Back in June as part of my ‘Hypocritical Guide to Productivity’ I wrote about the importance of getting enough sleep. Among developers pulling the all-nighter has a romantic stigma associated with it. We’re supposed to be console cowboys, right? Riding shotgun over an open range of code deep into the night has become part of the ethos. In reality, however, those late nights are a sure cow path to exhaustion. Losing only 90 minutes of sleep reduces next day effectiveness by 33%. The September 2006 issue of FastCompany had blub by David Lidsky on how to get the best sleep. His suggestions came from the book Good Night by Michael Breus:
- Don’t drink anything caffeinated after 2:00pm
- Get outside during the day for at least 15 minutes of sunlight to ‘set’ your internal clock
- No ‘Tubes (TV, Internet, or otherwise) an hour before bed
- Develop a rhythm
Also along those same lines Yahoo’s Jeremy Zawodny has a great list of tips for reducing mental distractions in 2007.
1. I will unsubscribe from every email list that I don’t consider essential to my work or hobbies. It’s so easy to get occasionally interesting information when I need it (via search) that I shouldn’t be spending mental energy reading a large stream of incoming hay on the off chance that a needle shows up.
2. I will end every day (both at work and at home) with no open tabs in my browser. I’ve been using tabs as a sort of ad-hoc todo list that has no obvious order or priority and often spirals out of control. No more of that.
3. While the echo chamber is fun, entertaining, seductive and often frustrating, I will check the various blog amplifiers and aggregators only once a day (barring unusual circumstances).
4. I will try harder to say no.
Personally, ending the day with zero open tabs will be extremely challenging. I love to leave interesting opinions dangling; if after a day or two (or seven) the ideas still seem exciting I know it would make for good blog post. However, that does lead to some days when I’m navigating across two-or-more dozen tabs. And Firefox’s new session restore fixes those accidental reboots that were the cosmos’s way of telling me to clean things up. *Gulp. This is going to be hard.
Next up is professional networking. I stashed away several drafts on this topic but could never quite find an angle worthy of posting. The brief is that I use LinkedIn for managing my contacts. I see those listed as 1st degree connections as reflection of my personal character; these are my peeps, my posse. This is the company I keep. A quick scan through my list shows several connections that I either need to renew or delete. I do not believe that LinkedIn is the adult version of Pokemon (gotta get ‘em all). In fact, I doubt that I really have more than thirty meaningful professional relationships at any one time. In 2007 I want to make it a goal to make each and every connection between me and one of the thirty people as strong as possible – no more, no less.
In November I discussed how, in the dressing room, no one can hear your wallet scream. While the quest for professional, funky, affordable clothing does continue I have been learning the subtle differences that escape many of the geek kind. For example, suit jackets, blazers, and sport coats aren’t the same thing. With a few tips I headed off to my local D.I. (or Deseret Industries – like Salvation Army stores only much more prevalent in Utah). The diversity of jackets is incredible because of the extremely large church going population; pick the right store on the right day and you could be leaving with an Italian made, well-fitting, silk lined sport coat for $8. Throw it over a ringer T and your ready for Google acquisition (or at least you will look the part).
All in all 2006 was an exciting year for me. There were some good posts, better comments, and (hopefully) a deeper appreciation for the art we call ‘software development’. Thank you for reading and let’s get 2007 underway.
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