A big question that keeps coming up for an attention-deficit person like me is “How do you get into the flow?”

There are two things that work for me and I find them at loggerheads against each other. The problem is that it has been difficult to stick to either of them.

One is called being a night-owl, the other is called the MIT factor.

I love to work late nights. Life is completely undisturbed, you’re not going to get phone calls, there are no noises, nobody’s expecting email replies from you, nobody around to disturb you. All good.

But being nocturnal ain’t easy. Your whole life is thrown off-balance as well as your body’s natural cycle. Yet some of the best hackers I know are night-owls. They hack away their code and leave the rest to management. I’m not sure that’s a viable option for us in a startup where we do everything including working with many partner companies. Besides, I don’t wish it to go to such depths of imbalance, for example, I want to maintain my regular running but it is not possible when you wake up late. And running in the evenings on Bengaluru roads is defined as insanity. The struggle is productivity/flow vs. life balance.

The second is called “The MIT Factor.” Do the Most Important Task first thing in the morning. It’s that simple. Don’t think about what’s ahead in the day, don’t think about what bills are pending, don’t think about planning to reach office on time (just have a fixed deadline when you have to start getting ready and think no more about it). Just switch on your computer or take out your pen and paper as soon as you wake up and start working on it. The important thing is Don’t think. Just start working on it.

The problem with the second option is that if you don’t wake up early, you again end up in the daily grind where you may not get focus. And you need to have the discipline to immediately start working. Whatever you do at the start of the day sets the mood for the rest of the day. For example, you check email first thing in the morning? You’ll tend to do the same activity for the rest of the day.

The bottom line is I think there is a psychological concept where you have to load the entire problem, the entire domain on what you’re working on into your head and that takes time, say 15-20 minutes and then you suddenly start solving problems. But if you subconsciously know that you’ll get disturbed any time in those 15-20 minutes, the brain almost gives up and doesn’t think it’s worth putting in that investment to get into the flow if it is going to ultimately get disturbed. Is this true? I have no idea, just a theory that I’m beginning to believe (I can’t remember if I read this somewhere or just an opinion I’m forming for myself).

I wonder how other people approach this concept of “getting into the zone.”

Further reading:

• Flow in Psychology as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi
• Geek to Live: Control your workday by Gina Trapani
• Disconnecting Distraction by Paul Graham – I’ve been applying some of the ideas here and so far I’ve had good success.
• Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? Surrender to This Algorithm

A list of blogs I read has been published in the Mint Lounge newspaper on 13-Dec-2008 Saturday.
Read it online on the Mint website or in the epaper section.

Thanks to Sidin for asking me to write this and publishing it in Mint.

Unfortunately, as typical of newspapers, my words were modified to something that is newspaper-y which is really not my style, and the article was printed before I got a chance to review. And no, that short bio was not written by me

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As a small experiment, I had put up a skribit sidebar where anybody can suggest what I can write about. Little did I know that it would actually be used seriously. Someone posted the topic “On how fresh graduates can learn independently and grow. Instead of waiting for the Company to help” and today, there are 9 votes on it!

To be honest, I think I am not qualified enough to answer this question. I am certainly no role model. But since 9 people have voted on it, I feel obliged to write something useful. I have jotted down some thoughts on what ideas and habits have helped me, it may not necessarily be useful for everyone. I hope these fresh graduates who voted will pick the best ideas and habits suited for them.

Character and Lifestyle

Instead of focusing on building a career, why not focus on building a character? The career will take care of itself.

• “Sow an act… reap a habit; Sow a habit… reap a character; Sow a character… reap a destiny.” – George Dana Boardman
• As Cal Newport would say, “Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there.” … Too often, we confuse the medium (lawyer, doctor, engineer, etc.) with the message (what is important to us, what we want to do). So it’s far more important to figure out what you want out of life, then figure out how to achieve that rather than the other way around. And only you can figure this out for yourself.
• I would recommend reading First Things First by Stephen Covey to help you understand your priorities in life.
• Most important of all, find your inner peace. Remember that “Satisfaction is within.”

Career Building

Basically, you need to take initiative in what you want to achieve, no one can tell you what you have to do, life is not that simple. I’m glad the original question poser said that he/she wanted to grow “Instead of waiting for the Company to help”, you’ve got that part right already.

I recommend reading:

• The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning, part 2: Skills and education
• Career Advice presentation by Garr Reynolds
• How To Get A Job Like Mine by Aaron Swartz

Get Results

• “Results, Jay. Results. Otherwise you can’t expect rewards.” — “Vertigo” novel, by Ashok Banker
• Do deliberative practice, not just “a lot of work.”
• Stick to the 10-year plan. There are no shortcuts to success.

Ultimately, you need to take action and get results. It’s not enough to just plan and hope. As Morpheus would say, “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.”

Read

My personal slogan is “I read. Therefore I do. Therefore I am.” If I compare myself to my school days and today, there has been a major transformation in character and outlook, and I attribute that purely to reading.

A great part of my learning also comes from writing, hence the blog, wiki, books, and twitter. It might seem like a waste of time, but I learn more by communicating. But that’s just me.

• Read, Read, Read, the single advice given by Warren Buffett (one of the world’s richest men)
• Tactics For Reading, by Trent Hamm
• 25 Articles Every Student Should Read
• For every hour that you read, you must gain 3 hours of experience – Scott H Young

If you don’t know where to start, I would suggest The Personal MBA Reading List.

Friends

Make valuable friends. This is the most important tip I can ever give you.

Equally important, make the right kind of friends. Yes, it’s tough to let go of friends who you intuitively know are not the right influence on you, but speaking from experience, it is worth it in the long run.

As a wise man once said, “Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.”

Learn Your Trade

For example, if we are talking about a software engineer:

• Debugging is the most important skill, not coding. I wish I had known this when I was in college.
• Reading is a great habit that has a side-effect that you will also have the ability to read a lot of code and build up the structure inside your head about how the code works, just like you have to imagine what is written in a book or novel.

I also recommend reading:

• How To Be a Programmer
• Do Side projects
• Keep Learning

If you are looking for more in-depth knowledge, I would recommend taking a look at this Stack Overflow discussion.

Make A Difference

Consider this excerpt from a Business Week article:

One vocal camp even maintains that the repetitive nature of writing software code has corrupted Bangalore’s intellectual spirit. “These 20-year-olds are like coolies, doing the same job over and over,” says CNR Rao, a Bangalorean scientist who has been an adviser to the Indian government for decades. The software industry, he says, has turned the city into a glorified sweatshop. “Where is the innovation?” he asks. “How does this contribute to anything but greed and commerce?”

The joy of programming is the joy of building and creating something. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we can build and create something useful for other people? If yes, why aren’t we doing more of that? After all, there is no dearth of things that we can create.

Closing Statement

Hopefully, I have given some food for thought here.

If this article was useful, please feel free to post suggestions on what I can write about on my skribit page.

Update on 29-Oct-2011: Also read this great article by Patrick McKenzie (a.k.a. patio11) called “Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice”

I’ve been pondering about specialization vs. generalization in terms of career skills.

I have this notion that I should be a maven, should be an expert at something. But yet, I mostly do things that are the very opposite of this idea.

Since I don’t tend to be a specialist, I tend to not focus on a particular topic. I want to learn about different things and hence I tend to meet people of varied interests, and consequently end up being excited about a lot of different ideas. For example, one of my good friends is someone who I happened to meet on a bus because my seat was next to his, and we talked non-stop for 5 hours from the moment we said ‘Hello’. I was able to connect with him well because I knew a bit about his profession and we had some common terminology right at the beginning of the conversation. And I really love having such conversations. It’s one of the things that really motivate me and it ends up throwing me in different directions.

Maybe it’s not really a generalization vs. specialization debate, and more of an attitude. Then again, I see that people tend to really pigeonhole themselves, such as “I’m looking for C++ jobs” or “I want only bluetooth jobs”. Why? Because they’ll get experience in a particular technology and employers will give higher pay packages to specialists. This means these people focus only on things related to that one particular area and ignore everything else. Somehow I’ve been unable to do this, even though I want to.

As Tim Ferriss puts it:

“Most people avoid certain actions because they view changes as permanent. If you make a change, can you go back to doing it like you did before? You can always reclaim your current state in most cases. If I quit my job in industry x to test my artistic abilities in a different industry, worst case scenario, can I go back to my previous industry? Yes. Recognize that you can test-drive and micro-test things over brief periods of time. You can usually reclaim the workaholism that you currently experience if you so decide to go back to it.”

This kind of sums up what I’ve been doing in the past six months – test-driving things over brief periods of time, trying my hand at different things.

Yesterday, I needed some inspiration, so I ended up listening to one of my favorite podcast talks – Jason Fried on “Lessons learned from building Basecamp” (transcript). A few things that he said made a lot of sense, not only in terms of software, but also in terms of career:

1. Reduce mass
   • Enable change. Enable speed.
   • Do not worry about what may be needed 8 months down the lane.
   • Make just-in-time decisions, when you have the data.
2. Every decision is temporary.
   • If it is too costly to change, it’s probably wrong.
3. Getting Real
   • Design the interface first.
   • This is the same as Cal Newport saying “Fix the lifestyle you want. Then work backwards from there.”
4. Iterate. Start small. Make your first version half a product, not a half-assed product.
   • Do a 30-day trial of things, such as your decisions of trying something new, etc.
   • But do the basics and do them well. For example, if you want to start a blog, don’t expect 1000 readers overnight, work at writing 5 good articles instead.
5. There are so many more ideas that could be applied including the concept of publicity amplifiers, transparency and trust, blogging, etc.

It’s funny that a methodology for software can be used for lifehacking.

Of course, it’s not just software programmers who have this debate, even designers and productivity specialists do.

Later, I realized that another way of looking at this is “doing as much as required, no more”. Why is this important? Because results matter more than “expertise”. I had an Aha! moment. Suddenly, I feel less guilty and more positive.

Working from home full-time is a different experience than we are used to. You make or break things, there’s no one asking about your progress and there are no deadlines. It’s all up to you.

My productivity has varied a lot during this time and I was wondering how to make more days productive than they are as of now.

So I polled some of my friends who also work out of a home-office on how they they maintain productivity / motivation / focus, and I got some interesting replies:

• Manish Jethani says:
  • Make a separate “office room” in your home. You could convert your old study room into your office. You go into this room only for work — fully dressed for work (not in pyjamas!). When you get out of this room, you leave your work behind. In other words, you have a proper office located inside your home.
  • Cut out the distractions. Make your family know that this is your office. No visitors, no phone calls (except work-related), etc.
  • Follow proper timings. Work fixed hours.
  • To stay motivated while working out of your home, I think you basically have to enjoy what you do.
  • Self-discipline is the key.
  • The concept of an office, as we know it, is relatively new in our history. Throughout the ages humans have worked out of their homes. Think about it. It’s the more natural way of things. Thanks to the internet, working from home is likely to become the norm in the 21st century (also because commuting might become prohibitively expensive).

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One of the hard lessons that I have learned this year is “Always
remember Carpe Diem“. The
corollary is that “If you don’t execute on your idea quick, someone
else definitely will.”

For example, long back Vikram had this
idea that there should be a company which takes care of odd chores
such as electrical maintenance or plumbing, basically handyman work.
Yesterday, I saw www.handiman.in on the back
of an auto rickshaw. I came home and checked it out and it does
exactly that. It’s a very useful
service and seems
reasonably
affordable, at
least for IT people. I’m sure lot of people in Bangalore will go for
it.

Today, Mrinal
pointed
to www.indimeme.com,
a TechMeme for the Indian blogosphere.

I started kicking myself.

I’ve had this idea for months but I couldn’t really move on it because
I don’t have the knowledge yet, for example, about clustering
algorithms. However, I did brainstorm it with a couple of friends and
thought we’ll work it out. But a single person beat us to it.

There is a range of reasons why such a website is a good idea,
probably the same reasons why TechMeme is indispensable too:

• Allows people to see what are the latest topics that Indian bloggers
  are talking about.
• Allows people to see the discussions across blogs, not just one blog
  and its comments.
  • Encourages the above type of discussion.
• The portal can become the gateway of the Indian blogosphere.
• For the website creator’s point of view, it can bring in a lot of
  visitors. And subsequently, advertisers.
• An indispensable website means the creator of the website is
  indispensable too. Just like Gabe
  Rivera
  is everything behind the scenes of TechMeme. (Let’s face it, we’re
  all replaceable in our workplaces.)

And so on.

Anyway, the only downside I’ve noticed about IndiMeme.com is that the
clustering results aren’t good yet, but the thing is it is already out
there. It has been
executed.
It needs refinement. And I’m sure it’ll get there.

I don’t know whether I should add this idea to my already-long
personal ‘deadpool’. Sigh.

When I started thinking about this idea, I came across one paper
called Mining blog stories using community-based and temporal
clustering which
explained how this is a special type of clustering that takes time
into account. They call it:

“[the] Content-Community-Time model that can leverage the content of
entries, their timestamps, and the community structure of the blogs,
to automatically discover stories. Doing so also allows us to
discover hot stories.”

I was thinking whether the same idea can be applied to an RSS
aggregator and then I found that was done
too as well.

I guess there are simply no low-hanging fruit left in this accelerated
world.

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not
enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.

– Leonardo da Vinci

Philipp Lenssen recently had a good post on tips on information
overload by various
people. It got me
thinking about the various tips and tricks I’ve imbibed in the recent
past and which work reasonably well for me. So I tried to collate them
into one place:

Email

• Always bring the inbox down to zero regularly. ‘Regularly’ is
  defined by you.
• Never allow anything to be in your inbox > 2-3 days
  • If you’re not going to reply in that time frame, you never will.
    So simply archive it or reply with a one-liner saying you can’t
    look into it now.
• If you don’t have anything to add, don’t reply.
• Make sure you are clear on what is the action you are expecting
  from the recipient.
• Reply in bullet points. Because everybody
  skims.
• Once you’re done with the email (replying, taking action or
  reading), archive it.
• If it is not actionable, archive it. Don’t let it remain in your
  inbox.
• Use keyboard shortcuts.
• Mailing lists go into folders. I simulate them in Gmail using “Apply
  label, Skip Inbox” in the filters. The reason is that mails not
  directly addressed to me are not urgent, so I can process them
  whenever I have the inclination. Whatever is in my inbox is what
  deserves immediate attention.
• Minimize the number of times you need to check email. The minimum
  that is required for you to stop worrying about it. The beauty of
  email is that you can reply at your pace. Make use of that feature.
  If you end up constantly checking email, you’re better off resorting
  to phone calls or instant
  messenger.
• [new tip] Before you send the next email, go through the
  checklist.

Feeds

• Use your feed reader once in a few days. The world won’t stop
  without you.
• Use a desktop feed reader because it is faster to
  use.
• Have a ‘Try Before You Buy’ folder where you add feeds. If it
  doesn’t turn out to be useful, delete it.
• Have a number in mind, say 100 feeds. If you add a new feed, delete
  an old feed that is no longer interesting.
• If you end up doing a ‘Mark all as read’ on a feed 2-3 times in
  a row, delete it.
• Separate them into categories and/or priorities.
• Most importantly, read interesting things. Do not aim for reading
  500+ blog posts a day. Optimize, don’t maximize.
• Remember that the goal is to derive some value out of this reading
  and that value is usually knowledge. If it is not helping you
  towards that goal, delete it. Don’t think twice, just delete it.
• While working, if you feel the need to distract yourself once in
  a while or read something interesting, don’t use your feed reader
  but use good filters like TechMeme or programming.reddit or a good
  link-blogger on your subjects of interest. Have a separate dedicated
  time for reading feeds.
• Take
  notes.
  Over time, you’ll judge if a feed is useful or not depending on
  whether you’re taking (any) notes or not.
  • You can also use a mental version of the “McDowell
    Grid”.

Inlets

• Cut down on the types of inlets – Email, Feeds, Twitter, IRC,
  Messenger, Phone, etc. (this one is particularly hard for me)
• Spend at least 50% of your time at the computer with all these
  inlets shut down.

Focus

• Personally I find productivity inversely proportional to information
  overload. The days when I’m productive and “in the zone” turns out
  to be the days when I’m less affected by information overload. The
  vice-versa is true as well. So if you focus on the right things, the
  information overload problem will get solved by itself.
• Maintain focus by having a todo list. Have a big todo list and then
  pick random tasks from that list depending on your energy levels
  and get things done.
• Never indulge in tasks outside of your todo list. If you’re not in
  the mood for any of them, don’t indulge in
  wilfing.
  Go out instead – whether for a walk, or call up a friend or even
  read a paper book. If you’re not being productive, just get out of
  the chair.
• Don’t use fancy software for writing lists. Use a good plain text
  editor (like Vim).
• Use GTD.
• Use an auto-pilot
  schedule
  (I’m still learning this).

P.S. Many of these ideas have been borrowed from elsewhere. It’s been
a long time since I imbibed all these, so I don’t remember all the
sources from which I gleaned them.

I recently started using my own home page in Firefox as a start-point
for all the important links that I should visit from time to time.
It’s been a good boost for productivity since it keeps the main
thing the main thing:

title="Sample Home Page"> src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3031/2325637441_6e338b3c49.jpg"
width="500" height="390" alt="Sample Home Page" />

This was just a simple ‘idealet’ inspired by Opera’s Speed
Dial feature.

The advantages to using this are:

1. Quick access to things you need to access like your website
   management page or your bank website, instead of hunting around in
   the bookmarks menu.
2. Avoids the need for a bookmarks toolbar. I feel a toolbar takes too
   much screen real-estate compared to its usefulness.
3. When you’re bored, you open your homepage and visit some of the
   vast websites where you can learn stuff, like the ones under the
   ‘Grey Matter’ section.
4. It jogs your memory to visit some of the websites that you should
   visit from time to time, like any forums that you want to be
   updated on (instead of letting them flood your inbox).
5. Having a simple local HTML page as the homepage is much faster than
   an online start-page.
6. Backing up/restoring/editing a HTML file is simpler than
   a bookmarks database.

The only thing missing is that when I open a new tab, it should
automatically open with the home page instead of a blank page. This can
be done using the Tabbrowser Preferences add-on.

Update: Or you can simply use the many Speed Dial addons to Firefox out there…

(Warning : I just started typing this post because the title popped into my head, so what follows
might seem like a lot of rambling.)

No matter how much we talk about talent, opportunities, and other things we can blame on, making
things happen basically boils down to one thing – it’s all in the mind. And of course, you need to
put in some effort too, but that again is derived from your mindset.

For example, I have a few problems that I chronically face:

1. If I have an idea or come across something interesting or even start on a new project at work,
   I tend to have a lot of enthusiasm at first but soon forget it later in the drudgery of everyday
   life, and especially so when it comes to personal projects.

2. I tend to get worked up on deadlines and schedules without actually paying attention to the
   work.

3. I am constantly worried about not following up on things and not being organized.

About six months ago, I started following the ‘Getting Things Done’
(GTD) philosophy and it has helped me
improve a lot w.r.t. these problems. This helped me concentrate on actions and not only on
problems. As and when you keep showing up and doing things, you’ll see the progress yourself and
you’ll be a happier person. That reminds me of this LifeHack
article: “All you
need is the willingness to take the next most obvious step – then repeat the process again and
again, regardless of how you feel. Try it.Happiness comes from seeing the results of your efforts.
You don’t need it before you start.“

The gist of GTD is to concentrate only on the next physical action and let other things take care
of itself. This helped me deal with the second problem.

When it comes to problem 3, I’m way more organized now, to the point, where I think my actual
talent (or the lack of it) and the willingness to put in effort are the barriers. I hope Knuth’s
philosophy of being at the bottom of things
will help me here.

These three problems are similar in the sense that they tend towards one point – it’s all in the
mind. To alleviate it, I applied the GTD approach.

Similarly, if you’re worried about what kind of raise you’re going to get this year, etc., then
stop worrying. There is no use of worrying over things that you can’t control. You can’t control
the traffic on the road, so if you need to reach a place on time, just leave early and the rest
will take care of itself.

If you’ve been sweating it out for the past couple of hours trying to fix a bug and you’re not
making any headway, then it is important to switch to a different problem and then come back
later. You’ll come back with a fresh perspective, fresh energy and fresh ideas on what to look
out for and may be the things you’ve overlooked previously might be the actual problem. This is
also important because it helps you to always keep moving forward, one way or another, and you
don’t get stuck in one project and don’t move in other projects (and by project, I mean the GTD
meaning of ‘project’).

There has been many a time when I’ve gotten frustrated and feel like just banging my head on the
keyboard. This is where I take a step back, relax and say to myself ‘CUT to the G’ (yes, that’s a
phrase I coined for myself):

1. Concentrate
2. Understand
3. Think
4. Get Things Done

Each of these steps is important in its own way, but I personally underestimate the value of the
second step. Knowing what you’re exactly doing is a critical nature of a
programmer
especially because only you would know how the system exactly works and nobody else would look at
it, everyone else is just a end user.

Step 4 is eventually what gets you moving, but Steps 2 and 3 are equally important. As Abraham
Lincoln once said “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my
axe.” And to get to this stage, you need to do Step 1 which boils down to one thing – It’s all in
the mind. That’s why it’s so hard.

Footnotes

1. Related reading: ‘Leadership – Some Random Thoughts’ by Lawrence
   Rabiner.

2. That doesn’t mean to say that you/I can achieve anything and everything, it’s just that you
   need to get over the mindblocks to do even the simple things that you are capable of achieving.

When I look at people around me, I often ponder how they manage to live life just like any other day. They tackle work and fun and go home and watch TV and sleep. Then, get up the next day and the cycle continues. I think of them as analogous to “machines”.

On the other hand, I’m more like a wind-up toy. I need to motivate myself regularly to keep me going. I don’t know if there’s a deficiency in me or it’s just that I’m built that way. I usually resort to many tricks and advice and the worst/best part is that these tricks usually work for me.

Why is it that I find it so hard to get motivated?

I can think of several reasons :

• I have this mental block that “I am not a finisher”. I tend to start things with great enthusiasm but due to past history, I get an uneasy feeling that I won’t be able to complete it, and once you lose confidence and enthusiasm, that’s the end of it. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.”
• It’s easy to “lose sight” of what’s important. The daily bhaag-daud makes you lose sight of the big picture. As Stephen Covey once said, “The main thing is keeping the main thing the main thing.”
• Don’t follow the herd mentality. Do what is important to you. “To lead a symphony you must occasionally turn your back on the crowd.”
• There’s not enough passion. This violates our Dappers Rule.
• Not enough concentration. One thing at a time. And think while you’re at it. The one thing that I remind myself (and it helps me very effectively) is “You have to think more than you think you should but often less than what you are afraid you have to”.

Looks like I already have 5 points. I guess that part of my “growing up” would be to tackle these issues.