Productivity Illusion

[cjsmith]

While I may FEEL more productive if I can't access LJ at work, at the end of the day I'm not sure I'd gotten any more done than on any other day.

Darn. I'd been so hoping I would magically turn into a whirlwind of Super-Coder efficiency. (There's something about working at a startup that makes me desperately want to be superhuman.)

Maybe I have been guilting myself over something that didn't actually make much difference. When I'm working a hard problem, I take breaks. I have to. I rapidly become useless if I don't let my brain shake itself out every so often. Maybe whether those breaks are LJ or not doesn't matter.

Hard to say, this early. I'll give it more time. Maybe this change is merely a small positive thing.

Comments

Re: being in the top part of the graph

[moriamerri.livejournal.com]

"I've never been at a place where it was considered to be the engineers' job to figure out what to make."

I have been *sort of*. Or, at least I've been at places
where it was honestly very collaborative about what to make.
And I've also SOMETIMES seen engineers intervene to try
to modify/abort "crummy" plans/features. Although I guess this
is politically iffy, I think it can make for much
efficiency. But it probably should not have been in my
thoughts about being in "the top part of the graph", due
to the political iffiness in spite of possibly great
efficiency. I think I've somewhere seen
it "work", but not something one can count on.

Anyway, not sure I can make any sense with this -- It
shouldn't really be in suggestions for efficiency, even
though it is such a key element of efficiency. You're
right, usually there is little control beyone taking
the job (or not). And where there is control, (or at
least influence) there is also probably some risk.

Maybe this just comes back around to design -- where
sometimes developers have a lot of leeway and control
about what really is being made..... I'm thinking about
the kind of situation where the "requirements" are
very bare bones, so dev really does have a LOT of
control of whether what is made is sensible or not
(at least within the basic outline of the feature, or
whatever....) Maybe I've worked in unusual places,
I don't know.....