipedia Fair Use with full attribution there. Used to illustrate Paul Heckel quote.

The first real book I remember reading on 'how to program' was Code Complete by Steve McConnell. It was lent to me by one of my first mentors. I enjoyed it so much I went out and bought a copy of the then new expanded edition Code Complete 2.

Before that, all the books I had read were either about how the hardware and software worked together or explaining how to write programs using a particular language syntax. There might be a few good points about writing comments or how to structure your code but they were few and far between and you had to look for them amongst the text.

Code Complete was different. Within the first couple of chapters, it introduces the concept of metaphors.

"Important developments often arise out of analogies. By comparing a topic you understand poorly to something similar you understand better you can come up with insights that result in a better understanding of the less familiar topic "

(Code Complete 2, p.9)

After lots of examples from other fields, he ends with a useful metaphor for metaphors.

"A software metaphor is more like a searchlight than a roadmap. It doesn't tell you where to find the answer. It tells you how to look for it. A metaphor serves more as a heuristic than an algorithm."

(Code Complete 2, p. 11)

He then gives a long list of metaphors that have been used in the past.

"A confusing abundance of metaphors has grown up around software development. David Gries says writing software is a science (1981). Donald Knuth says it's an art (1998). Watts Humphrey says it's a process (1989). P. J. Plauger and Kent Beck say it's like driving a car, although they draw nearly opposite conclusions (Plauger 1993, Beck 2000). Alistair Cockburn says it's a game (2002). Eric Raymond says it's like a bazaar (2000). Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas say it's like gardening. Paul Heckel says it's like filming Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1994). Fred Brooks says that it's like farming, hunting werewolves, or drowning with dinosaurs in a tar pit (1995). Which are the best metaphors"

(Code Complete 2, p.13)

What was nice today was that two authors wrote very different, but very lovely pieces - both with there own very personal metaphors for learning, that I hadn't seen before.

The Programmer and the Sea

Ryan Palo ・ Nov 9 '18

#learning #story

Article No Longer Available

It really made my commute so much nicer - and like McConnell's spotlight, for me, they both shone a different light on this messy process of learning how to be a better developer.

What are other people's favorite metaphors either for programming or for learning, or for learning about programming?

The cost of things that require zero talent

Mark Nicol — Wed, 07 Nov 2018 22:03:07 +0000

Back in June last year I wrote some notes to myself about some lessons I wanted to learn and things I wanted to try.

I'm a long way from feeling that I've solved a lot of the insecurity and lack of confidence that drove me to write this, but the notes have helped me, they might be useful to someone else as a starting point and so they somehow felt worth sharing here.

I think the biggest lesson or suggestion I can offer is writing things down can sometimes be helpful.

Introduction

This all started with various copies of a list called “10 Things That Require Zero Talent” that did the rounds back in June 2016. It struck a chord with me because one of the big things I realize back then was I use as an excuse is that other people are far more talented than me. Could it be that this is a list that would be helpful?

I don’t feel qualified to talk about what they all mean or how to tackle them for yourselves — if you want to read one of the many articles by coaches and motivational people such as https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/10-things-require-zero-talent-donn-carr.

But it did strike me that one thing people don’t talk about is how to look at the cost of doing these.

General Thoughts on time and effort

I feel I need a model for this so I’m going to assume a couple of units ‘Fux’ that measures how messed up my life is and ‘Spoons’ that measures how much attention I can give to things in a day.

Learning or Relearning: Initial investment in spoons results in more ‘fux’ in the short term, but the payoff is that over time investment in spoons is rewarded by a reducing level of ‘fux’, reaching a zero point where things are no worse than when I started and then ‘fux’ start to go down for each additional investment of spoons.

Diminishing Returns: Each spoon invested reduces the level of ‘fux’ but by less each time till eventually it really isn’t worth investing any more spoons.

Straight Investment: Each spoon reduces one ‘fux’ and while there may be diminishing returns at some point the graph is essentially flat for the range I’m interested in.

The important point that seems to get missed is the slope of these graphs is different for everyone and so is the number of spoons everyone starts the day with, and indeed these vary from graph to graph depending on skills and abilities.

The list — and my own plan

1. Being on Time/Showing Up on Time / Showing Up Early

I can certainly do more of that. Aiming to be early and arriving on time is far better than being late. The useful investment of spoons seems to be in prep, having backup plans, and being able to use the time hanging around better.

2. Work Ethic

This seems to come down to being trustworthy, which in turn comes down to being someone who removes more ‘fux’ than they generate. Here I need to unlearn some things which are going to take effort. Communication and Honesty seem low cost

3. Effort

In this model, this is spend all the spoons and do so wisely. Creating a lot of ‘fux’ is not a good use of spoons. So listen and review.

4. Positive Body Language

I struggle with interacting with people a lot. Being decent and honest seems sensible. I think my body attitude communicates how I’m feeling — so it is easier to try and be genuine and positive than to fake it. Confidence is worth an investment of spoons but that is going to be a big one.

5. Energy

I don’t think this really is a thing that takes zero talent. It also is a bit smug to assume people have the same levels of spoons. So this may come back to trying to improve my overall level of spoons so that I can spend them more freely throughout the day.

6. Attitude

OK I make the choices where my spoons are spent. There is an element of suck it up on the days when my spoons are all gone but I shouldn’t resent anyone else for how I feel. The fair thing is to not make others spend spoons they don’t need to just because my own spoon level is low. Appreciate I’m working with a bunch of people with radically different spoon levels. In which case offer them a spare spoon any time I can.

7. Passion

Spare spoons for the things I care about. If I want to learn new stuff that will take spoons. I’m not ever sure about the if you don’t feel passionate don’t do it line. Passion is a spectrum — the more it matters the more effort it is worth.

8. Be Coachable/Always Learn

Listen to feedback from others. If they can help me spend spoons more wisely or to create less ‘fux’ then great. Feedback means someone else has spent a spoon on my ‘fux’

9. Doing Extra

There are only so many spoons — but be generous with them and if I can clear a lot of ‘fux’ for a small investment of spoons that is better than leaving it to someone for whom it is more expensive or who may be out of spoons.

10. Being Prepared

Review and learn. Plan ahead to get through the day with the fewest ‘fux’ and some spare spoons if I can.

Again this has turned out a very introspective piece. If it is of use ‘lovely’, if not I’ll leave it here as notes to myself.

The Planning Event

Mark Nicol — Tue, 06 Nov 2018 21:50:06 +0000

This is the final part of my set of articles about Scaled Agile. At the end of the last article I'd promised to describe the Planning Event.

The Planning Event is where all the teams get together. The purpose is to "define and design system that best fulfills the shared vision". That's a mouthful to unpack!

This is like a combined sprint planning and review meeting - but for everyone. It gets its own two-week 'iteration' in the SAFe model of which around two days the end is the meeting itself.

For the development teams, this is a few days grace to consider the bigger picture. To look at process improvements, experiments, training and catch up. For the Product Owners and Scrum Masters, there is a lot of work to prepare for the planning event.

The Product owners and Product Manager have to agree their high-level priorities. They have to prepare any new stories or epics.
The System Architecture team need to define their priorities. They need to document any refactoring or system improvements.
The Release Train Engineer needs to document any changes to the development process.
The development teams also get together with their Product Owner to review their own backlog of existing stories.

At the Planning Event, each team gets the chance to plan their own part of that picture. They set an achievable target for the next Program Increment. They work through with all their colleagues where the dependencies and risks are.

At the end of the two days, everyone should leave with a good feeling that the objectives are clear and each team feel that they have a plan they can achieve and feel confident in. At least for the next 2-3 months.

A lot rests on how well the event is facilitated. Often it is the release train engineer who takes on the responsibility of facilitating the event. There are three main things that have to come together for the event to work.

Organisational readiness

Is planning scope and content understood?
is there responsible agreement on priorities for business owners?
do we have agile teams ready to do work?
do we know who the scrum masters and product owners are and do they understand their roles?

Facility readiness

Is the venue large enough for all to attend
Is all the technical and communication support needed available
Are distributed communications available for members of the teams that can't attend in person? This includes all the channels for audio, video, and presentations

Content readiness

This includes preparing :

the executive briefing on the current organizational situation
the product solution briefing on what the top 10 priorities are, and the vision for the product.
the architecture briefing covering the system architecture, new enablers, and non-functional requirements.

A typical pattern for the even itself describe by Dean Leffingwell and Richard Knaster in Scaled Agile Distilled is something like:

Day One opens with the presentation of the business context.

The facilitator outlines the objectives of the Planning Event. They then describe any working agreements and logistics.
The Business Owners then give an 'Executive Briefing'. They set out the business context and business priorities for the next three months. This may include market analysis, about how the customers' needs have changed. It could also be any planned organizational changes or other corporate plans.
Next, the Product Manager outlines the Product Solution. The current vision for the product. The product management objectives for the next iteration and further into the future.
Concluding this part is the Architecture Presentation. What is the current architectural vision? Are there any changes to development practice? Is there any new common infrastructure? Are there any large scale refactors, or structural changes that teams need to be aware of.

The rest of the first day is for the team breakouts. Each team drafts their initial plans. They work with their Product Owner on the Program level stories. The aim is to split them into stories that they could tackle in an increment.

Once the team has a backlog they prioritize the stories and lay out their plan. Each of the stories represented by a single card or post-it on a sheet. 1 sheet for each iteration in the Program Increment. These sheets are displayed around the room. Dependencies are shown by linking cards together.

Throughout this process, the program level team circulate round the development teams. This allows them to clarify any queries about the program level stories. Members of the development teams also circulate. Since everyone's work is visible. people have the chance to identify overlaps or dependencies.

Once the teams have their backlog and their plans drafted each team has 5-10 minutes to present. They outline their plans highlighting any risks or remaining questions or concerns.

The day finishes with a review meeting. The point of this is to give the business owners and programme team the chance to make decisions based on:

What did we just learn?
What do we need to adjust - do we change the vision, the scope or sources?
Where are the bottlenecks?
what needs to be descoped from the Program Increment?

Day 2 starts with a presentation of what has changed. Given this revised scope, the teams breakout and adjust their plans and objectives. At the end of the replanning once again teams present their plans, focusing on any program risks.

Once the teams have presented their revised plans, everyone votes on how confident they are. Is this a plan that everyone can commit to. If confidence is low planning is repeated until everyone has a high degree of confidence. The teams then commit to making the plan happen.

This sounds like it could be a dry and corporate sort of business. It doesn't, however, have to be like that.

The link below is to one of the most entertaining videos I've found about the whole subject of SAFe. I hope that our planning increment in a couple of weeks is half as much fun as Lars Roost & Henrik Kniberg make it sound.

Is SAFe Evil - Lars Roost & Henrik Kniberg