Most of the time devCat is crucial in the coding/debugging process. However, sometimes he gets a little ADHD and goes rogue.

• Good night’s sleep (8-9 hours)
• Clearly defined requirements.
• A fun challenge to solve.
• An idea of how to begin.
• Music! Something fast paced and/or harsh. I find soft tunes, good lyrics, etc. are usually very distracting.
• Deadlines help, too, even if they make me stressed out and work too much.
• No political BS / hateful and intolerant political comments from my coworkers within the past day or two, as being called a horrible, racist nazi by association absolutely kills my desire to do any work for them. Going two days without something like this happening is exceedingly rare.
• Being left alone, *especially* in the morning before work! The more distractions, the harder it is focus, even if i have peace and quiet later on.

Working from home and your teenaged daughter almost burns the house down while making a grilled cheese sandwich.

Downside to being a computing student:

I need my PC to study, but all my distractions are on my PC so it's really hard not to get distracted while studying.

Living in a tiny house and having a remote-only job (and no lappy) means I get the wonderful, lovely privilege of working in my bedroom... with my 18mo (who will not leave me alone), and my girlfriend (who won't fucking leave). It's positively great!

Blasting music is often not enough to drown out the sound, and certainly does nothing for getting hit with toys or screamed at to get picked up, so I get basically nothing done during the day. And that's presupposing I'm not begged to run errands/go to lunch with her, both of which take precious hours. (She won't take the baby out alone, so she's always here unless we find a babysitter)

At least it's quiet after 9pm, so I stay up coding for as long as I can. But 18mo's wake up super early, and the girlfriend prefers to stay in the room until I'm up... so even with earplugs I don't get enough sleep. A monster a day and a bottle of Tito's vodka a month is all that keeps me sane.

Why can't I just be fucking left alone to fucking work? I'm our only goddamn source of income.

It's no wonder we're fucking broke.

And to make matters worse, I'm being downsized... and considering the above, I doubt I'll be able to land a new job. 😡

So many interruptions!
So many distractions!

I just want to fucking finish this refactor. I dont' care about meetings, texts, bloody office game tournaments, lunchtime, gossip, or people trying to be friendly. Just let me fucking work!

If you see me rocking out with my headphones on and working furiously, seriously, just don't fucking interrupt. I'll bite.

6 months of internship made me realize that solving other peoples bugs is my biggest distraction.
Apparently I enjoy solving bugs more than writing clean code from scratch. 😐

Got basically nothing done yesterday because I was absolutely exhausted the entire day. Thanks, doxxing thread. But I couldn’t sleep anyway so whatever.

Told everyone at home that I wanted a really productive day tomorrow (today) because of it.

Guess what happened?
Endless fucking distractions.
Because of course.

• Cooking since apparently it’s my job.
• Extended computer repair and maintenance, since that’s apparently my job even when it’s not my computer.
• Conversations.
• Children following me.
• People paraphrasing politics.
• People summarizing stupid fail videos.
• People relating stupid prank videos.
• More conversations.
• Endless random nonsense comments from children.
• Endless noises from children’s toys, tablets, playing, etc.
• Children following me when I leave.
• Taking half an hour to order food instead of five minutes.
• Cleaning since nobody else ever does.
• Picking up toys since nobody else will and I’M FUCKING TIRED OF STEPPING ON AND TRIPPING OVER THEM.
• More fucking food prep.
• Endless random nonsense comments from children.
• More conversations.

Is it any wonder I’m so fucking pissed off every workday?

I can’t wait to move so I can have a fucking office with a fucking door and a fucking lock. And you know what? I’m going to splurge and install some fucking soundproofing, too.

WHY IS IT SO FUCKING HARD TO JUST LEAVE ME THE FUCK ALONE!? I’M PAYING FOR YOUR FUCKING EVERYTHING. FUCK THE FUCK OFF!

This will be the only place I where I will use a multi monitor setup.

!dev
!!misery

I'm drunk, so it's time for some faux-emotional, blunt oversharing. and lots of profanity. It won't be pretty.

------

I'm miserable. I can't sleep at night. When I finally manage to, I sleep like crap. In the morning, early, I get woken up by my children screaming or pulling my hair or jumping on either the bed or me, or talking ad furore, or any number of other miserably unpleasant things that completely prevent sleep. So I'm tired every single day, which totally surprisingly makes focusing on work fucking difficult. Doubly so because the work is fucking uninteresting and the code is awful to read and difficult to understand because it's complicated and often poorly written. And extending it takes enormous mental effort I simply do not have to give. Oh! Guess what my job is?

To make matters worse, time to myself basically does not exist, ever. I wake up, I attend standup, I cook and eat breakfast, I work while fighting against endless distractions and interruptions, I cook and eat dinner, I work some more, and finally: I can go to bed and try to sleep. The next morning, I wake up and repeat this misery, ad nauseam.

Et ad nauseam? Nauseam est nunc.
It's not proper latin, but fuck you. it's good enough. and nobody speaks it anyway.

Ego sum miseriae. Is that good enough for you?

I can't find it in myself to care about anything. I've been doing whatever I can to feel a little more normal, but mostly I just feel numb. If I drink, it helps a little because I notice my misery a little less. That's a great solution right there: drink until I don't care anymore, and keep doing the same shit without even trying to make things better. Why? Because I fucking can't. I hate this house, I hate the lack of quiet, I hate this city, I hate the dust and the clutter, I hate this state, I hate this codebase, I don't like my coworkers, I hate that I can't get a fucking thing done without spending 6x longer than it should, I hate that I can't fucking think of a single thing I want to do, I hate that I can't ever enjoy anything, I hate that I'm beginning to hate myself, and I fucking hate everything else, too.

In short:
I'm not happy. I'm fucking miserable.

And no, I'm not posting this here for you to psychoanalyze me or suggest solutions. It's for me to vent. Fuck your opinions and fuck your advice and fuck you.

Things I like about WFH
-save petrol and mileage
-work in underwear
-big TV during lunch
-time saved by no commute
-lie down during meetings

Things I dislike
-feel like my room has been invaded by work/miss the physical separation of work and home
-distractions and temptations
-they moved the stand up to ealier because of WFH
-Everything has to be a meeting. No just popping by someone's desk with a quick question

Sometimes I miss physically seeing my colleagues/getting out of the house but not often

One time I had this conversation with my then PM:

PM: …so in total we need like 3 extra pages; the leaders profile, event showcase and lastly a contact page.

Me: Sure, already on it.

PM: Make it simple and quick, I told the client the updates would be live in an hour.

Me: Okay.

*{5 microseconds later}*

PM: Also the page headers need to be different from the other pages.

Me: Yes, you told me that earlier.

PM: Okay, just needed to re-emphasis.

*{sad disturbing minutes later}*

PM: I don’t know if deploying on azure would be better than having the website on AWS. The pages seems slow.

Me: Yep.

PM: Or maybe we separate the asset files from the main site using a CDN.

Me: You right.

PM: The other projects on AWS seems to perform better in terms of SEO. Don’t you think?

Me: I think.

*{this dude literally just lent me a jacket and won’t allow me put it on}*

PM: So after we are done with this update we need to inform the client about the benefits of switching servers to AWS. I believe they will agree or won’t they because the event is close by?

Me: {{pointed both hands at my PC hoping they’ll get the message}}

PM: Oh you done?

Me:

I've been working exclusively from home for over 2 years now. I've been seeing several posts from people talking about adjusting to working from home, so I figured I would compile a list of tips I've learned over the years to help make the adjustment easier for some people.

1) Limit as many distractions as possible. WFH makes it much easier to get distracted. If you have roommates/family members at home, ask them politely to leave you alone while you're working. Make sure the TV is turned off, put your phone on silent, etc.

2) Take regular breaks. I find it easier to accidentally go hours without taking a real break from work. Try working in half hour intervals, and then taking 5-10 minute breaks. Read an article, watch a youtube video, grab some coffee/tea, etc.

3) When you eat lunch, eat it away from your computer. I often find myself eating lunch trying to wrap up fixing a bug, which makes it feel like I never really "took a lunch." Lately I've been trying to step away and do something else completely unrelated to work.

4) Get ready for work like you normally would. It's very easy to wake up, throw on your favorite pair of sweats and sit at the computer with messy hair half awake "ready" to start the day. Instead try doing your normal morning routine before sitting at your computer. It will help your mind and body go into "it's time to work" mode.

5) Keep your work area clean. I find it very difficult to work when my workspace is cluttered. Studies have shown working in a messy place tend to make us less efficient.

6) Keep your work area work related. Try to only have the things you need for work in your workspace. If you're working from your personal computer this can be difficult. I always end up with camera/music equipment left over from the previous night's photo editing/jam sessions. So try to clean off your desk when you're done for the night so it's ready for work in the morning.

7) Prepare for meetings. I have alarms set 10 minutes in advance so I can go from programming mode to meeting mode. During this time I'll go to the bathroom, grab a snack, water, mute all my email notifications, close any non essential programs, get my code ready if I need to present it.

Stuff is hard & stressful right now, but hopefully these tips will make it a bit easier. If anyone else has any good tips please share them.

Nights
Far less distractions
Almost dead silence
Only me and my screen

I call this the Distraction Stack.

[working on code]

"Hey, can you look at this bug?"

[
working on code,
looking at bug
]

"Can I bother you for a second?"

[
working on code,
looking at bug,
being bothered
]

"When you're done with her can you stop by my desk?"

[
working on code,
looking at bug,
stopping by your stupid desk
being bothered
]

It's enough to make me pop.

I get pissed when somebody takes me out of my coding mindset for something minor. A deep bubble of abstract thought gets popped so that I can be told that we'll be eating dinner in an hour. I then have to start my thought processes from scratch.
This is why I can't get any work done during the daytime, and why I do all my coding at night.
This comic depicts this issue perfectly.

Had a great day yesterday. Productive, happy, felt great, and was focused despite a lot of cute distractions. Finished a third of my feature.

Today, I wanted to start work early because I had planned out what I wanted to work on next and how to approach it. I felt motivated. I’d jump out of bed, get ready, and start early. No breakfast but maybe some coffee.

Woke up to two hours of constant distractions, irritations, and time wasting instead. Anger. Everything sought to prevent me from starting.

When I finally got to work, the first thing I saw: political warmongering bullshit.

Guess I’m not getting much done today.

Productivity. No distractions. Today:

I should put a sign on my door, "DO NOT DISTURB, CODING.... BRING SACRIFICE IF YOU MUST...." damn distractions....

Just got my wireless, noise cancelling headphones for Christmas! Open floor plan, be damned!

I have to get up in 3 hrs but I'm still coding. Not really a rant tho

*One day at office sitting at my desk coding in front of a window with a refreshing breathe of fresh air coming from it, and a decent view of trees in front of the building*

CEO: would you like to be sitting together with the other dev?
Me: that would be awesome!

- next day -

*come to work to see my stuff has been moved over next to the always open door, with clear view of the lobby, prone to all kinds of nonstop distractions, and psychologically lethal ambiance*

ceo: YOU TWO ARE SITTING TOGETHER NOW, AREN'T YOU PSYCHED??

me: WELL CANT SAY PSYCHED, BUT A PSYCHO SOON HAHAHA >fucking asshole<

Do you ever go on YouTube to look something up then like 3 hours later find yourself watching videos on how to train giraffes or something you really don't need to know?

Trying to concentrate but headphones don't get rid of visual distractions? There's a solution!

I swear, once I called in sick just so that I could finish coding a feature without distractions( like pings and shit)

Issues I didn't know I would face when trying to study from my parents' place: They're not talking to me and disturbing me, it's the fucking cat snoring so loudly that is distracting me 😅

Time management tips one must follow to be successful:-

1. Remove distractions:- Phone, Whatsapp, Instagram, FB, etc. All away from you during work.

2. Remove clutters: Get rid of not required things.

3. Eliminate redundancy

4. Emulate others: (My favourite) If someone has spend time and done some work. Do not reinvent the same work done just replicate that work and continue from that point.

5. Share burden: Team work and depending on others is not bad.

6. Make work fun: Most important if you enjoy your work you will give your best.

I was excited to get back to work on a major project today. I was thinking in the shower, on my bike, on the train, on the walk from the train to my office, on the elevator, about how I would approach it and came up with a good plan. Again, I was excited.

Then, on our standup call, a dude says he needs access to the util server I manage, and just happens to not know shit about Linux. So I spend the next hour and a half walking him through simple SSH commands, and completely lose my train of thought for the project I was planning to tackle.

Now, I'm seething on the toilet, hoping to reset.

Regus sent me to collections.

Jist: if you ever think about renting an office from Regus, for the love of your bank account and your credit, just don't. Go into the kitchen and pan-fry your face instead. it'll be better.

Moral: get it in writing. What is "it"? Fucking everything.

------

I needed someplace quiet away from my children to work, so I rented an office from Regus. They said they had a minimum 6-month contract, which is fine, but at the time I was pretty sure I would be moving within three to five. They said they understood and offered the quivalent of a month-to-month plan: I could cancel my contract whenever I wanted, given a few weeks' notice, and that would be that. It wasn't in writing, but both the accounts person and the regional manager were there offering it to me, and they seemed cool. Awesome! I agreed, signed the contract, and paid a hefty damage deposit.

Long story short, I ended up hating the office, and chose to bear the distractions at home instead. Seeing how much I disliked it, the accounts person I talked to originally called me and offered to cancel my contract. I agreed, and she walked me through the steps to cancel it and request my deposit back. Done. I aske her if that was it; no more payments, no more contract. "No more," she said. "You're done." I liked the sound of that. Done and done.

The next day, I check my bank account; no deposit.
Two weeks later, still no deposit.
A month later, still no deposit.

They did say it could take up to three fucking months or something, so whatever. I waited.

Another month later, and instead of my refunded deposit, I get an overdue invoice notice? Seriously?

Apparently they never cancelled my contract, don't remember offering me the month-to-month agreement, nor does the very chick I talked to remember telling me over the phone that everything was paid up and done. Apparently my contract wasn't even for six months like they originally promised, but indefinite? despite all of this? and despite the two of us fucking cancelling it? together?

But no, the legal agreement is binding and explicitly states that they are fucking assholes and due their pound of cash.

So fuck that and fuck them.
And in response, they sent me to collections.
Huge fucking surprise.

and now collections is calling me saying I owe $1900, which works out to a lot more than the couple months it's been since I cancelled that crap, AND.

AND IT'S LESS THAN THE FUCKING DEPOSIT REGUS NEVER RETURNED!

SO NOT ONLY DID THEY NEVER CANCEL MY CONTRACT, THEY CHANGED ITS TERMS (or lied up-front) AND DECIDED TO POCKET THE DEPOSIT INSTEAD OF APPLY IT TO MY FUCKING IMAGINARY BALANCE!

FUCK YOU SHADY MOTHERFUCKERS!

Ok, let's actually try and work on my games Dev kit workspace functionality and not get side tracked with devRant... Oh fuck I'm on it right now... Well shit!

I think I browse through devRant at an unhealthy amount lol

The place I'm interviewing for apparently has a "no music" policy. Is this common? Music is a huge part of programming for me. It helps me get into a rhythm and ignore all the little distractions like people tapping their feet, etc. that drive me absolutely crazy. Am I expecting too much here???

I want to improve my workflow by perpetually ignoring all meetings and emails. Just let me work!

I need someone to explain me this:

- whenever I work hard as fuck and stay on my purpose and fuckin grinding out all of my work being focused as fuck on it; EVERYONE SUDDENLY WANTS TO FUCKING TEXT ME. I AM BUSY. MY DAD WANTS TO TALK. MY MOM HAS QUESTIONS. MY DOG WANTS TO SHIT. MY FRIENDS WANT TO HANG OUT WITH ME AND FIND ME COOL. RANDOM GIRLS TEXT ME. RANDOM GIRLS WANT TO FUCK ME. MY PHONE EXPLODES FROM TEXTS AND NOTIFICATIONS. NUCLEAR DISTRACTIONS

- whenever i dont work anything, just lay on the couch to have some rest or when i feel depressed and lonely; NO ONE WANTS TO TEXT ME. PEOPLE TAKE HOURS OF FUCKING TIME TO RESPOND. THOSE WHO USED TO GIVE A FUCK TO SPAMBOMB ME WITH TEXTS NO LONGER GIVE A FUCK. I FEEL EVEN WORSE THEN. FUCK YOU AND FUCK EVERYONE WHO DISTURBS ME WITH DISTRACTIONS

I just started using noise canceling earbuds and holy cow does it change things.

People talking and traffic blasting down the street in front of our office are my two biggest distractions on any given workday and I haven't heard any of it all day. It's heavenly.

I also have a brown noise machine I sleep next to and I've started dreaming again because I get actual restful sleep again.

Best way to avoid procrastination : We tend to avoid commitments or to do large tasks as even visualizing them seems tiring and the longer it takes, the vulnerable we are to distractions

So I use this simple trick
I break my task into numerous sub tasks. For example if I need to finish a feature before day end, I would first list down all the cases I can think of in order and write them down using actual pen and paper.
I then start implementing them step by step.
I mark them checked once done.
It gives me a sense of achievement as I see those checks besides the sub tasks and I can also take breaks between steps.

So all it takes is just first five minutes of planning.
I had to do the above procedure, for this post as well.
Hope it helps fellow developers
:)

!rant

Anyone else who can't focus while listening to music? I can't grasp how that's not annoying to people.

The sound of silence.
For real, the best coding flows happen then.

If there is something that I can hear and process, my train of thought behaves like a dream behaves when you wake up in the morning.

Even worse are children, humming, whistling or munching as the ONLY sound in that silence, Im scorching inside when that happens.

If I can't be somewhere silent (preferably completely), I block the distractions with binaural beats and/or sound of rain.

In the past: "Alright, have the day off, so can do some serious work (work on my game project). Let me just check my mail first... And a cpl of sub-reddits... And see if there are any updates for Unit3D, or any interesting forum posts, or new assets on asset store that look nice... And check some online newspapers just to see if anything is going on... And check if anything new has been posted on slashdot since I last checked 5 minutes ago (nope)... And maybe see if there's any updates to Sublime Text or new useful packages that can help improve workflow... Ooh came across article on how to improve workflow... Hm someone mentioned a new task-management system in comments, gotta check that out... I'll just sign up for a demo-account and... Hm but what if there are any better ones? Better google for comparisons. Wait, isn't there a new episode of Silicon Valley today? Gotta see that first, no time tmr. Hmm also new episode of Archer, and American Gods. Better get watching these out of the way first, or I can't concentrate... Ah, wait, it's dinner time, no point starting anything until after that."

Now: All of the above, plus "I'll just check devRant real quick before I... hmm... interesting rant... *scrolls and reads rants and comments for 3 hours*"

How am I supposed to get any work done? :_(

Anyone else feel really unproductive and as if you're working slowly? I cut distractions but I still seem to zone out sometimes. Thinking about pomodoro method.

"You're a programmer, dammit!" Damian Conway

I'm at a seminar given by Conway right now, so much stuff I wish I had heard before about how to be more productive and how to stay "in the zone" while programming without distractions. If any of you ever gets a chance of following one of his seminars (he also wrote books), it's highly recommended.

Notifications

Phone calls, whatsapp, emails, slack messages, recurring meetings. The list is limited but distractions abound

I should be writing code, but I keep scrolling! #devRant

My productivity has gone fucking low.
I have hundreds of things ti do , Prepare for exams, write code for my internship project,write code for my game, learn new things about ML,etc.
But all I fuckin do is play games all day instead of making mine!

Plz help, give me some words of encouragement or tell me something that you do to boost your productivity and keep away from distractions !

Distractions are neither created nor destroyed, it just changes from one app to another ;-)
The Law of Conservation of Distractions

Here's to the last time I'll see the office for a month.

I guess I'm on the WFH bandwagon now 🍻

Distracting myself from something I should be working on. Then continuing to code. But I bout that pc a few years ago. It also compl—

Wait, what was the topic again?

!rant

So I've been using Linux as my desktop and server environment for a solid month now, and I think the biggest benefit it's been for me is the digitial detoxification. I no longer worry about having the biggest/most high spec computer anymore and instead my OS is built around getting as much clutter and distractions out of the way so I can focus on programming as much as possible. It's very much akin to my mediatation sessions where you cut out everything around you to regain your focus.

It's the same feeling I got when I lost interest in video games. it was a huge time sink that was entertaining yes, but it no longer gives me the same feeling of accomplishment as getting over the mountain of a project goal and reaching the summit. Linux is a more challenging environment but with that challeng comes the excitement of learning something new, and your environment is in your own hands.

It's been a while but I should go back to my buddist meditation group again. I've been a workaholic for the past couple months and I need to afford myself time again to decompress.

One could easily deduce when we got a dog from my personal project's git history :/

Cut down distractions.

distractions are the greatest enemies of humanity rn

Does anyone else ever get so distracted/tired/pent up with other shit going on that they become a liability?

Last night I had about 5 hours sleep and have been worried over general UK politics lately.

Today, on a phone call to get support over getting locked out of our Apple Developer Program account, the call centre agent asked if we had the password.

I immediately replied "Sure! It's **begins saying actual password allowed over the phone**

When you really need to study, but your brain is so desperate for distractions that you go answer questions on StackOverflow

How many hours of actual productive work do you devs average a day? Honestly, I think I average about 2 hours of honest, good work in my 8 hour day. Between random meaningless meetings that could be emailed out or just daily distractions (coworkers chatting, my phone, etc). Am I alone in this?

I want to be able to NOT go on youtube every 5 minutes when I'm trying to develop.

I've been trying all morning to just continue my studying and it's not working out :/

I hate responsibilities xD

First day at my job and once I got home I immediately crashed into my bed and woke up at 3 AM.

For some reason I still feel physically tired. Even though I woke up by myself (no distractions from my environment).

+ I feel like having worked out even though I did not. I can feel the muscles aching everywhere in my body.

Anyway back to how it went...
I got there (company) and met a young people like me who are also working in this company for the first time.

Once I saw them + the chief and the leaders, my anxiety kicked in, but I made sure not to show it.

We took photos and saw the cubes (data center cubes) and it felt like I was in a hacking scene from Mr Robot or Watch Dogs lol. It was so cool.

After that we were assigned to our temporary work places and mine was at a place where you get packages from the delivery trucks, cut them, sort them, put etiquettes on them and register them in the system.

Another boy (let's call him Daniel) and me were assigned to this place. He is going to be a sys admin.

The people at this workplace were very chill, cool and mature.
You can joke with them and they will not get offended (looking at you, Twitter) lol.

Daniel however is the opposite.
He is so god damn extroverted that he literally won't stop talking.
At some point he asked me if I was even listening and I admitted that the unconcious side of the brain of mine built a filter over the years that only let's valuable information flow through. When there is no valuable information, I do not process them in my conciousness.

Poor guy got a bit sad, but me whatever. Not my problem. He gave me an headache by talking nonstop nonsense.

Today, when my shift begins, I will learn to do drive a forklift and I'm excited about this.

I do not even need a license for it which you normally need in other companies :D

I read once "productivity is elimination of distractions" or something like that.
And honestly, it has worked so far.

Motivation is even better tho. But if I'm really unmotivated, or anxious, I subconsciously create distractions; then I have to deal with me inner child. Point is, motivation has a direct line to productivity, so I usually don't do what I can't bring yourself to do.

I hate leaving work late, stuck on a bug and 10 miles down the road heading home, figure out a solution and then argue with myself do I go back and fix it now with no distractions or write it down ... then in the morning I’ll do it but bear with distractions... or not write it down .. hope I remember and then do it in the morning

But I’ll probably get distracted.: forget .. then remember after everyone leaves and implement it tomorrow night .. lol

Mobile phone.
With our without internet it is still one of the biggest distractions I have. I keep checking it even though there is nothing.

After 4 major releases of our system with truly tight timelines & 2 years away from devrant and other socials networking to avoiding distractions, I back to devrant again!

It is nice to be back again reading rants and jokes again

Working with a group on a startup idea. We have weekly Google chat meetings with the full team and sometimes me and the other two founders have side calls. Our group is getting bigger so the weekly is getting longer so the 3 of us were talking about ways to make them more efficient. One was, background distractions like TV, random people talking in bg, kids...

So then yesterday the 3 of us went over a different topic and the guy who had brought up the distraction issue was in the bathroom shaving and trimming nose hairs the whole time. He kept asking questions about the agenda which we all had access to. I shouldn't even care much. I drink through the meetings anyways.

K.
1. Uni wants me to use Java.
2. I don't like Java, because everything that I am used to, is different.
3. I look up easy things online on shitty websites...
4. C'm on journaldev... Where 's da cookiebanner?

Well after working a normal office job for a while I'm kinda starting to think I thrive on isolation.

All of the people, the noise, the distractions, the lights, it's all so overwhelming. I have constant anxiety attacks.

Idk does anyone relate with this? We're they ever able to overcome? Cope? Bend their employer to the will of their isolationism by working at home more often and still producing results despite the Beck and call to "please stay in the office and fit in our prescribed work time box, you robot."

Just people. Meetings, emails, phone calls that tear me away from work. Please, just let me work! 😭

Week 1 Day 1

It's a little late to do a whole big list of things I want to change going into 2018 so I'll just keep this focused on one thing: I do NOT want to work a minimum wage job by the end of 2018, preferably by the end of May.

So I'm gonna change that; starting now. I got accepted to the Grow with Google Challenge scholarship I may or may not have applied to while blackout drunk and I realize that drunk me was watching out for sober me. He set up a good start to getting me away from unloading trucks at 2AM and into a nice comfy chair where I can replace physical pain with mental anguish. But all kidding aside I'm really excited to start this course but I have no drive and motivation is a little hard to come by around here (The Fairy Godmother is MIA) so I'm going to be posting these rants daily in the hopes that it keeps me obligated to not waste the opportunity given to me. So without further ado, day 1 everybody.

I started today really simple. I signed up for a slack account, got Udacity set up so I was officially enrolled and everything, then moved on to setting up my laptop for android development. I wanted a fresh start so I when ahead and wiped my hard drive and looked at a few different OSes to see what fit my needs. After trying to mess around with Arch Linux and failing, I moved to Debian, I liked Debian a lot but I'm not completely comfortable with it just yet and I don't want to waste a lot of time having to familiarize with a new OS when I just want to dig in. So eventually I ended up with Windows 10, for the convenience and ease of use, but decided to put a spin on it and download the Ubuntu subsystem for W10 so I could still practice on something similar to a GNU/Linux OS. So far everything is set up, I have the only 4 applications I will need: chrome, android studio, google play Music, and devrant of course, and I intend to keep all other distractions off of this machine. Overall I'm feeling really good and I'll follow up tomorrow with some actual coding and whatnot and we'll go for there.

Week 1 Day 5 - Week 2 Day 5

"It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop" - Confucius

He had a lot of great quotes but I think that's one every dev who's ever worked on a personal project can get behind. It's been about a week since my last rant so I've got a lot to cover, I got a little busy so my progress has been lacking but I have two days off coming up and I plan on making all my meals ahead of time and turning my phone off to limit distractions.

So far I've worked my way through the first lesion on layouts and getting/editing views by the id. This seems pretty basic once you get comfortable with the topic. I'd like to think this will become second nature once I start to get into the guts of the course. The second lesson started working with internet connectivity and I've just started working through it. A lot doesn't make sense but at the start of the lesson one nothing made sense so I assume it'll all wrap up nicely.

I wanted to publish this two days ago (January 23) but I closed my laptop and forgot all about the rant so now it's two days later and I've made some progress, things are getting easier to understand and I'm liking it. I've also decided to start making something I've always wanted to while I work on android development. I'm going to start making an RPG I've been working on since my sophomore year of high school. I haven't written any code for my game yet but I've got the world development and story air tight. So as an ending statement, I'd like to ask anyone on devRant with game making experience how I should go about structuring my project, and some of the things that aren't going to be easy to find with google searches. I plan on, to the dismay of many other game dev's I've talked to, write it in Java because it's familiar to me and I would probably make a worse game in C++ even though that is the go to language. I'd also like to thank some of you repeat readers for silently encouraging me to keep going just by ++ing my rants every time, JoshBent and Dfox. It's been really nice seeing names pop up every single time.

slack seems to be having issues with connectivity currently.

sweet, maybe I can actually get some work done!

or maybe i'll just browse devrant for a few more minutes. who's gonna know?

I need your help.
I think I'm addicted to distractions and diversions. It's ruining my life and any chance to get experience.

Instead of actual developing, I constantly watch development tutorials and courses, listen to podcasts about development, read books and articles about development, post on development forums and go to development meetups.

I can't write a few lines of code without being 100% concentrated first, and afterwards I get distracted by everyday life events only to find myself at the end too tired to do anything productive and then surrender to sleep.

I'm getting depressed. How can I fight this? How can I push myself to work and be an actual developer?

Jesus christ I need my VP and CIO to get their hands out of Azure and GCP and just let me work.

Yes, governance and security and IAM are big deals. That's why you have infraops people like me to deal with that.

I'm literally working with one hand tied behind my back because just about every button press or CLI command I need to do my damn job as a professional cloud fluffer requires me to go bother an executive and ask permission to pretty please can I deploy a new container, can you go press the shiny button? No not that one, move your mouse up...up..now UP..ok over lef-no..can I have mouse control? Sigh fine, do you see where it says "Approvers", no that says "Release Pipeline"

Look I actually kinda like this job, I do, in as much as when I have something to do I get left the fuck alone to do it. Meetings are minimal, aside from the odd days when one of our app services decides to yeet itself into the river Styx, there's little distractions.

Yeah, developers do dumb shit but that's probably best left to the notion of job security and never talked about again less they go to HR and complain that the ops guy was very stern and direct and made the developer take some accountability for their work product.

AND YET

It's so intergalactically stupid that I have to go ask permission just to do ops tasks by the same people barging down my goddamn door asking why the ops task isn't done yet.

"Because you won't give me permissions in GCP to actually DO anything".

Okay. Rant over. Time for lunch. Good meeting, see you all at the holiday party.

Can we please invent a company where we don't have to endure the incessant ringing of Microsoft Teams? 🙉🔔 It's like a never-ending symphony of interruptions and distractions. I yearn for a peaceful workspace, free from the jarring sound of countless notifications. Let's build a world where productivity reigns, and Teams ringtones are banished forever! 🚫⏰

Do any of you have a fidget spinner or other fidget gadget? They seem to be pretty popular right now esp the fidget spinners. If you have one does it actually help you, or does it actually become more distracting? I'm fine myself fidgeting with paperclips and was looking at a fidget gadget.

Today is nice... Since the rest of my team is in another country and they're off.

I'm in but I can actually take my time and get shit done at my own pace.

No distractions, no needing to explain things for the Nth time....

Checking out cool projects and libraries because your bored coding the function you just rewrote 20 times from all the changes that keep being sent over.

What coding at work is supposed to look like:
class myclass {
public:
void myfunc;
void.... And so on so forth.

What coding at work actually looks like:
class myclass {
pub--"Hey can get line one? <name> is asking for you."

(20 minutes later)

public:
void myfunc;
vo--"Hey <same name> wants to talk to you again."

Programming doesn't give me gray hair, distractions do.

I keep putting off coding because "there is never enough time" and "there are too many distractions."

Next thing you notice I don't get any coding done for the longest time... 😥

Nuked my arch today cuz my ssd will soon arrive and ill start afresh. Wanted to practice some c++ so booted up windows and god after staying away for about an year, it feels even worse(windows is fresh install too)
What a fkin nightmare everything was soo fkin laggy, too many distractions and basically the "fluidness" that I'm accustomed to has gone. I'm never fkin coding on windows again thanks.

Depends on what a tough dev day is. If it was just a tough day usually playing ice hockey helps. If it was a stressful day, board games with my daughter, provided it's not a Wednesday (her Mom's night). If it's a tough problem or bug I'm working on then alcohol, running or lifting, sex, general distractions will do the trick

imgur and youtube

Stackoverflow's hot network questions. By far.

No distractions and beer any time!

Oh, I've pulled a lot of all-nighters. I love doing hackathons. I find myself most productive when I work on something in a single stretch. I have ADD that way. If I leave a project mid-way, that's probably the last time I'll be working on it; unless someone comes to me and reminds me about it.

Other than attending organized hackathons, I go on personal hackathons. When I'm in the mood to code something up in my free time, I just find some stupid, random idea to code and code it up overnight. (Oh, I have a very long list of projects that I can complete over the weekend)

Other times, I'll just be in the mood as I'm working on something and then lose track of time (and other bodily calls like hunger) as I finish it.

If my weekend looks very peaceful without any distractions, I put my hand in my project bowl and pull something up to finish it off over the weekend.

!dev

so I got asked how much I wanted as my monthly salary for my first dev job and I said 300 USD, did I overshoot ? I haven't gotten a reply yet and I am worried I messed up

backstory, I had this online video interview but during that period i was working for my dad in a remote village, the background was terrible, I had to tilt my camera to an odd angle to make it less terrible, after all the usual talks on "our company company's vision and mission........ we are trying to create....... blag blah blah.......". he commented on my area and I said I was working odd jobs to keep up,

him: how much will be enough for you monthly ?

me: I just need enough to pay for internet and maybe a little left for other stuff (I was this desperate)

him; no we need you to face this job squarely without distractions, how much will be enough ? send your reply as message, yes, they reached out to me through email and whatsapp

me; 300 USD

I'm fucking worried I was over the bar.

Installed iOS 12 beta 1.

OBVIOUSLY it’s buggy, but as an early adopter I’m fine with that.

I’m loving the hugely enhanced privacy measures and the “screen time” feature which really breaks down your device usage into tangible data bites. It’s depressing to me when I see how often I pickup my phone, how often I’m on it, how many notifications an hour I get etc.

I’m really going to take advantage of these new tools to extremely minimise my phone usage.

i now there are others like me who really want to study prog. but sometimes get distracted. o was wondering how you guys get past these distractions and have the passion to stay dedicated in learning and doing your work.

Wait till 11pm and put a Star Wars OST on. That puts me in a real development Flow State. I never get into that zone in the office because of distractions.

Distractions.

Who chooses the Weekly Rant?
Are we allowed to make suggestions?

I suggest because a lot of people are at home and we need some distractions that every just post pictures of their pets.

Eliminating distractions and interruptions. When focused and in the zone, even a "quick question" breaks my concentration enough that it becomes frustrating to get back into my train of thought.

I am also known around the office to stare you dead in the eye while you're talking to me and I'm still typing... and not hear a damn word you said.

Google is keeping me away from distractions by 58 min ad... that's the kind of ad i want

The way to avoid procrastination is to understand and use what your mind is trying to do - give itself instant gratification.

I use this method:
Step 1: Prepare your workspace in every way possible.
Step 2: Leave. Go do something fun for 20 minutes or so (yes, procrastinate on purpose). Get your mind calmed down and get rid of the anxieties about starting by just not starting.
Step 3: Sit down in your prepped environment, free of distractions and with a calmed mind, and pick a task to start hacking away at.

Just realized that before i did that commit there was this guy (let's call him a friend, fucking asshole from a different department who can't see someone is working before continuing their stupid conversations) took my attention away for 15-20 mins and i being distracted didn't commit 1 file out of 7 and ended up changing (exact same file over next code merge) it.
Now Everything fails.
Sweet afternoon work is gone.
To be repeated ....

How I try to stay productive:

I seem to be slightly less distracted if there are other people around me. Probably because I have to make an effort to focus, which stops a part of me secretly searching for distractions when there are parts of work that I would rather avoid (like googling error messages). So I used to spend some time of the day in a café or in our family kitchen.

Taking breaks an going for a walk, preferably in the forest (when I work from home).

Prioritization of tasks also helps to focus and do one thing after the other. That said, sometimes it inspires me to do more than one task at a time.

Writing down what I did and want to do (in an actual note book on paper) helps me start a new work day, especially after a weekend off.

I work from home and my biggest coding distraction is when the house is a wreck. I also love in a small 2 bedroom apartment and my office is in the living room..

Any tips on staying focused and not being distracted for a quasi-intermediate programmer? I keep getting distracted by steam games. Even weird shit like installing gitlab community on a VM, thus loosing an hour of time.

1. Music, something fast paced with minimal to zero lyrics (usually a GOA radio station in my case)
2. No distractions around (use a "do-not-disturb" flag or something to hang on your monitor or show on your desk)
3. No chats or other communication/social media visible, best case those apps / tabs are completely closed or muted
4. Having a clear goal to achieve, might even be only a sub-goal for the current coding session.
5. Structure your code before your actually write it, I usually create step-by-step comments in each file, documenting my thought process and what steps the current file/class/whatever should do.
6. Try to code your stuff in the same order as the aforementioned comment step-by-step list dictates (unless there is a reason to change the coding order)
7. Only windows open: IDE/Editor, Browser
8. Also keep only the browser tabs needed for your work open (testing clients, documentation, music if using a browser client, etc.)

At least that's what works for me

on the tube.. got stuck on devRant and i think i just missed my stop. damnit! another 20 minuters wait..

If I had a dollar for every time a mother fucker in QA distracted me and threw me out of focus..

Nothing against QA but an unnecessary interaction costs me about an hour of downtime trying to back up to speed.

All mandatory tasks complete for the week, no meetings, no distractions, time to go back to the default of documentation........ahhh email just in from nodeweekly!

No internet! I have been without home WiFi for a week now and I can't download big files over my hotspot as it is expensive. I need to download a Raspbian image for my Raspberry Pi but it is ~1 gigabyte. Been needing to get my Raspberry Pi set up to turn it into a server for a site I am currently creating.

My current distractions are the need for keltfest and castlefest. I can hardly wait for them. Aside from those two, at work there are hardly any distractions but when it comes to personal projects... yeez where to start?

- magic the gathering
- tv shows
- youtube
- planning furniture creation
- movies
- games
- playing the guitar

This is probably because I don't own a desk. Will create one within the next two weeks.

For me the best way to get unstuck is to go for a walk outside the office and think in peace. I work for a small company and we all share a working space so the distractions are endless... Either someone's talking loudly on the phone, or they're asking me questions (and the headphones, for some reason, do not work as a do not disturb sign for my coworkers) so at times it's impossible to concentrate...
When I'm working at home on my own projects, usually on the weekends, I go for a brief swim at the beach. It works wonders....

The distractions. I can easily focus if people leave me alone long enough

Best way to learn to code? More specifically, best way to avoid distractions whilst learning? I find myself easily tempted to play video games or watch YouTube videos instead that has nothing to do with coding...

Did anyone else suffer from this? Is this just a phase and once I break past it, I'll be really into programming & forget about everything else?

here we go again

the remote-retrospective-where-most-of-the-team-are-muted-and-clearly-tweeting-or-doing-other-stuff

any ideas on how to improve this?

It should be at night (after 9/10pm; I work better at night anyway), headphones on, music blasting (heavy metal nowadays), alone, preferably no distractions, but now that I am at home for xmas holidays I have to be on the lookout for my parents calling me. When I go back to uni I can eliminate that variable from this equation and so I should be in the zone for longer. Hopefully 😅

All the shit that has been stressing me out has stopped and everything is okay now I can program without distractions, although I think JavaScript has some stress planned

Clear myself of distractions and work on something interesting.

I had this song stuck in my head the whole fucking day today. And I really, really *REALLY* wanted to listen to it. Once. Without any distractions or breaks. While working. And focusing on work. Matching the tempo of the song to My work rhythm.

SO WHY THE FUCK COULD PEOPLE NOT WAIT FOR 4 MINUTES AND 35 SECONDS AND ****CHOOSE**** TO IGNORE EARPHONES, A BLACK HOODIE COVERING MY ENTIRE FUCKING FACE AND THE LACK OF RESPONSES WHEN YOU CALLED THE FIRST 2 TIMES????????????????

Worst part? It was JUST THAT ONE SONG WHILE WORKING. OTHER TIMES, NOBODY CARES I EVEN FUCKING EXIST!

i wanna be happy but i think im afraid of being happy, because being sad and alone is sort of comfortable at this point, since im like this since a long time ago. i still feel hurt bcs i feel so alone and i feel like a loser but im able to find distractions so i dont have to deal with all this guilt and sadness, but when things start working out in my life i keep thinking "do i deserve this?" and i get scared and really ashamed. scared of what people will think of me, scared of what they will do to me, ashamed of what people will and do think of me, so i just end up isolating myself all over again and being alone and sad and depressed all over again as well

How do i tell my boss all these sudden requests for new features I've been getting that seem unimportant but time consuming are huge distractions/velocity-killers from a project I've been working on with the business for the last month and should be released this weekend?

And well I may be out in for awhile soon for health reasons. So at this point I'm just thinking "you know what take your pick". I can work on your new requests now but for this other project... I'll give you the basics you can have someone figure out all the rest from the code. Good luck.

Code isn't too bad imo but the project is massive, spans multiple projects that integrate with each other.

And well I'm the only dev since boss never bothered to assign anyone else to help...

I think my favourite one is Notepad++ I like things raw and out of distractions... Maybe because I write a lot of LaTeX and it feels like heaven...

>> Focus <<

No matter how much trickery is added
No matter how many distractions
In the end if even one person deviates
They may as well be punished
Because they likely did or enabled something wrong by trying to cause a check that distracted someone important
And a person who is caught cannot be helped by their fellows right away if at all because it associates them with the crime
Imagine the horror of one of us fully enabled catching one of them doing something horrible
The loud scream of fury the last thing they heard before the icy feeling of metal entering their body is experienced and noone could help them
Outside very specific times and places the best that could be accomplished is a temporary suspension of punishment
Eventually because of how convoluted things have become punishment will be effect

Now I want to smile
And act appropriately
Because I need to
I'm so happy
And I can't believe this is happening to me

It's nice to finally figure out how to solve a complex puzzle in a coding project.

For me, this usually happens at a line in the grocery store or better yet at the lobby of the kindergarden while I'm picking up my kids.

In a quiet, closed space unhindered by distractions.

For me (and I'd imagine, many others here), constant conversations in the background, people walking by, etc absolutely kill my focus and keep me from getting work done. Working from home helps a bit, but my neighbors provide plenty of their own distractions.

Honestly, I'll take a broom closet with a laptop, headphones and an Ethernet jack over any other open office design.

WFH pro tip. Wear 3M Worktunes and face a direction that has no distractions.

Please f-ing knock softly on my window, it sounds like a bomb exploding from where I am sitting!!!