Creating a Productive Environment
From Personal Space to Development Environment
Tom Harrigan
Alley Interactive
Hi I'm Tom
Alley Interactive
Sleep is good
Increased memory
Increased attention and focus
Longer life
Lower stress
Decreased dependence on stimulants like caffeine
Becoming nocturnal
House of Glass
Working on large abstract systems involves fitting the whole thing into your mind – it’s like constructing a house out of expensive crystal glass
Why Programmers Work at Night – Swizec Teller
The Makers Schedule – Paul Graham
Consequences
Breaking the rhythm of your daily routine has consequences. – Eat Move Sleep by Tom Rath
“Switching over to daylight saving time, and losing one hour of sleep, raised the risk of having a heart attack the following Monday by 25 percent” – Reuters
Our screens aren't helping
Brightness and Blue light
“reading on a tablet for a couple hours before bed may find that their sleep is delayed by about an hour.”
There's an app for that
Sleep solved, start the day right
Cold Shower
- Improve immune, lymphatic, circulatory and digestive systems
- Boost metabolism, increase weight loss
Drink cold water
“Consume at least 500 milliliters of ice water on an empty stomach immediately upon waking. In at least two studies, this water consumption has been shown to increase resting metabolic rate 24–30%, peaking at 40–60 minutes post-consumption” – Tim Ferriss, 4 Hour Body
Protein
“Breakfast is also the ideal time to eat protein, which gives you the energy to make it through the day.” – Tom Rath, Eat Move Sleep
“chicken breast or protein shake will do” – Tim Ferriss, Four Hour Body
Defeat bigger challenges earlier
Take care of bigger, harder items while you have more mental energy
Keep a daily log
Track everything from sleep to caffeine consumption
GTD - Getting Things Done
A notebook is handy for this too.
Main principles:
-Get everything out of your head
-Break everything down into its next actionable task
Bad to-do list item
- Fix Mailchimp Bug
Good to-do list item
- Download backup of production data
- Test known individual users/emails with issue
- Inspect the user_meta fields and arrays for those users
- Test function that is formatting the array data and creating API request
- Check import script for malformed data
- Check Mailchimp API logs for bad requests
- Add logging code to capture future issues
Another Bad To-do item
- Create WordCamp talk
Better item
- Read 4 Hour Body, Eat Move Sleep, SuperBetter, Getting Things Done
- Distill notes
- Settle on main topics
- Find images
- Create slides
Apps to help with GTD
Home Office Environment
Blue light is not always bad
Standing desk
- Ikea Bekant – $489
- StandCrafted – (wall mounted Kickstarter project) – $395+
- Jarvis – $750+
- Craigslist
- Bed Risers
- DIY
Standing desk tips
- Don’t stand all day
- Posture
- Screen at eye level
- Mat
- Bonus: keep free weights next to the desk
Posture
Mat
- Any yoga mat
- Standing mat
- The Level
Also, running shoes are great
On Goal Setting
Learn from Elon Musk
Goal: Get man on Mars
Side benefits:
- Reduce dependence on fossil fuels
- Best electric car ever made
- Battery technology is good now
- Solar power has gotten better
- Space is becoming more affordable. Smaller satellites can be launched at lower budgets
Make your goal big enough that you'll stay motivated
My bad goals:
- Get rich
- Get a promotion
- Create successful startup
- Contribute to WordPress core
My better goal: Buy a house
Growing - Don't be in a silo
We grow better together. Find like-minded, or complimentary individuals to bounce ideas off of and learn with. Create or join a roundtable or mastermind group.
Don’t be afraid to ask people for help.
Tip: Post Status has a fantastic Slack community
Balance
“No matter how successful you are in your career, you must always remember that we are here to live. If you keep yourself busy working, you will surely regret it.” – Jack Ma
Structure in some free time. Example:
- Monday: Game night
- Wednesday: Dinner
- Saturday: Date night
- Sunday: Soccer
Tools of the trade
Developer focussed tools
Sequel Pro
Sublime Text 3
Dev setup
API interaction
Plugins
plugins
– Airplane Mode
– private debug log
– query monitor
– fieldmanager
– transient manager
Books
Eat Move Sleep – Tom Rath
SuperBetter – Jane McGonigal
4-Hour body Tim Ferris
Getting Things Done – David Allen
Interested in working on complex challenges at scale in WordPress?
We’re hiring! Let’s chat.