Ask HN: Does dithering impact your programming productivity?

2 points·hoodoof··3 comments

Sometimes I realize I've been kinda dithering for a while - programming, but perhaps not doing the tasks that will have high impact on project completion. Or maybe I've just started working on something interesting but not important.

I've started to think maybe this dithering time might be making a big impact on my programming productivity.

Does it happen to you? Do you find yourself dithering?

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Oh man, this is a huge problem, and managing it is critical. I find the best way to deal with catching myself doing trivial work is to immediately stop coding at all, step away from the computer, and get a little exercise.

That way I can't use busyness as an excuse for just spinning my wheels. After a few minutes of not thinking too hard, I'll head back to the desk and verbally state my goals. After that, I tend to be orders of magnitude more productive.

I'll try it.

I certainly have a "self assessment" program running in my head which asks "is your brain out of steam"? I usually run this in my brain at the end of the day because I have a tendency to keep programming long after my brain is too tired to keep going.

Yeah, end of the day is too much potential lost time, and 'pushing through it' feels more... Righteous? But it's really, really destructive to creative work.

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