One of the repeating items on my to-do list is cleaning off my office desk. It’s something I committed to recently, to try to keep my working area tidy; so long as I keep on top of it every few days, it only takes a few minutes each time. But I’d found myself putting it [...]
Archive of posts filed under the Productivity category.
Triple Monitors!
As a programmer, I’ve always found that the more monitor space you’ve got, the more productive you can be. And multiple monitors are even better than a single huge monitor, in a lot of ways. When you’re referring to online documentation while you’re programming, for example, it’s a lot easier to just glance from one [...]
“Is Antivirus Dead?”
I’ve mentioned before that I no longer run antivirus software on most of my Windows machines, but Bruce Schneier has just posted a persuasive argument in favor of it in most cases, despite the flaws. But persuasive or not, it doesn’t change my opinion or my stance on the systems I control. Antivirus is generally [...]
“Capstone projects and time management”
Joel On Software, on one of the few similarities between student projects and professional ones: It’s taken me a while, but I finally learned that long-term deadlines (or no deadlines at all) just don’t work with professional programmers, either: you need a schedule of regular, frequent deliverables to be productive over the long term. That [...]
“Proving a Computer Program’s Correctness”
It sounds great, but isn’t viable in practice.
Know Thyself: Context
If you’ve been following the Know Thyself entries in recent months, you’ll know that I’ve had trouble pursuing my goals in the last few years. Thanks to a few articles on StevePavlina.com, I’d tracked the problem down to a lack of purpose and context, but I didn’t know how to move forward from there. Trying [...]
Know Thyself: Goals, Context, and Purpose
A few months ago, I thought I’d found the answer to my motivation problems. A tweak to my purpose, thought I, and all would be well. As usual, things weren’t that simple… it helped, but after the initial surge of enthusiasm wore off, I discovered that it didn’t make enough difference to keep me moving. [...]
“Read It Later” iPhone App — Excellent!
I’ve been using the free Read It Later add-on (RIL from here on) for Firefox for quite a while now. It’s really great for marking pages that I want to read, but don’t want to take time out from whatever I’m doing when I find them. It’s also very nice because I often have my [...]
“Prison-style Study Ball keeps students shackled to desk”
You’d expect to see something like this in a Dilbert comic, not real life. While I’m all for productivity, I don’t think I’ll be buying one for myself.
“The Magic of Unity Builds”
This hack seems appalling when you first understand it… but when you read the timing results at the end, you’ll see that it really can be worth it if you’ve got a big project. Hm, Project Badger takes a long time to compile…