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Ask HN: Peer Programming Without a Peer

7 pointsnallic4 comments

TL;DR: Peer programming makes me productive - how can I get into the same state of mind without a peer?

So the last 3 months has taught me something about myself. Solitude makes my brain explode in inspiration and ideas very easy to explore without anyone looking over my shoulder and at home with easy access to all my hobbies and beloved gadgets. - I'm pretty sure now I could get an ADD diagnosis or maybe some other letters.

Problem is - I don't get much work done and in the end the people paying me to work will probably stop.

Procrastination is not new to me but I manage it a bit better when in the office. There I hate the noise and stress, but at least I kind of "feel" that I need to do some work.

It's frustrating - BUT - I found a solution: Peer programming.

I did have a chance to work with a colleague - a new guy who need to learn the way around old code. So he watched and listened to me sharing the desktop while I got work done - I was telling about why stuff was implemented, getting a lot of insight myself and having razor focus for 4-5 hours straight.

I was amazed! - but this was temporary. We don't use peer programming all the time and having a redundant peer who just pretend to listen is an expensive way to work.

- So my question: how can I trick my brain into this : "someone is watching and you need to keep focus" mode, where I actually enjoy working ?

I actually like what I do and I am OK at it - it's not because my work is boring - the procrastination I do is very similar to the real work I need to do.

I might just be hopeless - I might be the only one with this disorder. I see lots of people praising this work from home period, where they can work in silence and get focused. I envy this!

Can you introspect on what was helpful about having a peer? Are there parts of that process you could replicate without needing a real coworker? You could talk to your engineering manager or team about how helpful it was to use pair programming.

If you've found that sporadically jumping into new work has a negative effect on your overall productivity, are there steps you can take to ignore distractions? Starting with 10 minute meditation sessions might help.[0] Be aware of when random thoughts are taking over and pulling you off task. If your higher-level goal is to focus better it will most likely require an internal change rather than an external force watching you. Although I guess software to block distracting content could help temporarily.

Building up focus and the ability to work in isolation probably takes time. It might help to write your frustrations down in a personal journal to try to identify issues and trends. Maybe the wikihow articles on how to focus would help for some focus strategies?[1]

Getting a friendly desk animal and doing some rubber ducking might help too. :D

Work shouldn't be so adversarial... The way you frame it makes your job sound like it's at odds with your personal development. Maybe your manager would have some ideas? Remote work is weird so lots of people are most likely running into things like this. Engineering people are probably the exception since having isolation for work is usually seen as a good thing.

[0] "The Mind Illuminated" is a good meditation book

[1] https://www.wikihow.com/Focus

Talking to myself! Specifically talk through what I am doing and what I plan to do next.

Also many a problem has been solve by entering the question as a slack message that I never needed to send.

WFH makes talking to myself possible now!

Have you considered live streaming your desktop, e.g. at Twitch? Might give you that "someone is watching" feeling.

On the other hand, one has to be super careful about privacy, security, NDAs.

I have actually considered recording it - maybe make "Pomodoro" sessions where the recorder can't be stopped and record the screen and my voice. I could maybe convince myself these recordings are valuable to myself or maybe be shown to others in the future and get the "rubber duck" effect that way without burdening others. I think I need the "now were live!" state of mind somehow and this could be it. Maybe these recordings stored in a organized way could also serve as a kind of journal in the future. I will look into this.

Real streaming is not an option - the code and information on the screen is private. But for my private projects I have tried streaming to twitch and it kind of works in the same motivational way.

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