Re: tips for focusing

On Tue, 22 Aug 2006 00:32:37 UTC, "carcrashnights" <carcrashnights@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

All of the suggestions have been very helpful. The environment I work
in is pretty diverse because I am able to work from the office or from
home, but must split the time between the two fairly evenly. This means
that mostly everything said has been very applicable, either to the
quiet home atmosphere with self-imposed distractions or to the
fast-paced, noisy office.

For those of you working on GNU/Linux, is there anything you do with
your environment or are there perhaps specific applications you use to
consistently accomplish more? For example, one of my former colleagues,
whom I really respected, showed me how he was able to focus on
particular programming problems separately, simply by using an advanced
FVWM setup which had a different set of virtual desktops for each
"programming context," as he called it.

Thanks for all of the great advice, I've been trying a few things
already and will let you know how it goes.

-carcrashnights

I use an approach that is usually applicable to any computer work
environment that you 'own'. When I get into work in the morning
my desk and computer (currently locked up) are in the same state
they were when I left yesterday. Similarly my home system isn't
changed by unwanted visitors.

*ix users have little problem with accomplishing this. Windows
users generally need to be the primary user and leave the machine
locked when they are away. It helps to favor tools that remember
what you were doing the last time you were in them. Starting
that type of tool is nearly the same as leaving the application
running. ...yes, I leave my systems on all the time. I also
tend to never shut down applications. I'll have a file manager,
email, source control system, a few editor/IDE sessions for
each project, and so on all up and running until the darn thing
needs to be rebooted. I usually work in full screen mode for
each application.

I've seen people that can waste an hour or more a day by not
optimizing their wrk environment to suit them. It takes time
to power on a machine, login, and set up your stuff for the
day, and later reverse the process. I've tended to favor
editors that can be started with a group of file names or
just the editor name (and it restores the previous environment).
I'm usually plugged-in and working at my desk within five minutes
of getting to work/home. I allow myself to start by checking
email. Once I'm sure what the plan is and my priorities are
set I can get to work.

Another helpful idea is optimizing common tasks that you do
repeatedly. Say that you spend five minutes after making
a program change to compile, link, setup the test environment
and perform a test. Setting up your environment to do these
steps for you can make the process much faster. It doesn't
require an IDE for such things. I actually don't like IDEs
because they force you to only work on one project/program
at a time. I have several programs that cooperate as a
product, so optimizing each step saves time.

What is productive for you today will change over time.
Some things stay the same and others will change. Only
you can decide what works best for you and your environment.

Always be open to learning more and having fun,

David
.

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