rvdavid: A Web Developer's Blog

Well it’s the last week of my half week holidays and I had a blast. I found myself going from missing work to not thinking about work at all. I know though, that once I got back here at the helm at DP HQ, I’ll be needing some time to get back into the swing of things.

Of course, this is not the first time I’ve taken time off, so I thought I’d warm up my blogging again and talk about what I do to get my mind into gear. So here are 5 things that I like to do to get myself back into focus:

1. Classical Music
   This is more a point about setting a quiet mode for the day. When I have my headphones on with a Play list that has Chopin, Liszt and Beethoven, I know that my thoughts are going to be well insulated against the hustle and bustle of phones, idle chatter and other random office noises. Not only that, but over the years, I’ve come to associate classical music with focus – which is my ultimate goal. I want to have a focussed day and this sets it up for me nicely.
   
2. Pen and Paper up a list of things to be done today
   Yes, that’s right I still use pen and paper when creating a “to-do list”.I use evolutions task manager for this in my day to day, but during times when I need to kick start me off, there’s nothing like a good pen and paper to-do list to keep me focussed on what I need to do. I guess it’s because I am more deliberate when I’m writing up a list rather than typing it up.

   It goes without saying, but after each task is completed, I cross it off and continue on to the next one. This keeps me focussed and helps me build momentum.

3. Get the backlog of easy stuff out of the way first – regardless of how tedious it is.
   Once I’ve got Now this goes without saying, today, this is exactly what I did and even though I’d much rather be in the trenches coding away, I know that I’ll be distracted if I didn’t do this first. So that’s what I did. I answered emails, wrote up quotations and even wrote a letter of reference for someone who used to work for us.

   This is linked directly with my to do list and how it works on building my momentum. As each little task is complete, I plough through the next few until there is no more left.
   

4. Do not let myself be swayed by positive stress
   So as I have now completed the easy tasks out of the way, I usually feel the need to lean back and ‘lax out. I feel like I’ve run a marathon… and won! This feeling is known as positive stress. You’ve poured all your energy and focus into a task and successfully completed your mission now it’s time to report to for debriefing. NOPE! Roll forward to the next task – Unit Testing.
   
5. Unit Testing
   Now I’ve mentioned this before on a previous post – I’m a fan of Unit Testing. Unit Testing really does aid in focussing your mind to achieve tasks at hand. With Unit Testing, I map out what I need to do by way of tests. What functionality a certain model object will have. My models methods start off mapping to business requirements, my tests map to each public method in my models. It’s a beautiful cycle of productivity. I love this stuff!

I apply the same to my blogging as well. I’m not game to launch into my theory of how models should be explicitly returning messages just yet, so I’ll be holding off on that post till tomorrow or the day after. I’m currently listening to Classical music and getting this easy post out first to gain some momentum writing my blog posts.

I recommend you try it out yourself. It’s really something that separates the counter-productive, procrastinating me to the productive, action man that I know I am.

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