"I never saved anything for the swim back"

Re:"I never saved anything for the swim back" by ess on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @05:17PM (#146152)

I believe the problem here is just microfocus. When people focus too much on one thing, they tend not to take a step back every now and then to see if things are still the same as when you started. Let's say I want to start a business in china making valves for microturbines. I spend half a year and progress is very slow. It's time to realise that things are bad, take a step back and review the process. If things are hard, you are doing something wrong.

Sometimes it's neccesary to work hard. But sometimes is not a year. One has to take life in 6 month chunks, and you only have about 140 of those. You lose one, you will never get it back. A year is two of those chunks. It's too much time to be unhappy in.

I'm one of the fastest developers I know because I was taught the technique - when things start going slow, stop, zoom out and analyse the reason why it's going slow. Then go back in, but approach things differently. This time you want to maintain the quality of work, but reduce the time spent on it. It's not difficult to optimize that.

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Re:"I never saved anything for the swim back" by nostrademons on Tuesday March 25, 2008 @09:45PM (#146413)

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/?SlowDownToSpeedUp

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?SharpenTheSaw

BTW, this'll be familiar to anyone that's learned a musical instrument. The way you get speed in music is to slow down the tempo until it's at a level where you can easily play the piece (with a new piece, this is often 1/4 or less of actual speed). Then you work on control and rhythm only, until you've got it perfect. Then gradually bump up the tempo for as long as you can maintain control. If you start getting sloppy, slow it down and practice more at the lesser tempo. Eventually, you'll be able to play it perfectly at tempo, with a good reserve if you wanna speed it up for effect.

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