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Search - "all the distractions"
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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.5 -
*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<4 -
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.5 -
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.
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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!10 -
Eric Thomas' Top 10 Rules For Success
1- Know what you want.
If you don’t know what you want, how will you know what to say yes to in your life? Stop taking every body else’s leftovers and step up and take what you deserve!
2- Work on your gift.
We all have our own individual talents, gifts and strengths. But those natural gifts will only become truly great by refining and nourishing them. Natural ability will get you started, but commitment and determination to achieve greatness is what will get you to where you want to be.
3- No excuses.
Stop using your circumstances, finances or current position in life as an excuse to justify why you aren’t working towards your goals. You are in charge. If you aren’t where you want to be, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself honestly- WHY? Take responsibility for you life once and for all.
4- Upgrade your values.
Your values dictate your behaviours. And your behaviours create your results. If you want to a different result, you need to change your behaviour.
5- You reap what you sow.
Nothing in life is free. It is up to you to determine the course of your life. If you want success, you need to do what it takes, daily, to get there. Don’t focus so much on being successful. Focus on solving problems, helping others, and adding value to people’s lives, and success will come.
6- Education is the great equaliser.
If you are at the bottom, you need to learn. If you are at the top, you still need to learn. Never, ever, ever stop growing and educating yourself.
7- What is your WHY?
Why do you wake up in the morning and hustle? Why do you do what you do? Knowing the answer to this question is the single most important thing to know about yourself if you want to become successful. When you know WHY you are doing what you do, you won’t ever quit, even on a bad day.
8- Have boundaries.
If you want to be a huge success, you have to be strict on yourself with how you spend your energy. Distractions will come in many forms, family, friends, TV, but you have to make sure that your time is being spent wisely.
9- Speak from the heart.
Transparency is attractive. Don’t be afraid to open up to the world and let yourself be seen.
10- Succeed as bad as you want to breathe.
Everybody wants to be successful. But not everybody is willing to do the work that it takes to become successful. When you are willing to get so uncomfortable, so out of your depth, so blind that you have no other choice but to be successful, THEN you will become successful. The only question you need to ask yourself is this. Am I willing?
Credits: https://fearlessmotivation.com/2016...2 -
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???16
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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 DISTRACTIONS6 -
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.8 -
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
:) -
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.1 -
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.2 -
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."3 -
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.2 -
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.1 -
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
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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.1 -
!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.9 -
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!
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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...3 -
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
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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.... -
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 me3 -
In a country, a long time ago there was a programmer by the name of Alex. He was a programming genius and apart from a few hours of sleep, he was busy developing unique programs for new generation technology firms. Alex was a bachelor and he happily and proudly lived the way he wanted to. He did not have duties, authority over him, bosses to report to, children to take care of, and distractions. He could sit and code for the entire day without getting any break or feeling a bit tired. However, he had no idea that everything in his life was soon going to turn around. Before Marriage: The Bachelor’s Life Alex was the epitome of a modern ‘Play Boy ‘ or every man’s dream. He was fairly dressed, had a classy house, a snazzy car, and a good-paying job. He was in the habit of spending his mornings drinking coffee while browsing through the different coding topics. He comes in the afternoon and spends the evening part of the day with his friends. Life has never been this good. Alex was able to work hard and the more he was innovative, he enjoyed it. It illustrates how a young person would sit for many hours coding at night and not bother about other people around him. He was alone as a bird and as per him, that’s what he wanted to be. He had no peer to tell the truth to, no wife to prepare meals for, no maids to babysit his mess. A man could chow down a pizza for breakfast, lunch, and supper with not even a raised eyebrow from onlookers. He was profiting from living the best life he possibly could. After Marriage: Married Life: Alex & Sarah The climax for Alex is when he marries Sarah on a sunny morning on a fine day. Young people met, and after becoming enamored, started a family and got married to find a new home. Sarah was friendly with people and it was very easy for her to make friends; however, she had little knowledge of technology. Alex had it in his mind that marriage does not change the life you lead and how wrong he was. It was a fairy-tale to have such a perfect life for several days after the marriage. Their nights would be spent in front of the television set with their arms wrapped around each other, eating takeout. Despite this, when the number of days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months, Alex felt the beginning of a shift in his behavior. The Coding Cave That Transformed into A Home Office Due to the pandemic the coding cave Alex used to have became a home office. Sarah had made up her mind to open her business from home, therefore, she required a home office. Thus, she moved inside the cubicle that Alex had created as his coding cave and left him with no space to code. He now had to code in the living room, because Sarah would incessantly request him to either lower the auditory input of the keys he was typing or to switch off the LCD screen. The Once-Clean Apartment Turns into a Mess Alex was a neat freak, and he adored tidiness, especially in his apartment. But after marriage, his once clean and neat-looking apartment was changed into a dirty one. Although Sarah was not very neat, she used to litter her things anywhere she felt like without being conscious of it. Alex was a programmer and his coding notes were mixed with Sarah's business papers, it irritated him so much. Alex’s to-do list before marriage The to-do list before marriage only comprised coding-related tasks. At marriage, however, he seemed to have developed a longer list of things to do than ever before. Instead of just going to the grocery store to buy some food, Alex seemed to have endless tasks to do mostly around the house. He had to cook for himself, sweep the house, and wash the dishes among other things. This was a new world as far as he was concerned. The Pizza Days Are Over Gone there is no more time for Alex could eat pizza in the morning, afternoon as well and evening. Sarah was very conscious of what she took as food or what her family took as food and therefore ensured that Alex took healthy home-cooked foods. He could not have the pizza anymore but the meals prepared by Sarah were really tasty. Conclusion Therefore from a life before marriage to the life after marriage, it was evident that Alex led two different lives. He went from a playful man with not much responsibility to a man with more responsibilities as a husband and a father. Still, he wouldn’t have it any other way, despite these changes. Later he cherished Sarah and the life they had, and nothing in this world could make him exchange what he had now. Essentially, it was a tricky business being married, but a blessing, and an addition of love, company, and much hilarity too. Therefore, if you are a bachelor reading this, embrace your coding cave and your pizza days because once you utter the words ‘I do,’ all those will be things of the past.But trust me, it's all worth it.