7 ms·

Thanks HN

180 points by pace 15y ago

snth 15y ago
In my experience, almost any productivity "treatment" works at first, until you get used to it. But, I hope I'm wrong and this continues to work out for you.
ajpatel 15y ago
LoL I always think this will work then I remember WiFi speeds suck compared to my UVerse connection and so I stay at home and the cycle repeats. Glad you made it work though :)
- ivankirigin 15y ago
  Bad interenet is a feature.
- pace 15y ago
  Worse: I couldn't get into the WLAN (students only), so I could only use my phone's Internet connection w/384Kbit/s -- but that was good, you get so effective with such a low bandwidth (using Google's mobile client, doing only must searches etc.)
hhastings 15y ago
Lmao. Love the ending.
bergie 15y ago
Getting into a place where Internet connectivity is either not available or is very spotty helps. I've done some of my best programming in trains. Sure, not having access to documentation sucks, but not having access to HN and Twitter compensates for it well :-)
- zdw 15y ago
  When I'm disconnected, I tend to just leave a bunch of comments in code with ONLINE in them and what I need to look up and recover my train of thought. I then switch to working on a different part of the program, or a different program altogether, and come back to them when I'm next online. This has worked pretty well for me so far, as long as I'm not under a time crunch.
  - bergie 15y ago
    That is a good point. Another tag like TODO and FIXME :-) I've noticed that I eventually get "push anxiety" when I work offline for longer periods. Once we even had to do a detour on a road trip from Poland to Helsinki to stop by a colleague's office in Sweden to be able to push code I had written on the way. I guess I simply don't trust my laptop...
    - xer0 15y ago
      Push anxiety, excellent.:w I suffer from write anxiety.:w I've been helping someone learn to program,:w and as I watch him write code I feel more tense the longer he goes:w without writing his file.:w When I mentioned this as a matter of human interest,:w and as an introduction to why you should save often,:w he laughed.:w I'm quite confident I will have the last laugh on him before he truly learns that lesson.:wq
    - cookiecaper 15y ago
      This is a great reason to get a phone capable of tethering.
petercooper 15y ago
Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.
- impendia 15y ago
  I can't speak for Germany, but in the United States practices vary. You can't just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin, but at North Carolina State you can.
  - ricree 15y ago
    Even in the case of Wisconsin, it looks like state residents can get a membership on a reasonably cheap yearly fee. Though I didn't see it mentioned, I'd assume this would include building access during normal hours. (Though perhaps that's a bad assumption?) http://library.wisc.edu/visitors/borrow.html#wiscres http://library.wisc.edu/visitors/borrow.html#wiscres Informally, I checked the websites of a handful of state universities, and all had some way for residents to obtain borrowing privileges. It's far from a comprehensive survey, and I may be wrong in my assumption that borrowing privileges would allow normal building access. Still, at first glance it seems promising.
  - matsur 15y ago
    You _can_ just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin. There is only one library on the Madison campus (Memorial Library) that requires an ID to enter. That leaves 49 other libraries on campus open to anyone.
    - impendia 15y ago
      Fair enough, I was thinking of Memorial. And, for that matter, I was thinking of one particular library at NC State which may have been for math and science only.
      - 15y ago
yurka 15y ago
In my experience, simply changing environments may cause an increase in productivity. Even if the new environment isn't strictly better, you still get a boost until you get acclimated. This might be crazy, but some sort of random rotation between various work environments might yield a sustained improvement in productivity.
- shabble 15y ago
  There's the fairly well-established Hawthorne Effect[1] when applied to measuring productivity in others, but I'm not sure how well it would apply to self-analysis since you actually know the details of what you're studying. Quoting: Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. However it is said that this is the natural process of the human being to adapt to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring. Unless you're measuring against some concrete metric though, there's potential for misinterpreting a feeling of increased productivity vs actually achieving it. Also, you may be more motivated since you know you're measuring your output. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect
bane 15y ago
If you live in the Northern Virginia Area, you can hit the phenomenal Johnson Center at George Mason University. Private group rooms (with whiteboards), a semi-isolated reference area for even more quiet, couches, coffee tables, power at most tables, a movie theater, coffee bar, cafeteria (with everything from a taco bell to chinese food), convenience store, two banks (last I checked), a pretty good uni book store, art exhibitions, a halfway decent restaurant on the top floor and a computer store, parking decks are pretty close and relatively cheap. If even has a private prayer area in case you need to call to a higher power for help with a particularly difficult bug. Wifi requires you to be a student (last I checked), but tether to your phone and you're pretty much all set. If you're working with a distributed team and don't want to shell out $3-4 grand a month on office space, just pay for parking once or twice a week and use this facility. (also, if the Johnson Center is full-up, there's always the Fenwick library across campus that can be even more private since fewer people use it, and I believe most of the technical reference books are stored in the stacks there)
khalidmbajwa 15y ago
I have a proper fully equipped office at home, and a designated workplace for the company i run where developers i work with operate. I instead prefer to work from Coffe Shops simply because they offer distractions at such a minimum threshold. It works for me because A) Crappy Wi-Fi : So i can't stream Youtube or Hulu or download movies or Tv-Series yet not bad enough for me to be able to look up online documentation, parse through StackOverFlow, hold voice calls over Skype or make SVN commits. B) My external hard disks that contain the bulk-load of my sources of distractions, are no longer a moment's click away. C)No useless camaraderie, noone ambling by your desk to engage you in menial distracting conversations. It's just me , and my Macbook. D)For about 10$ (Two coffes per day), i get a serene and beautifully decorated place, that's hot in winters, cold in summers,complete with a comfy Sofa and a little table all my own, and for what is a sheer bonus in this part of the world, no power interruptions ! (7+ hours of no power is regular over here in summers). If i feel a need to have one of my devolepers or my designer collaborate with me more closely than Skype voice calls can afford, i prefer to call them over to the coffee shop rather than go over to the office.It works for the kind of work i do.It may not for everyone. It's cheap, it's comforting, and it's completely distraction free. I get more done in 3 hours over here than in 10 at any other place.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]

180 points by pace 15y ago

snth 15y ago

In my experience, almost any productivity "treatment" works at first, until you get used to it. But, I hope I'm wrong and this continues to work out for you.

ajpatel 15y ago

LoL I always think this will work then I remember WiFi speeds suck compared to my UVerse connection and so I stay at home and the cycle repeats. Glad you made it work though :)

ivankirigin 15y ago
Bad interenet is a feature.
pace 15y ago
Worse: I couldn't get into the WLAN (students only), so I could only use my phone's Internet connection w/384Kbit/s -- but that was good, you get so effective with such a low bandwidth (using Google's mobile client, doing only must searches etc.)

hhastings 15y ago

Lmao. Love the ending.

bergie 15y ago

Getting into a place where Internet connectivity is either not available or is very spotty helps. I've done some of my best programming in trains. Sure, not having access to documentation sucks, but not having access to HN and Twitter compensates for it well :-)

zdw 15y ago
When I'm disconnected, I tend to just leave a bunch of comments in code with ONLINE in them and what I need to look up and recover my train of thought. I then switch to working on a different part of the program, or a different program altogether, and come back to them when I'm next online. This has worked pretty well for me so far, as long as I'm not under a time crunch.
- bergie 15y ago
  That is a good point. Another tag like TODO and FIXME :-) I've noticed that I eventually get "push anxiety" when I work offline for longer periods. Once we even had to do a detour on a road trip from Poland to Helsinki to stop by a colleague's office in Sweden to be able to push code I had written on the way. I guess I simply don't trust my laptop...
  - xer0 15y ago
    Push anxiety, excellent.:w I suffer from write anxiety.:w I've been helping someone learn to program,:w and as I watch him write code I feel more tense the longer he goes:w without writing his file.:w When I mentioned this as a matter of human interest,:w and as an introduction to why you should save often,:w he laughed.:w I'm quite confident I will have the last laugh on him before he truly learns that lesson.:wq
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    This is a great reason to get a phone capable of tethering.

petercooper 15y ago

Is being able to work in a university library as a member of the public standard practice in Germany? (Or is the poster an alumnus, perhaps?) I'd love to do that here in the UK but they're key-carded to the hilt.

impendia 15y ago
I can't speak for Germany, but in the United States practices vary. You can't just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin, but at North Carolina State you can.
- ricree 15y ago
  Even in the case of Wisconsin, it looks like state residents can get a membership on a reasonably cheap yearly fee. Though I didn't see it mentioned, I'd assume this would include building access during normal hours. (Though perhaps that's a bad assumption?) http://library.wisc.edu/visitors/borrow.html#wiscres http://library.wisc.edu/visitors/borrow.html#wiscres Informally, I checked the websites of a handful of state universities, and all had some way for residents to obtain borrowing privileges. It's far from a comprehensive survey, and I may be wrong in my assumption that borrowing privileges would allow normal building access. Still, at first glance it seems promising.
- matsur 15y ago
  You _can_ just walk into the library at the University of Wisconsin. There is only one library on the Madison campus (Memorial Library) that requires an ID to enter. That leaves 49 other libraries on campus open to anyone.
  - impendia 15y ago
    Fair enough, I was thinking of Memorial. And, for that matter, I was thinking of one particular library at NC State which may have been for math and science only.
    - 15y ago

yurka 15y ago

In my experience, simply changing environments may cause an increase in productivity. Even if the new environment isn't strictly better, you still get a boost until you get acclimated. This might be crazy, but some sort of random rotation between various work environments might yield a sustained improvement in productivity.

shabble 15y ago
There's the fairly well-established Hawthorne Effect[1] when applied to measuring productivity in others, but I'm not sure how well it would apply to self-analysis since you actually know the details of what you're studying. Quoting: Changing a variable usually increased productivity, even if the variable was just a change back to the original condition. However it is said that this is the natural process of the human being to adapt to the environment without knowing the objective of the experiment occurring. Unless you're measuring against some concrete metric though, there's potential for misinterpreting a feeling of increased productivity vs actually achieving it. Also, you may be more motivated since you know you're measuring your output. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

bane 15y ago

If you live in the Northern Virginia Area, you can hit the phenomenal Johnson Center at George Mason University. Private group rooms (with whiteboards), a semi-isolated reference area for even more quiet, couches, coffee tables, power at most tables, a movie theater, coffee bar, cafeteria (with everything from a taco bell to chinese food), convenience store, two banks (last I checked), a pretty good uni book store, art exhibitions, a halfway decent restaurant on the top floor and a computer store, parking decks are pretty close and relatively cheap. If even has a private prayer area in case you need to call to a higher power for help with a particularly difficult bug. Wifi requires you to be a student (last I checked), but tether to your phone and you're pretty much all set. If you're working with a distributed team and don't want to shell out $3-4 grand a month on office space, just pay for parking once or twice a week and use this facility. (also, if the Johnson Center is full-up, there's always the Fenwick library across campus that can be even more private since fewer people use it, and I believe most of the technical reference books are stored in the stacks there)

khalidmbajwa 15y ago

I have a proper fully equipped office at home, and a designated workplace for the company i run where developers i work with operate. I instead prefer to work from Coffe Shops simply because they offer distractions at such a minimum threshold. It works for me because A) Crappy Wi-Fi : So i can't stream Youtube or Hulu or download movies or Tv-Series yet not bad enough for me to be able to look up online documentation, parse through StackOverFlow, hold voice calls over Skype or make SVN commits. B) My external hard disks that contain the bulk-load of my sources of distractions, are no longer a moment's click away. C)No useless camaraderie, noone ambling by your desk to engage you in menial distracting conversations. It's just me , and my Macbook. D)For about 10$ (Two coffes per day), i get a serene and beautifully decorated place, that's hot in winters, cold in summers,complete with a comfy Sofa and a little table all my own, and for what is a sheer bonus in this part of the world, no power interruptions ! (7+ hours of no power is regular over here in summers). If i feel a need to have one of my devolepers or my designer collaborate with me more closely than Skype voice calls can afford, i prefer to call them over to the coffee shop rather than go over to the office.It works for the kind of work i do.It may not for everyone. It's cheap, it's comforting, and it's completely distraction free. I get more done in 3 hours over here than in 10 at any other place.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]