Productive weekend: when all things can be put off until later
The main goal of our work is to make IaaS simple and straightforward, even for those who have not experienced IT. Therefore, we constantly optimize all systems and talk about our experience. A couple of examples:
Today we decided to return to our traditional format, when we understand whether there is life after the meeting , or how hard the life of an introvert programmer in a corporation is.
Let's talk about procrastination.
')
/ Photo by Surian Soosay / CC
The need to think in advance about your actions before starting to work - this can cause some difficulties for novice programmers: sometimes they just don’t know where to start. In this material we will understand how to deal with procrastination and whether it is possible to get benefit from it.
Programmers have a certain advantage: sometimes they can automate some routine tasks, which make their lives easier. But this is not always possible and does not negate the fact that the most difficult is to start working.
So how to deal with procrastination in this case?
To begin, we decided to look for options from colleagues by profession and misfortune on Quora and found some interesting tips. The fight can begin with a clear work plan . So you can structure your thoughts and paint a step-by-step recipe for creating a program. And for completing each step on time, you can even reward yourself. You can improve the plan and add some nice things to it that will be reward for the work. Stimulus can be anything, anything tasty for lunch or coffee.
Another option is to divide the work into smaller tasks. This will help if there are too many tasks and all of them are too abstract. Karl Fogel (Karl Fogel) in his book "Creating Free Software: How to lead a successful open source project" gave the results of an interesting experiment . Psychologists divided the students into two groups: in the first group the tasks involved abstract thinking, and in the second group - the concrete one. For the assignment all students had to pay.
As a result, students from the second group sent tasks completed ahead of schedule. But those who worked with abstract tasks, mostly sent everything at the last moment, and some did not get in touch at all. This proves that abstract thinking about work can contribute to procrastination, and a clear plan, on the contrary, stimulates activity.
Today there are different time-management techniques that promise to help procrastinators and are based on dividing the working day into time periods. One of such methods is called (10 + 2) * 5, and its essence lies in the fact that within an hour it is necessary to take two-minute breaks every 10 minutes. This technique is suitable for those who are very difficult to focus on and who are constantly distracted by checking social networks, mail and viewing funny pictures. Now it can be done quite “legally”, but not longer than two minutes.
Another technique involves the division of work into longer periods of time. It is called “Pomodoro” (from a timer in the form of a tomato). The author of the technique suggests setting the timer for 25 minutes. After each such time period devoted to work, you can give yourself a five-minute rest. After four 25-minute intervals, you can allow yourself to rest for as long as 20-30 minutes. The effectiveness of this approach is explained by the fact that psychologically a person does not need to tune in to complete the entire amount of work, you just need to concentrate for 25 minutes. And this is much easier.
In addition, many procrastinators love to delay doing things before deadline. And then they set the deadline themselves, and the time until it counts ticking timer.
The developers note that it is not necessary to resort to this technique every day. But it can be useful for routine and boring things. In addition, many people adjust it to themselves: someone prefers to divide time into large segments, for example, 50 minutes, which, in principle, does not contradict the essence of time boxing , on which the Pomodoro method is based.
It is not necessary to buy a special timer, since today there is a wide range of applications "Pomodoro". The essence of their work is almost always the same - they are counting down time. But some have interesting bonuses: for example, PomoDone offers integration with Basecamp, Todoist, Evernote and many other programs. Pomodoro Keeper allows you to view statistics to analyze when productivity was highest. And in Be Focused there is a function to add a task list directly to the application and bind the timer to specific items.
Procraster combines both time boxing and rewards, which you can choose from the list or add your own options. But besides this, he can complain about the reasons why you are trying to postpone work, and the application will offer solutions to your problem. But in addition to timer applications, there are more sophisticated tools to combat procrastination.
For example, in Finish, you can enter data about current tasks, which are divided into short, medium and long-term. At the same time, the application constantly reminds about all these tasks until you mark them as completed. Of course, there are special programs that will not allow you to be distracted by social networks and any devices. Some of them are able to block applications, and some restrict the use of, for example, a phone, for a certain period of time.
Another student study conducted by Cornell University showed that the use of such applications had a positive effect on their desire to study: in groups using technical means, MOOC courses from Stanford University completed 40% more students.
In addition, the “experimental” of these groups spent 24% more time on coursework and 27% more time on domestic work. But applications can be used not only to increase their discipline. For example, Avoiding Procrastination 101 is a collection of tips that will help defeat procrastination and motivate you to work hard.
Of course, you can read not only applications. There are many useful books that can turn your idea of ​​how to live and work, and teach you not to waste time. For example, in his book , Still pulling time? A Guide to Completing Unfinished Cases ”Joseph R. Ferrari, who has been researching procrastination for more than 30 years, distinguishes between real procrastinators and just those who like to put things off for later.
The first requires the help of specialists, and the second may well take up their lives. The main thing is to determine the causes of this behavior. In his book, he gives a lot of interesting advice, for example, offers to unite in the office with the most productive colleagues and be equal to them. In addition, he is confident that you need to develop punctuality and strictly adhere to the time frame. But until the procrastinator reaches the bottom and is not disgraced because of his addiction, according to the scientist, he is unlikely to want to change his behavior.
The book "7 skills of high-performance people" business consultant Stephen R. Covey (Stephen R. Covey) is not only devoted to procrastination, but you can also find useful tips on how to combat this ailment. It was Covey who introduced the time matrix , which is divided into 4 parts and includes “important and urgent” matters, “important and non-urgent”, “unimportant and urgent” and “unimportant and non-urgent”. The distribution of own affairs at the beginning of the week in such a matrix, according to the author, can greatly increase your efficiency and prevent the desire to postpone some cases for later.
Piers Steel, a professor of psychology who studies procrastination at the University of Calgary, wrote the book Equation of Procrastination: How to Stop Saving Everything for Later and Start Doing, where he explains the psychological reasons why people like to put everything off for tomorrow. Having learned their enemy from the inside, readers can learn to understand the mechanisms of this phenomenon and more effectively cope with it. You can read other articles of the author on the topic of procrastination here .
A former Google employee, developer (Edmond Lau) wrote a book called the “Effective Engineer's Handbook.” In it, he tells how you can achieve more by working less. For example, every time a programmer takes on a task, he must be sure that it will bring him maximum benefit. Then we can say that he effectively spent his time. This teaches a new way to evaluate time and not to waste energy on smaller and unimportant tasks.
Procrastination may not be as bad as they say. Many people have learned to use her for good and no longer try to go to war with her. For example, philosopher John Perry from Stanford University believes that postponing for later can make the procrastinator a useful member of society. For this it is necessary to maintain the circulation of affairs in work.
After all, it is well known that the most important things are postponed for later. But over time, there are other very important things, this is where you can take on those that faded before the importance and urgency of new ones. The main rule - you can not try to get rid of all the other smaller cases. After all, when there is nothing to do, instead of getting close to the very main task, the procrastinator begins to stand idle and turns into lazy. This method, however, is not suitable for everyone, since deadlines in the project work are usually very tough and there is no waiting for the task to give way to the importance of some other time.
But Paul Graham is confident that procrastinators are of two types: passive and active. And what John Perry describes is precisely related to active, or good procrastination, when a person can do other things and becomes even more productive. Another plus of such a system is the release from unnecessary cases. Sometimes over time, it turns out that the task is no longer relevant.
In addition, if a person postpones certain work tasks all the time, it may be worthwhile to listen to these signals and analyze the situation. Maybe this job really does not suit you? Or the project you are working on doesn't seem good to you? There may be several solutions: you can change jobs, or you can try to delegate some responsibilities. In any case, procrastination is good because it allows you to understand exactly what you like and what you like to do, as those who want to pull the rubber are the first to be accepted for such cases.
The main thing is not to get infected with the passive form of this "disease" and not to become a bum. Although procrastinators love to say that they spend less time on work: what they could do in a week, they do in a couple of days and nights. But besides the deterioration of quality, most often they spend all the remaining time quite useless. On average, a person lives 27 thousand days or 650 thousand hours. This seems like a big number until we think about what exactly we spend on these watches.
For example, an average person spends 10 years of his life only on work. And how many of these years were spent on procrastination? But after all, we succumb to its influence in everyday matters. So let's take today and begin to do what has long been shelved! Although, wait, today is Friday, probably, it would be better to start on Monday ...
Today we decided to return to our traditional format, when we understand whether there is life after the meeting , or how hard the life of an introvert programmer in a corporation is.
Let's talk about procrastination.
')
/ Photo by Surian Soosay / CC
The need to think in advance about your actions before starting to work - this can cause some difficulties for novice programmers: sometimes they just don’t know where to start. In this material we will understand how to deal with procrastination and whether it is possible to get benefit from it.
A fight with a shadow
Programmers have a certain advantage: sometimes they can automate some routine tasks, which make their lives easier. But this is not always possible and does not negate the fact that the most difficult is to start working.
So how to deal with procrastination in this case?
To begin, we decided to look for options from colleagues by profession and misfortune on Quora and found some interesting tips. The fight can begin with a clear work plan . So you can structure your thoughts and paint a step-by-step recipe for creating a program. And for completing each step on time, you can even reward yourself. You can improve the plan and add some nice things to it that will be reward for the work. Stimulus can be anything, anything tasty for lunch or coffee.
Another option is to divide the work into smaller tasks. This will help if there are too many tasks and all of them are too abstract. Karl Fogel (Karl Fogel) in his book "Creating Free Software: How to lead a successful open source project" gave the results of an interesting experiment . Psychologists divided the students into two groups: in the first group the tasks involved abstract thinking, and in the second group - the concrete one. For the assignment all students had to pay.
As a result, students from the second group sent tasks completed ahead of schedule. But those who worked with abstract tasks, mostly sent everything at the last moment, and some did not get in touch at all. This proves that abstract thinking about work can contribute to procrastination, and a clear plan, on the contrary, stimulates activity.
Today there are different time-management techniques that promise to help procrastinators and are based on dividing the working day into time periods. One of such methods is called (10 + 2) * 5, and its essence lies in the fact that within an hour it is necessary to take two-minute breaks every 10 minutes. This technique is suitable for those who are very difficult to focus on and who are constantly distracted by checking social networks, mail and viewing funny pictures. Now it can be done quite “legally”, but not longer than two minutes.
Another technique involves the division of work into longer periods of time. It is called “Pomodoro” (from a timer in the form of a tomato). The author of the technique suggests setting the timer for 25 minutes. After each such time period devoted to work, you can give yourself a five-minute rest. After four 25-minute intervals, you can allow yourself to rest for as long as 20-30 minutes. The effectiveness of this approach is explained by the fact that psychologically a person does not need to tune in to complete the entire amount of work, you just need to concentrate for 25 minutes. And this is much easier.
In addition, many procrastinators love to delay doing things before deadline. And then they set the deadline themselves, and the time until it counts ticking timer.
The developers note that it is not necessary to resort to this technique every day. But it can be useful for routine and boring things. In addition, many people adjust it to themselves: someone prefers to divide time into large segments, for example, 50 minutes, which, in principle, does not contradict the essence of time boxing , on which the Pomodoro method is based.
Technique to the rescue
It is not necessary to buy a special timer, since today there is a wide range of applications "Pomodoro". The essence of their work is almost always the same - they are counting down time. But some have interesting bonuses: for example, PomoDone offers integration with Basecamp, Todoist, Evernote and many other programs. Pomodoro Keeper allows you to view statistics to analyze when productivity was highest. And in Be Focused there is a function to add a task list directly to the application and bind the timer to specific items.
Procraster combines both time boxing and rewards, which you can choose from the list or add your own options. But besides this, he can complain about the reasons why you are trying to postpone work, and the application will offer solutions to your problem. But in addition to timer applications, there are more sophisticated tools to combat procrastination.
For example, in Finish, you can enter data about current tasks, which are divided into short, medium and long-term. At the same time, the application constantly reminds about all these tasks until you mark them as completed. Of course, there are special programs that will not allow you to be distracted by social networks and any devices. Some of them are able to block applications, and some restrict the use of, for example, a phone, for a certain period of time.
Another student study conducted by Cornell University showed that the use of such applications had a positive effect on their desire to study: in groups using technical means, MOOC courses from Stanford University completed 40% more students.
In addition, the “experimental” of these groups spent 24% more time on coursework and 27% more time on domestic work. But applications can be used not only to increase their discipline. For example, Avoiding Procrastination 101 is a collection of tips that will help defeat procrastination and motivate you to work hard.
What to read
Of course, you can read not only applications. There are many useful books that can turn your idea of ​​how to live and work, and teach you not to waste time. For example, in his book , Still pulling time? A Guide to Completing Unfinished Cases ”Joseph R. Ferrari, who has been researching procrastination for more than 30 years, distinguishes between real procrastinators and just those who like to put things off for later.
The first requires the help of specialists, and the second may well take up their lives. The main thing is to determine the causes of this behavior. In his book, he gives a lot of interesting advice, for example, offers to unite in the office with the most productive colleagues and be equal to them. In addition, he is confident that you need to develop punctuality and strictly adhere to the time frame. But until the procrastinator reaches the bottom and is not disgraced because of his addiction, according to the scientist, he is unlikely to want to change his behavior.
The book "7 skills of high-performance people" business consultant Stephen R. Covey (Stephen R. Covey) is not only devoted to procrastination, but you can also find useful tips on how to combat this ailment. It was Covey who introduced the time matrix , which is divided into 4 parts and includes “important and urgent” matters, “important and non-urgent”, “unimportant and urgent” and “unimportant and non-urgent”. The distribution of own affairs at the beginning of the week in such a matrix, according to the author, can greatly increase your efficiency and prevent the desire to postpone some cases for later.
Piers Steel, a professor of psychology who studies procrastination at the University of Calgary, wrote the book Equation of Procrastination: How to Stop Saving Everything for Later and Start Doing, where he explains the psychological reasons why people like to put everything off for tomorrow. Having learned their enemy from the inside, readers can learn to understand the mechanisms of this phenomenon and more effectively cope with it. You can read other articles of the author on the topic of procrastination here .
A former Google employee, developer (Edmond Lau) wrote a book called the “Effective Engineer's Handbook.” In it, he tells how you can achieve more by working less. For example, every time a programmer takes on a task, he must be sure that it will bring him maximum benefit. Then we can say that he effectively spent his time. This teaches a new way to evaluate time and not to waste energy on smaller and unimportant tasks.
This is the norm
Procrastination may not be as bad as they say. Many people have learned to use her for good and no longer try to go to war with her. For example, philosopher John Perry from Stanford University believes that postponing for later can make the procrastinator a useful member of society. For this it is necessary to maintain the circulation of affairs in work.
After all, it is well known that the most important things are postponed for later. But over time, there are other very important things, this is where you can take on those that faded before the importance and urgency of new ones. The main rule - you can not try to get rid of all the other smaller cases. After all, when there is nothing to do, instead of getting close to the very main task, the procrastinator begins to stand idle and turns into lazy. This method, however, is not suitable for everyone, since deadlines in the project work are usually very tough and there is no waiting for the task to give way to the importance of some other time.
But Paul Graham is confident that procrastinators are of two types: passive and active. And what John Perry describes is precisely related to active, or good procrastination, when a person can do other things and becomes even more productive. Another plus of such a system is the release from unnecessary cases. Sometimes over time, it turns out that the task is no longer relevant.
In addition, if a person postpones certain work tasks all the time, it may be worthwhile to listen to these signals and analyze the situation. Maybe this job really does not suit you? Or the project you are working on doesn't seem good to you? There may be several solutions: you can change jobs, or you can try to delegate some responsibilities. In any case, procrastination is good because it allows you to understand exactly what you like and what you like to do, as those who want to pull the rubber are the first to be accepted for such cases.
The main thing is not to get infected with the passive form of this "disease" and not to become a bum. Although procrastinators love to say that they spend less time on work: what they could do in a week, they do in a couple of days and nights. But besides the deterioration of quality, most often they spend all the remaining time quite useless. On average, a person lives 27 thousand days or 650 thousand hours. This seems like a big number until we think about what exactly we spend on these watches.
For example, an average person spends 10 years of his life only on work. And how many of these years were spent on procrastination? But after all, we succumb to its influence in everyday matters. So let's take today and begin to do what has long been shelved! Although, wait, today is Friday, probably, it would be better to start on Monday ...
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/325322/
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