I recently ran across this posting: http://opensource.com/business/11/7/its-time-take-back-your-attention.
Staying singly focused on a task in this digital era is like trying to resist eating while sitting in a bakery as cookies, pies, and cakes emerge fresh and fragrant from the oven.
We live in the era of rampant multitasking, but I've seen studies that prove people aren't as good at as they think. Kinda like people think they can learn to do with less sleep. But here we fight our biology. It turns out that most of really do need a full 8 hours of sleep. Not 6, not even 7. Empirical task-based studies show that if you don't get 8 pretty much every night, you are not performing optimally. And as programmers, we need to be optimal to do the hard task of programming.
Self-discipline, self-control and focus are the keys to success in programming and life - including health and happiness.
At the NFJS conference this year, I heard about the Pomodoro technique for the first time - a form of focused intense concentration alternated with a short break. I've been trying it out. For my environment at work, I find that it is pretty effective. But for big problems where you really need to keep a lot of state in your head for prolonged periods, a double pomodoro may be needed. Of course, one could argue that even longer than 50 minutes is optimal. Probably true, especially if you are in flow, but here too, sigh, it turns out we fight our biology.
A lot of studies lately have been showing that sitting for prolonged periods is detrimental to your health. Sitting longer than an hour is unfortunately not advised (see links below). So do some walking, stretching and knee bends during those pomodoro breaks.
So a programmer is happy and optimal when self-disciplined to:
- minimize distractions (my old roommate used to program with the TV on in the background, aargh)
- spend most of the day in periods of intense concentration mentally stepping through code paths, design considerations, testing approaches and problem solving
- balance the mental discipline with the physical discipline of exercise, breaks and, *sigh*, 8 hours of sleep a night, even when hacking late into the night would be more fun
That's how I see it, anyway. (And now I need to get my *rse out of the chair and get some blood flowing.)
Links about prolonged sitting:
- http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20100119/prolonged-sitting-boosts-bad-health
- http://lifehacker.com/5800720/the-sitting-is-killing-you-infographic-illustrates-the-stress-of-prolonged-sitting-importance-of-getting-up
- http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2011/01/06/can-sitting-too-much-kill-you/
Excellent book on our biological requirements for sleep:
- http://www.amazon.com/Power-Sleep-Revolutionary-Prepares-Performance/dp/0060977604 (Despite the gimmicky marketing on the book, I found it a compelling, research and science-based treatise on how sleep, or the lack thereof, affects humans).
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