Attention Is My Most Valuable Asset for Productivity as a Software Developer

I now have an issue(addiction) with competitive multiplayer games. I get really good at them very quickly, I even won tournaments before it became a career option. However, I realized these are causing massive anxiety in my life, hurt my ability to concentrate, hurt my ability to stick to a project and destroyed my sleeping schedule. One of the worst games was Rocket League. I uninstalled multiple times and like an addict told myself I will be responsible this time and reinstalled it.....to end up where I began...angry at 3 AM....at a dumb video game. Since then, I completely uninstalled it but Warzone has filled that void....I have to stop playing that too as it is too addicting for me.

Single player games are not an issue and are actually calming as it seems that it is the competitive aspect that keeps me engaged.

Reading books also helps me significantly and has improvement my attention span.

It’s a super power. I’ve also noticed musicians are usually terrific coders.

A big part of being a great musician is years of learning HOW to practice. Glad to see others interested in the space.

Learning an instrument isn't going to make you a better programmer; applying pedological techniques you used to learn an instrument to learning programming might.

I’d posit that attention and communication are both secondary to core competency in software development. My guess is that information synthesis and lateral thinking are the core competencies of great engineers. I don’t think you can get the information you need or as much lateral thinking without attention and communication, but that doesn’t mean they are the core competency.

Forcing the second kind to communicate more wont make him better, it will make him worse. He will need to build up his technical skills before communicating more actually helps.

A lot of people just jump right into developing without asking the right questions first. Especially when given ambiguous orders.

Xerox repair techs' secret weapon was the morning pre-dispatch coffee session, where war stories were swapped.

A similar later reference noted information transfer (or lack) between techs and phone operators --- physically separating the two cut down on the operators' knowledge and effectiveness.

The TL;DR is, Bell Labs was designed to balance casual, collaborative conversations with solo deep work.

1. Instead of having a computer science building, a physics building, etc, they put every discipline in the same building. They had shared areas for eating & discussing which pushed people to run into each other, and have highly cross-domain conversations.

2. Inside the building, the offices were a hub and spoke model. Individual researchers had quiet individual offices for deep thinking they could retreat to AFTER they've bumped into someone at lunch from a different field.

In most open offices today, we've forgotten about the deep work spaces and ONLY kept the collaboration spaces.

[1] https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html

It strikes me from working in tech that in practice, perceived productivity is often simply "communicated productivity" rather than actual productivity. I'm curious to see what the proxies for productivity would be used in studies such as this.

They're definitely not a magic pill, but I'm not constantly battling with my brain just to stay focussed on the task at hand.

I haven't been formally diagnosed with ADHD but I do have certain symptoms that align with it. I'd be curious to get your personal experience and feedback with what I've been working on

However, I’m not sure how we arrived at a situation where people are recommending deadlifts as the go-to exercise for people who want to maintain fitness. Experienced weightlifters and coaches generally won’t recommend that beginners focus on deadlifts, like you said.

We shouldn’t be making fitness sound so complicated or setting the bar so high. No one needs to be doing deadlifts to get into shape. Frankly, most sedentary people need to focus on small, achievable, and enjoyable fitness goals to start. Simply going for a 15-minute walk every day is a step in the right direction for beginners. Going to the gym is great if that’s your thing, but doing a handful of push-ups and stretches at home is also great for someone looking to get started.

The Internet has been great for disseminating fitness information and generating enthusiasm for exercise, but this trend of recommending advanced exercises and over the top workout programs like CrossFit to beginners has probably done just as much harm as good. We shouldn’t be making fitness sound like some complicated, difficult goal.

I like low-bar squats, but I was never very strong in them(~1/2 my DL weight), they hurt my knees, and I've tweaked my back several times doing them.

I freaking love DLs. They feel amazing, they actually seem to fix my back pain, and I'm just downright strong in them(compared to my maxes in nearly every other exercise).

Now, I also have to say that as a 45 year old who has now gone through shoulder surgery, and gave up anything beyond farmers carries( * ) when it comes to weightlifting, that most people should just stick to cardio. I feel so much better now that I'm doing crazy hikes again and not carrying around a bunch of useless muscle. I'm better in bed, I feel less pain, I have more energy, and I'm not spending all day worrying about protein targets. To each their own. Weightlifting was fun and being big is kinda satisfying, but it's not something I will recommend anymore.

* - I'll probably get a bar and some plates to resume lower weight(275 or less), higher rep DLs once I move out of the bay area and have the space.

I’ve been lifting for 2 years and have not experienced any long lasting pain and have not been injured. My progress is slow, 330/225/360 S/BP/DL at 220 BW (gained 30lbs) but I’m not in a hurry. I’ve been doing round back deadlifts for a while now (my spine has completely lost it’s natural lordosis due to a lifetime of sitting, my lower back has a slight rounding that I just can’t force into extension, my discs are completely fine and I have gained 2 inches to my height since I’ve started training) and have never experienced any back pain.

People start obsessing over their progress and start doing too much, either load or sets.

My well-being improved by a lot. Sitting for 8+ hours a day stopped being an issue and all the weird pains I had before disappeared.

Robert Oberst, another WSM competitor also says the same thing and talks about it on the Joe Rogan podcast (#1321 I believe). To quote:

"I went from football to strongman, and in football we never did deadlifts. It was all hang cleans and power cleans, which by the way, quick little tip: if you’re deadlifting to be a better deadlifter fine. If you’re not, (you’re) doing that for deadlift’s sake, don’t fucking do it. The risk to reward ratio is a joke."

"A lot of people are not going to like that I’m saying that. (…) If you go to any NFL gym, any college football gym, any athletics where people are actually getting paid and it matters what they’re doing, they’re not deadlifting. They’re hang cleaning and power cleaning."

They’re also great for boxing. Help you generate more power on your punche. Uppercuts especially.

The trick is to not lift for hypertrophy. Lift for power and speed and neuromuscular activation. If you’re sore the next day you went too hard.

I once was a gym bro who believed that deadlift and barbell squats where like the only thing you should do in the gym.

Until i blew my back really hard, doing squats following the 5x5 strong lift program. I really regret that now because it ruined so much for me. I now have constant pain in my back and i cannot do the sports that i truly love doing (boxing and bjj) like i used to.

Now i have a much different view on the gym. I use machines to a greater extent and i focus more on training for health than lifting heavy barbells.

>Ex-professional weightlifter of about 10 years here

This implies a number of things:

1. First and foremost, it implies the use of much higher weights and workloads than what a typical non-professional stronglifts or starting strength type lifter might be using. This is related to the next two factors: potential use of performance-enhancing drugs, and potential obesity. Without these two factors, you'd plateau at lower and safer weight, close to your natural limit.

2. It implies the potential use of performance-enhancing drugs. Performance-enhancer use is incredibly pervasive in today's professional athletic world. Their use will push you beyond your limits; the limits of strength, and the limits of what's safe and healthy.

3. It implies potential obesity: competitive lifting requires massive amounts of food in order to fully recover and continue lifting as much as possible. Teamed with performance enhancers, one might achieve a strength level, body weight, and muscle mass far higher than one's bones and ligaments evolved to handle.

So if you're using good form, not eating inordinate amounts of food, and not using performance-enhancers, you can safely and healthily deadlift. You will move less weight than the professional, but it will be weight that your body is more naturally capable of handling.

A lof of gymnast / psycisian's advice I've read says the opposite. That deadlifts are a great exercize, and should not be restrained to the weight lifting / body builder types.

I'm not sure how much value there is to just state "Build physical strength" and the main take away is to do deadlifts. I think there isn't any doubt from a health perspective that doing weightlifting has benefits for overall health but the program someone should go on is dependent on so many factors. Also, why can't it just be "Stay physically active". I would say that has further greater benefits than even weightlifting. Doing half an hour to an hour of moderate cardio activity every day or a few times a week is great.

My recommendation for someone wanting to seriously get into weight lifting is to do your research. There is definitely a lot of "bro science" out there but fortunately there is also a great set of resources out there that is firmly in the realm of solid science.

Here is some Youtube channels that are very solid on approaching weightlifting grounded in real practice and science: Jeff Nippard, mountaindog1 (John Meadows), Greg Doucette, VitruvianPhysique and Renaissance Periodization.

A good book is: https://www.amazon.ca/Science-Development-Muscle-Hypertrophy...

What I have personally found is that for me there is two primary focus points: reducing the risk of injury and keeping consistent with the program. Reducing risk of injury comes down to knowing your own limits for what exercises are comfortable and not going hard with attempting to do max reps all the time. Personally, I don't do any traditional squats and for deadlifts I use a trap bar. Being consistent is much harder. Making a schedule to be in the gym three to four times a week is really hard.

So, yeah, if you want to get started with weightlifting, spend a few hours with those Youtube channels. Picking a class of exercises as a one size fits all is definitely not the way to go.

I would personally recommend almost anything else -- running, swimming, natural weight exercises (ie. when you are in unstable position lifting your own weight), that train a lot of different muscle at the same time and help keep things in balance.

Don't base your decisions on what has been written in this thread. Most information here is anecdotal, garbage, or both.

Went to a personal trainer for a year or so - expensive as hell (like €75 per 30 minute session), but I had the money at the time and was lacking in many ways.

I couldn't do push-ups at first, because my wrists hurt too much from RSI. I couldn't really do deadlifts at a proper weight either, because my hands weren't strong enough. But after just a few sessions (using wrist straps), my grip strength increased a lot, and my RSI complaints went away. TL;DR, deadlifts helped me beat RSI. They're back now though, haven't been to a gym this year and before that it was sporadic at best.

Squats, I had trouble with those as well; the trainer identified the cause pretty quickly, pointing out ankle flexibility. Another one to consider. Gave me a specific exercise to sort that one out.

We did a lot of the hip flexor ones as well, split squats I believe they were called? I was so bad at those at first, complete lack of balance and control. I mean even after a year they were still uncomfortable to do, but it was a big improvement.

Part of me would like to go for PT again because I lack intrinsic motivation so I need some other guy telling me what to do, but I can't really afford it anymore.

Any outdoorsy activity is vastly superior to it due to exposure to fresh air and sunlight. It also tends to be less boring and monotonous than lifting heavy things for some inexplicable reason.

After different types of exercise I believe what matters most is keeping the blood flowing and stimulating blood flow.

Strength is nice but when acids still build up it does you no good.

There are also no shortcuts. Exercise takes at least half an hour a day.

In my experience walking half an hour a day can be as good as lifting weights.

I'm quite fond of loaded carries. So, if I may pester you, do you have an opinion on loaded carries regarding correcting bad posture and back problems?

I don't mean to undermine your experience tho!

Am I supposed to mainly feel glute, rather than ham, soreness in a DL?

Please only answer if you really know, mainly asking deviation.

What's that?

Also, squats are harder to learn, require good shoulder mobility (which a lot of desk jockeys don't have), and, at a minimum, require a squat rack, which you're unlikely to have at home. Better yet, I'd advise to use a power rack, which will catch the barbell if you fuck up your balance and fall forward.

TL;DR: while I agree that squat is a better overall exercise, and one that the author of the article should be doing if they don't have the time to do anything else, it requires a lot more gear and training than a deadlift. It is, therefore, not very practical to do barbell squats at home. And if the choice is between a deadlift and no lifting at all, it's deadlift all the way. It hits the posterior chain and core pretty well, and all you need is a barbell and a set of cheap-ass plates.

One way to not overdo it out of the gate is to not use straps on the barbell - you'll be limited by grip strength which is pretty slow to build. You also get to build a truly crushing handshake that way, for when we're back to handshakes. :-)

I have noticed that most of my time is spent finding what to do, get their opinion about new projects from my team members (who are nice people I enjoy working with), and most of the time I find that I am not the person qualified for the job and the problem can be solved in a way that does not involve data work.

Finding what to do and how to minimize the effort in implementing a solution is 90% of my job.

There are days I write SQL as well and those day I am very focused. The days I am not focused it's mostly because There is no go from A to B job to do.

In that sense, I sort of want to congratulate you to only have encountered productive, collaborative work environments, and not backstabbing, infighting, untrusting ones.

Important and Not Urgent tasks ... Also included are building relationships with others and planning ahead.

Not Important and Urgent tasks ... and over-talkative coworkers.

> Not Important and Urgent tasks are nasty attention thieves. They shout out to you in immediacy, but offer little value in return.

Nothing about co-workers.

Narrative and anecdotal writing allows one to take from it what you like, as trying things out works better for some than understanding it all to begin with and it shouldn't be discounted just because it may not work for all.

Conversely, it might be worth considering the importance of the reader to learn to extract what's good for them out of any reading and not expect everything to be curated just for them.

Getting hung up on how a piece of writing is not perfectly catered for acceptance by the reader is likely going to leave a lot of nuggets, value and insights missed.

The comment above could be taken as merely a counteract of pushing another interpretation of it being imposing and presumptuous. Still there's many folks who don't take this writing style as imposing and presumptuous.

On my work computer, to do a simple task it often requires logging in to myriad services that need to be finagled in concert. Each with a different password that expires regularly, but of course also MFA. Often more “work” than the “work” itself.

And that’s often the happy path rather than multiple attempts to the same service, vpn woes, etc.

Oh you just updated your computer? Now re-log in to your vpn, atlassian, GitLab, slack, zoom, outlook, aws, and others. Want to watch a slack recording? You’re logged into the desktop application but now enter your credentials, again, this time in the browser.. it never ends.

It’s quite cathartic to save out my tabs into topic-based sessions, close everything, then reopen just one session on whatever I want to focus on after an exploratory phase.

[0]: https://sessionbuddy.com/

I included the assumption "sustainable productivity is desired".

You did not meet that condition, and should have stopped reading ;)

Can you please give a link where you bought , what model? Thank you!