1、Long-term tasks, to start early
Generally speaking, long-term tasks are always more annoying and difficult, and there is always a tendency to avoid difficulties in people’s hearts, the end result is either to simply give up in the end, or a little Time left to rush to work; I myself also had such a lesson before, self-deception said “to live a relaxed Life, leaving behind the troubles”, to the last few days before The last few days to rush to handle, make a mess.
Later, I found that this practice is actually the opposite of what you want, if you adjust your mental state, early understanding of the situation does not necessarily bring psychological pressure, but because there is plenty of time, confidence to grasp the progress, even if the middle of the unexpected problems, there is time to solve; more importantly, as early as possible, you can make full use of the remaining time in the margins.
For example, received a document, the need to give an opinion in three days, I will certainly be in the day roughly browse through, the following three days, you will be able to sit in the car, walking, etc. fragmented time to think, and the effect is good, if not early understanding, these times are wasted, what meaningful things have not done (Archimedes if not previously encountered problems, in the bath tub for 10,000 years can not think of ways to detect (the authenticity of the crown).
The same is true of e-mail, I often see people discussing whether e-mail is good to return immediately or after a period of time, my experience is that the receipt of e-mail to read as soon as possible, or at least understand what the e-mail said, if not urgent, and then return after thinking clearly.
2, always think clearly about what you are doing
Generally speaking, the work we do always has a purpose and meaning, but the form of work is very specific, busy often to a dead end, forget the real purpose and meaning, “think clearly” what they really want to do.
A few days ago, I need to build a demo environment, I have two sets of program A and B, program A is estimated to take half an hour, program B is estimated to take an hour, so I chose program A, but after doing it, I found that the server lacks a necessary component, so first struggled to add this component, and then compile the software they need to use, and found that in the 64-bit environment will be compiled with errors (previously I only in the 32-bit (I had only compiled on 32-bit machines before), googled and found that a patch was needed, so I went around looking for the patch ……
At this point has used up more than an hour, the following do not know how many problems will be; I suddenly thought that what I really want to do is to demonstrate the program, to solve the patching, looking for software and other problems, although very interesting, but in fact, from the point of view of the task, is a waste of time, so decided to choose option B, an hour later it was successfully solved.
From my observation, many technical people are keen on solving purely technical problems, which Weinberg called “hacking”; hacking is fun and addictive, but we are not gods who don’t eat fire and fire, and we can’t let hacking go if we want to really do something.
About this article, but also to add a point: even if you are too busy, but not without a clue. The pressure of work is very busy, busy head is a common thing, many people are in this busy lost in the direction, often busy all day, after work do not know what they have done today, what is the point.
My experience is that the more this time, the more you have to think about (although it is difficult to do so): what exactly do you want to do, the current arrangement is not to do some adjustments …… continuous thinking, in order to generate insight, in order to have a change, otherwise, it is possible to have been caught in the “blind busy “The situation and can not extricate themselves.
3, set a clear point of time for yourself
I admit that I also like to play, when nothing on Twitter, look at the forum, chat, it is indeed very interesting, the information is constantly updated, there is always something of interest to them, but so keep in front of the computer, a lot of time is wasted, what meaningful things are not done, even if they do, the efficiency is very low – Concentration is the only way to ensure efficiency.
After some reflection, I think a more appropriate approach is to set a clear time for myself: for example, at 8:20 now, I can tell myself to play online for 20 minutes and start studying English at 8:40. With a clear time limit, I will want to read all the content I am interested in as efficiently as possible within these 20 minutes, instead of “browsing” slowly; at the set point in time, I will make sure to do what I have decided to do before.
More importantly, it is good to set clear time points for yourself from small things to develop execution – if you can do many small things “when you say you will do them”, you will slowly be able to do more complex and larger tasks. “Just do it”, have the inertia, but also have the confidence to complete.
4、Journaling
Formal a little website, have a detailed access log (record), even if not to do data mining, once the site’s access to abnormal fluctuations, will be reflected in the log, and check the log, you can find the problem; website is such, people are also such. I also started keeping a daily diary since I translated Weinberg’s “The Road to Technical Leadership” in ’08, and found that the diary and the website access log have the same function.
For example, I usually arrive at work around 8:35, with an error of no more than 5 minutes before and after, but a few days last week it was around 9:00. Checking the diary, I could find this change, and I could figure out the reason for the change – it was a change in the order of doing things in the morning. And, based on the diary, I can also observe and assess the impact of this change, for better or worse.
There was a time when I found myself in a state where I had nothing to do. Without a diary, I would have thought, “I always have nothing to do this time of year,” but I would have written in my diary, “Today is the eighth day I feel like I have nothing to do. “This way, the pressure on myself will be much greater, and the motivation will be much stronger.
One more point about diaries. I used to wonder why diaries were so simple for people who had kept them for years. They only record what they did on any given day, attach a little simple commentary, and not too much lyricism. I have been keeping a diary for over a year now, starting with the translation of The Road to Technical Leadership, and have come to understand that an ongoing diary needs to be recorded in this way: the main actions of the day, with a little commentary and reflection. The diary is less suitable as a vehicle for lyricism, and a more appropriate function is to truly record the traces of life for analysis and reflection, and then one can improve.
5、Cultivate foresight/planning ability
The old saying “everything, in advance, is established, not in advance is invalid”, which is very true. Take the software project, although the project development time is difficult to predict, but experienced technical staff can often make more accurate judgment, so as to make more appropriate planning, this is because they have the ability to foresee: can foresee the problems encountered in the development, according to the arrangements made, the time is more abundant (also to ensure efficiency), and more prepared psychologically.
On the other hand, I have seen many technical people who just finish the task at hand and everything will be fine, without foreseeing the problems: how big and stressful their program can be, what kind of problems will arise beyond this load capacity, how to solve them, and how long will the problem, according to the current development rate, appear… …
The result is that when the problem really appears, the hands are busy and anxious, “iterative development” has become “demolition development” – at a certain point in time to push back all over again The quality can not be guaranteed, not to mention that they are also tired of suffering.
The software industry has a famous book called “Refactoring”, the core idea of this book is that software needs to be constantly refactored, or it will be rigid (decay), if only to meet the immediate problem, not foresee and planning, continuous refactoring is not to say.
6、Establish the big picture
The other day a friend and I discussed the matter of job-hopping, right now there are two options, it is difficult to decide; I listened to his detailed description and said, “Well, you do not look at salary, position, you think: ten years, or five years later, you want to be a person, what is the state of life? Take this answer to measure your current two choices and see what happens. As a result, after a while he made a very painful decision. I think this is where the big picture comes into play.
I myself will also encounter many trade-offs, choices, for example, I always feel that my foundation about the computer is not solid enough, my English is not good enough, books are too little, my photos are not good enough …… so I want to go to remedy the foundation, to learn English, to read, to see the master photos … …
Doing any one of them will give people a sense of accomplishment, but people’s time and energy are limited, and it is impossible to do both; at many times when I need to make a choice, I try to get rid of the limitations of a book, a knowledge, or a thing, and jump out to think about what kind of state I am in now, what is the important task, and what kind of person I want to be in the future… …
Clearly the most urgent needs, so that you can choose comfortably, even if you give up some seemingly good opportunities, it is not a pity – in addition, as Mr. Li Xiaolai said, temptation is often disguised as an opportunity to appear, with the big picture of the mirror, many temptations will show their original shape.
The big picture is not only useful for personal growth, but also useful for work: no matter how small and trivial the matter at hand, thinking can always go beyond the limits of the work, try to look at what they do from a broader perspective, in the end, what value, how to improve; so that their work can do better, and colleagues will be more in tune with each other.
7、Attentive observation in life
I have to go to Metro to buy shopping once every weekend, the first few weeks, I will choose different points in time to go: 8:00 am, 11:00 am, 1:00 pm, 4:00 pm …… so that you can probably know, when the most time-saving shopping. This is difficult to judge accurately just by thinking about it, because there may be more checkout windows when there are more people, and fewer checkout windows when there are fewer people.
With this knowledge, you can make proper arrangements to minimize the time spent in line while shopping. In addition, you can also know the condition of the parking lot at different times of the day, and on rainy days, you can also choose the right time to go shopping and park your car in a covered space.
Another example is that there is more than one road from Home to work, and at the beginning I will try each road to see if it is congested, if it is flat, and roughly how much time it will take; so that when I encounter various situations, I can quickly choose the path that is relatively most suitable; if I only take one road, or do not pay attention to observation, I will not understand these situations, and I will not have so many choices when I encounter situations.
8、Cultivate a sense of proportion
Analysis of things, in addition to qualitative, there are quantitative, and quantitative analysis is often more meaningful – the world is either one or the other, black or white issues are too few. Unfortunately, many times we are unconsciously looking at the world with qualitative thinking, often losing many opportunities.
As an example, “Time as a Friend” mentions a biography “A Peculiar Life” in which the author describes in detail the Soviet scientist Lyubichev’s practice of managing time – Lyubichev’s daily grasp of time could be precise to the minute, and he carefully recorded how much time he spent doing how many things each day: writing for 35 minutes, reading 50 minutes …… Although “as precise as a clock”, the biographer admits that his life, which he considered “still full”, was indeed too poor compared to Lyubichev’s. I was very impressed by reading “A Peculiar Life”, and I know that although I cannot be as precise as Lyubichev, I can at least steal a trick or two to make my life more organized and efficient.
But when I recommended it to some of my friends, the first reaction I encountered was: life is so precise, it’s become a robot, how terrible! The subtext is that they simply do not want to understand, do not want to understand. But what I want to say is that a serious understanding of Lyubichev’s life does not require us to be as extreme as he was, but only provides an opportunity to learn from the experience and habits of others (if we do not know, we can’t even learn from them), as for how much to learn, this proportion is possible and needs to be grasped by ourselves.
I deeply believe that a sense of proportion is very important, it allows us to look at various situations calmly: see the bad, remind themselves to keep their distance, see the good, tell themselves to try to learn from, at least do not be widened the gap. In this way, we can face life openly and find the coordinates of where we are.
In the words of my favorite philosopher of science, Karl Popper, our feeling good about ourselves must be based on comparison and judgment – the more we know about the world, the more we see, the more we know (and of course the more we grasp, the more we restrain ourselves), the more this feeling really ” good” (the “good” behind closed doors is actually very fragile and bleak).
The philosopher Wittgenstein said on his deathbed: “How happy I have been, I have lived a good life”. He said that statement with a bottom.
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