[Music]
yeah it’s rowing
[Music]
good Monday morning I’m here in New York
City in Central Park
what has grabbed my attention and
thoughts air in here in New York is the
feeling of being unproductive you know
the feeling when you have like a really
unproductive day you feel like you’ve
got nothing done and I would like to
amuse a little bit about that feeling
and I will also like to talk a little
bit about not getting too caught up in
the idea of satisfying work because that
can be a little bit unerring
and a little bit of misleading and then
I want to talk a little bit about how to
better to view your work as a process
instead of these sequential goals and
think a little bit more about like
adhering to a process and insisting
discipline that’s what we’re gonna talk
about today I am mpj and you are
watching the final function today’s
sponsor is brilliant brilliant is a
problem-solving website that teaches you
how to think like a computer scientist
if you’re interested in computer science
fundamentals such as binary trees
quicksort Big O and all that kind of
stuff instead of just passively
listening to video courses beryllium has
interactive challenges with increasing
difficulty it’s kind of like a game with
the sense of cube with a sense of
progression it’s very satisfying use
brilliant org slash FFF when you sign up
to let them know that you came from here
also if you are one of the first 200
people to use that link you get 20% off
if you use if you get the annual
subscription check them out after this
show that link is also in the episode
description
so the first thing that I want to talk
about in deconstructing this idea it’s
the feeling of being unproductive and
what I’m thinking about here is when you
spend all day on something that you
didn’t expect to be spending time on you
maybe you were like you want to solve a
problem you had this idea you had like
this task on the on the board that you
were expecting to solve and yet you
really want to solve but instead you
just got stuck on fixing like the build
system or something and that took all
day perhaps you didn’t even succeed with
that perhaps you realized I own God I
have to work on fixing the bail system
tomorrow as well and then you’re left
with this feeling of that oh my god
I wasn’t productive and I think that’s a
little bit problem a little bit
problematic way of viewing the world
view productivity because if you take
bring that line of thinking to its you
know extreme conclusion that means that
you’re only really productive the second
you press deploy and your system it’s
very important to realize that work and
the success of work you know the end
result when you drag an item to the done
column and in your board is that success
is only the end event in a long series
of failures and if we if that’s what we
realize that is what our end conclusion
is then how do we feel productive our
about our work like if if the if the end
success is is not what we can draw a
success draw a good feeling from then
how do we feel productive about our day
I think we’re gonna narrow it down to
something that just feels productive you
know like it just feels like I really
got something done completing tasks you
have like these tiny low things on on
the board like you just dragging them to
in progress and then dragging them to
done and like you feel like you’re
chunking of tasks that’s a very
satisfying there another example in a
more modern setting more everyday
setting might be cooking you get the
ingredients out you chop them off you
fry them up cook em make them into a
meal serve it eat it boom you’re done
it’s a very satisfying activity and it’s
cleaning up your apartment might also be
very satisfying in that way just like
you take things put them into drawers
and it feels like oh yes progress in its
its hits you with a little bit of dopant
however what I really want to impose
here like the the core idea of my little
musing here is that yes because
something feels productive doesn’t
necessarily mean that it is I’m gonna
talk about one example then I had like
during my stay here there with the thing
that I would like to talk about here
that is very satisfying work is inbox
zero we should say if you don’t know it
it’s a technique where you always go and
put like process all your emails down to
so that your inbox is empty you leave
nothing in it so your inbox is not
something that you graduate the process
you always get it to boom zero this is a
super satisfying way of working but it’s
not necessarily like a one-to-one
mapping between being actual productive
and I had such an such an event here
today in New York where you just had
arrived I was jet-lagged I was feeling
horrible and I couldn’t get anything
done you know the feeling when
you’ve set out to do something I’m gonna
check my emails and finally go through
all these emails but your brain just
won’t do it it just refuses you get
nothing done you’re all over the place
so of course what I do is I go to
Twitter which is my go-to thing and I
just find myself a I could send a DM to
daniel Shipman who is another youtuber
and he is a space here in New York City
he teaches us New York University and he
replied I asked him if we could do it in
collaboration can we do something
together and he was like yeah sure come
over here like on this day and this day
and we are scheduled to shoot which is a
massive impact of a day I mean I didn’t
get anything done that day except this
thing not a single thing but this simple
little just act of booking a very
important meeting that was so high
impact that still made it a great day
still was a productive day what I want
to get out here is that some tasks are
very good at making you feel productive
and inbox zero is such a task I don’t
want a on inbox zero hard here
that’s important it might be like it is
a very good technique but it’s also
important to be skeptical of it because
it’s a technique that feels productive
so we should always whenever something
feels productive we should always ask
ourselves what’s it though
whenever I use static typing I always
feel enormously productive lately like
it’s it’s something just that in the
human brain that just likes putting
things into pockets if you ever use Ram
de you have soonerlater falling into
this this pocket of or this problem
where you find like oh I need to find
the perfect Ram de function for this
problem and you just like go through the
list of RAM de functioning yeah I can
use this and you or you find yourself
like that you’re looking for a way to
break up a function in two to function
and you just find yourselves self
breaking things up into smaller and
smaller and smaller atoms and eventually
your code is just oh it’s so elegant
it’s so broken down but it’s completely
unreadable to anyone else even though
you think oh it was so cool or maybe it
is readable to someone else but the
improvement and readability that it
caused was like nowhere near justified
by the amount that you spent on it but
it felt really productive it felt really
good because all of these little steps
gave you these bursts of dopamine which
feeling productive is it’s nice I we
want to feel productive it’s like it’s
important for us as humans to get these
dopamine boosts but it’s it’s probably a
bad like it’s not the whole picture of
what we want if we actually also want to
be productive we need to we need a
better more new and it’s thinking about
this because I mean if we want to just
feel productive all we can do all day
I’m gonna give you the solution for this
you can just play stardew valley stardew
valley is this amazing game we run a
farm it’s perfectly engineered around
the human reward system to give you
constant the dopamine boosts and make
you feel good about things you form
these plant seeds you are water seeds
every day and then eventually it results
in plants that you see you harvest and
sell them and then you can make or you
come and jam out of them and you feel
immensely productive playing this game
you feel like the most productive person
ever and you just get this dopamine
dopamine dopamine dopamine I placed all
your attentive play stardew valley
during periods of my life where I just
feel horribly unproductive and failed
because stardew valley always gives you
this very nice space where you are the
most productive person ever however that
feeling is not real it’s it’s it’s just
manufactured
[Music]
we as humans tend to be less skeptical
of activities that make us feel
productive so if something make us feel
productive we are less likely to
evaluate it and by I mean what I mean by
evaluate is is think about that the task
and ask ourselves is this really
productive and when we’re doing tasks
that don’t feel productive such as
messing with our complicated build
system for an entire day which actually
might really be productive we are more
likely to look at it what I really
productive was this really was this
really what we what we wanted to do and
I mean of course that that thing if we
were messing with a build system it
makes a lot of sense to you to spend
time and re-evaluate that but we should
really be a little bit extra mind for
evaluating activities that feel
productive because they they can be very
misleading
how do you feel productive how do we
feel productive if the answer is not
this this busy work if if having work
that it doesn’t feel productive this
dopamine stardew valley static typing in
books here kind of thing if that is not
the answer if we cannot rely on that
then how do we feel productive about our
day my thinking on this yes that we need
to remodel our thinking of being
software developers to from this success
oriented mindset into a process oriented
mindset I would like to propose a model
where you think it’s my job to bang my
head against problems what I’m
essentially talking about here is
redefining our our tasks as habits
instead so yes
your job is now to bang your head
against problems all day why is that
important why is the process a good idea
about thinking about things it’s because
first of all there’s a couple of reasons
for the first one and most important one
is that solving things sometimes takes a
lot of time success in a project or
anything in life is just the event that
is at a long long long long long chain
of failures and it’s important to be
able to feel good about this long chain
of failures because it’s just not
healthy to feel bad all the time during
it during a project that might take
months only to feel good for like five
minutes at the end of it when you deploy
it that’s that’s not that’s just not a
way to live you won’t last long as a
software developers if that’s your
attitude and even more importantly if
that is our attitude we were constantly
like incentivize ourselves to only solve
small simple problems we will be
developers that only go
for the low-hanging fruit all the time
we will we will just employed hard hard
and and time-consuming problems but that
that that’s of course a very bad
attitude as well because those problems
might also be the ones that are most
worthwhile in development and and life
in general when I first started writing
this episode I first defined this this
sentence ad it’s my job to bang my bang
my head against the problems until I
succeed but I then reduce it to yours
like bang it’s my job to bang my head
against problems because success but
might not be the endpoint of what you’re
doing we might learn that a problem just
cannot be solved you might find that
it’s just not gonna happen
it it’s it’s a part of the system that
cannot be moved you don’t have access to
your system you might find that hundreds
of developers has tried this before and
you would essentially need an army of
yourself to do it you might learn they
looked like a one developer job buddy
was actually the job of like a research
team for a couple of years ahead and
that is not a failure per se because
you’ve gotten a learning out of it you
have gotten more wise
your development team now has a better
idea about the problem space and what
you do so you should still like be yeah
I’ve done I’ve done work I’ve been
productive I I went through this and we
are wiser for it another reason why we
shouldn’t be so focused around like n
success he is that we sometimes learned
that a problem just shouldn’t be solved
might that journey we started out like
where this this problem space and this
idea about how to solve the problem
space but we might realize during during
development and as we explore the
problem more that it just doesn’t make
sense we misunderstood the problem we
miss
stir the solution we we with we did
assumptions around the problem that were
just wrong or we their assumptions
around the solution that or people that
were supposed to use the solution there
just didn’t make sense they like we are
we’re working on the wrong problem are
we working on the wrong solution and
that’s also a very very valuable insight
to get the third thing is that there
might also be problems that are in the
middle ground of these things like you
find that a problem it’s a problem that
you realize yeah we can solve this but
it’s gonna take way too much time to to
be worth it and but something that
really helps with this is time boxing
just decided that yeah I’m gonna work
for this for 10 hours and see where
where it leads
but once you reach the end of that time
box it’s okay now this is just taking
way too much time because as a developer
have so many times get caught in a
problem like being the person that I
don’t stand up says like yeah I’m soon
done you know I’m gonna get there and
I’m gonna no no no this week I’m gonna
get there and then at you I’m so close
now next week I’m gonna get there and
this it’s so easy to just be this person
that if you don’t keep tabs on how much
time you’re spending on a problem that
you’re you’re always like grabbing at
the end of the rope and just pouring and
pulling pulling and it really never ends
it probably will end at some point
but you’re way past the point where it
was business sense to spend on this
problem and by that time you should just
cut your losses and realize that yeah I
learned something here that this problem
was not worth solving that is valuable
okay so let’s let’s try to summarize
this thing we talked about how the
feeling of being productive like the the
or the feeling of being unproductive ah
just oh god I didn’t get anywhere
because all I did was spend time at the
bail system and then we talked about the
inverse of of that dimension which was
like oh I felt really productive and
move things to the done column but when
we also talked a little about the how
those tasks and things are a bit can be
a little bit misleading they always feel
productive but just because I feel
productive doesn’t mean that they they
are you might actually you spend your
day just optimizing typing’s for no good
reason
or playing stardew valley all the time
and then we wrapped up a little bit by
thinking about how we can be productive
in this reality where we cannot trust
feeling productive and my idea about
that is that we should focus on the
process instead and instead of framing
ourselves as people who solve problems
we are people who bang our heads against
problems and then different things comes
out eventually might be success but it
might also be learnings about how you
cannot solve a problem how you shouldn’t
solve a problem or how a problem might
just be the wrong problem to solve I
hope that was useful to you in some way
what do you think like is this is this
how you think about development and how
you think about problems be supposed to
comment down below hello I’m here to
remind you that today’s sponsor is
brilliant
a website that can teach you how to
finally check out big o-notation binary
trees yes use brilliant hood org slash
FFF you can also find that link in the
episode description
and that’s it if you are new this was an
episode of fun fun function I release
this every Monday morning Oh 800 GMT
however you will forget that so you can
subscribe by clicking here or watch
another episode right now by clicking
here
I am mpj until next Monday morning thank
you [Music]
yeah it’s rowing
[Music]
good Monday morning I’m here in New York
City in Central Park
what has grabbed my attention and
thoughts air in here in New York is the
feeling of being unproductive you know
the feeling when you have like a really
unproductive day you feel like you’ve
got nothing done and I would like to
amuse a little bit about that feeling
and I will also like to talk a little
bit about not getting too caught up in
the idea of satisfying work because that
can be a little bit unerring
and a little bit of misleading and then
I want to talk a little bit about how to
better to view your work as a process
instead of these sequential goals and
think a little bit more about like
adhering to a process and insisting
discipline that’s what we’re gonna talk
about today I am mpj and you are
watching the final function today’s
sponsor is brilliant brilliant is a
problem-solving website that teaches you
how to think like a computer scientist
if you’re interested in computer science
fundamentals such as binary trees
quicksort Big O and all that kind of
stuff instead of just passively
listening to video courses beryllium has
interactive challenges with increasing
difficulty it’s kind of like a game with
the sense of cube with a sense of
progression it’s very satisfying use
brilliant org slash FFF when you sign up
to let them know that you came from here
also if you are one of the first 200
people to use that link you get 20% off
if you use if you get the annual
subscription check them out after this
show that link is also in the episode
description
so the first thing that I want to talk
about in deconstructing this idea it’s
the feeling of being unproductive and
what I’m thinking about here is when you
spend all day on something that you
didn’t expect to be spending time on you
maybe you were like you want to solve a
problem you had this idea you had like
this task on the on the board that you
were expecting to solve and yet you
really want to solve but instead you
just got stuck on fixing like the build
system or something and that took all
day perhaps you didn’t even succeed with
that perhaps you realized I own God I
have to work on fixing the bail system
tomorrow as well and then you’re left
with this feeling of that oh my god
I wasn’t productive and I think that’s a
little bit problem a little bit
problematic way of viewing the world
view productivity because if you take
bring that line of thinking to its you
know extreme conclusion that means that
you’re only really productive the second
you press deploy and your system it’s
very important to realize that work and
the success of work you know the end
result when you drag an item to the done
column and in your board is that success
is only the end event in a long series
of failures and if we if that’s what we
realize that is what our end conclusion
is then how do we feel productive our
about our work like if if the if the end
success is is not what we can draw a
success draw a good feeling from then
how do we feel productive about our day
I think we’re gonna narrow it down to
something that just feels productive you
know like it just feels like I really
got something done completing tasks you
have like these tiny low things on on
the board like you just dragging them to
in progress and then dragging them to
done and like you feel like you’re
chunking of tasks that’s a very
satisfying there another example in a
more modern setting more everyday
setting might be cooking you get the
ingredients out you chop them off you
fry them up cook em make them into a
meal serve it eat it boom you’re done
it’s a very satisfying activity and it’s
cleaning up your apartment might also be
very satisfying in that way just like
you take things put them into drawers
and it feels like oh yes progress in its
its hits you with a little bit of dopant
however what I really want to impose
here like the the core idea of my little
musing here is that yes because
something feels productive doesn’t
necessarily mean that it is I’m gonna
talk about one example then I had like
during my stay here there with the thing
that I would like to talk about here
that is very satisfying work is inbox
zero we should say if you don’t know it
it’s a technique where you always go and
put like process all your emails down to
so that your inbox is empty you leave
nothing in it so your inbox is not
something that you graduate the process
you always get it to boom zero this is a
super satisfying way of working but it’s
not necessarily like a one-to-one
mapping between being actual productive
and I had such an such an event here
today in New York where you just had
arrived I was jet-lagged I was feeling
horrible and I couldn’t get anything
done you know the feeling when
you’ve set out to do something I’m gonna
check my emails and finally go through
all these emails but your brain just
won’t do it it just refuses you get
nothing done you’re all over the place
so of course what I do is I go to
Twitter which is my go-to thing and I
just find myself a I could send a DM to
daniel Shipman who is another youtuber
and he is a space here in New York City
he teaches us New York University and he
replied I asked him if we could do it in
collaboration can we do something
together and he was like yeah sure come
over here like on this day and this day
and we are scheduled to shoot which is a
massive impact of a day I mean I didn’t
get anything done that day except this
thing not a single thing but this simple
little just act of booking a very
important meeting that was so high
impact that still made it a great day
still was a productive day what I want
to get out here is that some tasks are
very good at making you feel productive
and inbox zero is such a task I don’t
want a on inbox zero hard here
that’s important it might be like it is
a very good technique but it’s also
important to be skeptical of it because
it’s a technique that feels productive
so we should always whenever something
feels productive we should always ask
ourselves what’s it though
whenever I use static typing I always
feel enormously productive lately like
it’s it’s something just that in the
human brain that just likes putting
things into pockets if you ever use Ram
de you have soonerlater falling into
this this pocket of or this problem
where you find like oh I need to find
the perfect Ram de function for this
problem and you just like go through the
list of RAM de functioning yeah I can
use this and you or you find yourself
like that you’re looking for a way to
break up a function in two to function
and you just find yourselves self
breaking things up into smaller and
smaller and smaller atoms and eventually
your code is just oh it’s so elegant
it’s so broken down but it’s completely
unreadable to anyone else even though
you think oh it was so cool or maybe it
is readable to someone else but the
improvement and readability that it
caused was like nowhere near justified
by the amount that you spent on it but
it felt really productive it felt really
good because all of these little steps
gave you these bursts of dopamine which
feeling productive is it’s nice I we
want to feel productive it’s like it’s
important for us as humans to get these
dopamine boosts but it’s it’s probably a
bad like it’s not the whole picture of
what we want if we actually also want to
be productive we need to we need a
better more new and it’s thinking about
this because I mean if we want to just
feel productive all we can do all day
I’m gonna give you the solution for this
you can just play stardew valley stardew
valley is this amazing game we run a
farm it’s perfectly engineered around
the human reward system to give you
constant the dopamine boosts and make
you feel good about things you form
these plant seeds you are water seeds
every day and then eventually it results
in plants that you see you harvest and
sell them and then you can make or you
come and jam out of them and you feel
immensely productive playing this game
you feel like the most productive person
ever and you just get this dopamine
dopamine dopamine dopamine I placed all
your attentive play stardew valley
during periods of my life where I just
feel horribly unproductive and failed
because stardew valley always gives you
this very nice space where you are the
most productive person ever however that
feeling is not real it’s it’s it’s just
manufactured
[Music]
we as humans tend to be less skeptical
of activities that make us feel
productive so if something make us feel
productive we are less likely to
evaluate it and by I mean what I mean by
evaluate is is think about that the task
and ask ourselves is this really
productive and when we’re doing tasks
that don’t feel productive such as
messing with our complicated build
system for an entire day which actually
might really be productive we are more
likely to look at it what I really
productive was this really was this
really what we what we wanted to do and
I mean of course that that thing if we
were messing with a build system it
makes a lot of sense to you to spend
time and re-evaluate that but we should
really be a little bit extra mind for
evaluating activities that feel
productive because they they can be very
misleading
how do you feel productive how do we
feel productive if the answer is not
this this busy work if if having work
that it doesn’t feel productive this
dopamine stardew valley static typing in
books here kind of thing if that is not
the answer if we cannot rely on that
then how do we feel productive about our
day my thinking on this yes that we need
to remodel our thinking of being
software developers to from this success
oriented mindset into a process oriented
mindset I would like to propose a model
where you think it’s my job to bang my
head against problems what I’m
essentially talking about here is
redefining our our tasks as habits
instead so yes
your job is now to bang your head
against problems all day why is that
important why is the process a good idea
about thinking about things it’s because
first of all there’s a couple of reasons
for the first one and most important one
is that solving things sometimes takes a
lot of time success in a project or
anything in life is just the event that
is at a long long long long long chain
of failures and it’s important to be
able to feel good about this long chain
of failures because it’s just not
healthy to feel bad all the time during
it during a project that might take
months only to feel good for like five
minutes at the end of it when you deploy
it that’s that’s not that’s just not a
way to live you won’t last long as a
software developers if that’s your
attitude and even more importantly if
that is our attitude we were constantly
like incentivize ourselves to only solve
small simple problems we will be
developers that only go
for the low-hanging fruit all the time
we will we will just employed hard hard
and and time-consuming problems but that
that that’s of course a very bad
attitude as well because those problems
might also be the ones that are most
worthwhile in development and and life
in general when I first started writing
this episode I first defined this this
sentence ad it’s my job to bang my bang
my head against the problems until I
succeed but I then reduce it to yours
like bang it’s my job to bang my head
against problems because success but
might not be the endpoint of what you’re
doing we might learn that a problem just
cannot be solved you might find that
it’s just not gonna happen
it it’s it’s a part of the system that
cannot be moved you don’t have access to
your system you might find that hundreds
of developers has tried this before and
you would essentially need an army of
yourself to do it you might learn they
looked like a one developer job buddy
was actually the job of like a research
team for a couple of years ahead and
that is not a failure per se because
you’ve gotten a learning out of it you
have gotten more wise
your development team now has a better
idea about the problem space and what
you do so you should still like be yeah
I’ve done I’ve done work I’ve been
productive I I went through this and we
are wiser for it another reason why we
shouldn’t be so focused around like n
success he is that we sometimes learned
that a problem just shouldn’t be solved
might that journey we started out like
where this this problem space and this
idea about how to solve the problem
space but we might realize during during
development and as we explore the
problem more that it just doesn’t make
sense we misunderstood the problem we
miss
stir the solution we we with we did
assumptions around the problem that were
just wrong or we their assumptions
around the solution that or people that
were supposed to use the solution there
just didn’t make sense they like we are
we’re working on the wrong problem are
we working on the wrong solution and
that’s also a very very valuable insight
to get the third thing is that there
might also be problems that are in the
middle ground of these things like you
find that a problem it’s a problem that
you realize yeah we can solve this but
it’s gonna take way too much time to to
be worth it and but something that
really helps with this is time boxing
just decided that yeah I’m gonna work
for this for 10 hours and see where
where it leads
but once you reach the end of that time
box it’s okay now this is just taking
way too much time because as a developer
have so many times get caught in a
problem like being the person that I
don’t stand up says like yeah I’m soon
done you know I’m gonna get there and
I’m gonna no no no this week I’m gonna
get there and then at you I’m so close
now next week I’m gonna get there and
this it’s so easy to just be this person
that if you don’t keep tabs on how much
time you’re spending on a problem that
you’re you’re always like grabbing at
the end of the rope and just pouring and
pulling pulling and it really never ends
it probably will end at some point
but you’re way past the point where it
was business sense to spend on this
problem and by that time you should just
cut your losses and realize that yeah I
learned something here that this problem
was not worth solving that is valuable
okay so let’s let’s try to summarize
this thing we talked about how the
feeling of being productive like the the
or the feeling of being unproductive ah
just oh god I didn’t get anywhere
because all I did was spend time at the
bail system and then we talked about the
inverse of of that dimension which was
like oh I felt really productive and
move things to the done column but when
we also talked a little about the how
those tasks and things are a bit can be
a little bit misleading they always feel
productive but just because I feel
productive doesn’t mean that they they
are you might actually you spend your
day just optimizing typing’s for no good
reason
or playing stardew valley all the time
and then we wrapped up a little bit by
thinking about how we can be productive
in this reality where we cannot trust
feeling productive and my idea about
that is that we should focus on the
process instead and instead of framing
ourselves as people who solve problems
we are people who bang our heads against
problems and then different things comes
out eventually might be success but it
might also be learnings about how you
cannot solve a problem how you shouldn’t
solve a problem or how a problem might
just be the wrong problem to solve I
hope that was useful to you in some way
what do you think like is this is this
how you think about development and how
you think about problems be supposed to
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