Programmers who work 4 hours a day

Everyone is familiar with this rule: go to work at five o'clock P.M. a.m., sit in front of a computer, compile a program for a day, and go home from work at a.m. Today, thanks to Timothy Ferriss for working 4 hours a week, I began to rethink how to work and how to turn myself into a more efficient programmer.

Recently, I made a big adjustment to my daily routine from Monday to Friday. For a long time, I have been working and resting like all other programmers. But in the second half of 2011, I started an experiment to see what kind of schedule can make me more efficient. This experiment is still in progress, and I do not strictly abide by the experiment rules as soldiers do-for example, I also want to get up 20 minutes earlier or 20 minutes later-but the current schedule is as follows:

AM to AM: meditation, writing, Goal Review, breakfast with family

Getting up at is not as difficult as you think. Each person's personal situation is somewhat different, but the human body basically needs 7 to 9 hours of sleep every day. One way to ensure you have enough sleep is to wake up without an alarm. You only need to go to bed early and then you can wake up.

When I get up, I will immediately drink 16 ounces of water-not coffee! I have been drinking coffee for a long time, and I don't really want to drink it. In fact, I feel better if I don't drink coffee. Then I will take a shower; this will make me feel the beginning of a fresh day.

I meditate for 30 minutes every morning. The best time for meditation is before sunrise or before sunrise, that is, before in the Western world. I don't want to explain why meditation is good for you; there has been a lot of research online. If you want to find a book about meditation, I recommend meditation for Dummies. Although the title is strange, it is the best book I have ever read.

After meditation, I will spend 30-45 minutes writing a blog. I generally write 500 to 800 characters. I found that the pen was written immediately after meditation, usually in one breath and written smoothly. In addition, the brain goes through a night of rest, and the State is very good. It is very good to clear all the accumulated things in the brain before the attention is transferred to other transactions. A skill in writing: This time is used as a preliminary cleaning of the brain. Do not conduct research or editing. These things will be done later.

Then it is the to do list time. I will view emails, Weibo, LinkedIn, and so on, and arrange for the next step to do the task. Speaking of tasks, I followed GTD's approach, and I used omnifocus to manage my life. I installed it on iPad, iPhone, and MacBook Air (I'm a fan of Apple. Yes. As a to-do management software, omnifocus is a little expensive, but because my whole life is related to it, the price is also worth it. Let's take a look at the to-do list and think about the expected goals of each thing-everything, from the small things to the long-term goals. Each entry in the list has a target. If there is no target, I will delete it.

Next is the breakfast time. There are a lot of health guidance you can learn from about when to eat breakfast and what to eat. I tried a variety of things. I found that those rich in cellulose, low carbon, and high protein are the most suitable for me. Have you tried oatmeal with peanut butter? Great! I also like to eat some fruit and have some tea. Also, I try to have breakfast with my family. Sometimes things can follow this kind of desire, but sometimes they won't. My goal is to continue this year.

AM to AM: 4 hours of programming time

This is my programming time. Four hours a day may make you feel pitiful, but I find that I have done more things in these four hours than most people do in a week. Studies show that people with fixed work schedules are more efficient than those who work randomly. For me, this fixed time is from to every day. All I have to do during this time is programming and not doing anything else. There are several basic principles:

First, turn off all communication facilities, such as phones, emails, and chat tools. No distractions. You can keep a method for a few people to contact you to prevent emergencies. Those who need to contact you for urgent matters have their own methods, and I have never encountered such a problem. I even taught my wife that she is often used to responding immediately to all requests and told her to respect my 4 hours. You should do only one thing during this time. Never do five or six tasks at the same time.

Second, do not leave a rest time in the middle to view emails or access the Internet, or do other similar things. The reason is: In an hour, I can develop X features. If I work for four hours in a row, I find that my output is not 4 times, but 8 or 16 times. When you concentrate on something, I believe you have experienced this experience. This is what we call the flow state of the brain. I plan to write more articles about flow in my blog later.

So why not apply such a system to the entire 8 hours of work? This is because the efficiency of a person is limited. Human brains are the same as muscles. Can you exercise on a treadmill for 8 hours? Just like our muscles, the brain needs to rest from time to time. This limitation varies depending on the individual. By trying and following the mistakes I made, I found that my limit time was 4 hours.

Another thing to mention is that I didn't set an alarm. When I feel tired and my work efficiency begins to drop, I stop working. Sometimes I only work 3 hours, sometimes I work 5 hours, and 4 hours is the average.

I work at home to avoid disturbing myself. If you need to work in the office, check whether the management department allows you to put the most efficient time at home. When you go to work, you will be able to offset the benefits of doing yoga and meditation in the morning. After the busy hours and office hours, your nerves become tense and the effect of meditation disappears completely. Working at home is certainly more efficient.

One o'clock P.M. AM to AM: Fitness, lunch, shopping

I need to exercise fitness every day. John J. ratey's book "Spark: the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain" demonstrates the benefits of daily exercise. If you want to know the scientific mechanism of exercise to improve brain functions, you can read this book. Do not exercise the same thing or even not go to the same gym every day. I do yoga three times a week in a yoga studio. I have two days of spinning classes in a spinning room, two days of weightlifting in the gym, and I have a coach in the gym. The coach has helped me a lot. If someone pushes you like this, you will have more motivation.

I like sports in the gym because there is extra service. You can drop five towels at a time without worrying about complaints from your wife. You can take a shower for 30 minutes without worrying that someone is shouting. "Are you not finished yet? "... You often encounter such a problem at home.

I also developed a habit of shopping every day, usually in Whole Foods, a supermarket that is only walking away from my house. Why do I shop every day? In many countries, especially Asia, people go shopping every day, instead of buying things for two weeks at a time and storing them in the refrigerator or freezer at home. In this way, you only buy what you need to avoid waste. Most of the time, you will find something in the refrigerator that you don't know, And you suspect that it has been there for half a year. I have lunch outside. Whole Foods has a good salad buffet. Because I like Japanese food, sometimes I will come with Japanese sushi or lunch box.

One o'clock P.M. to: learning and communication time

I try to bring together some discussions and appointment times so that I don't have to go to the company every day. Generally, these tasks include meetings, interviews, reporting, guiding development, and code reviews. During this period, I will not do any development unless there are urgent bugs or special situations that need to be addressed.

I also spent a large proportion of my time learning. I spent a lot of time reading other people's things, from books to Borg, mostly programming-related things. I want to learn new things every day. The best way to keep this learning momentum is to take notes on what you have learned and mark the relevant knowledge. Software such as Evernote is suitable for such a task.

At the same time, I will check whether there are other products in the market. The most efficient software developer can solve the problem without writing a line of code. I don't want to repeat what others have already done. Therefore, it is advantageous to spend time on codeplex, GitHub, and component source websites.

I learned a little from my wife's hospital internship experience. New doctors will see a doctor every morning. In the afternoon, they will gather to discuss the various diseases and discuss how they should be diagnosed. For me, I will reflect on what I have done afterwards. I will rethink the problems encountered in programming in the morning, where I encountered any bugs, or how I reflected my performance in the report, or how to host a meeting. I tried to learn from mistakes to prevent them from appearing again.

Six o'clock P.M. pm to PM: Home time

My wife is a doctor and she is very busy at work, but we try to spend this time together. We will cook together. Then I will do my homework with my children. (The second-year students have so many homework. This is another topic. I will discuss it later .)

From 8 to 8: 30: Reflection and brain assignment

Instead of thinking about things at night, I just sat down and reflected on my daily life. If you spend 15 minutes reflecting on your day in a quiet place, you will be surprised to find that you have learned so many things and achieved such a great improvement.

Next, I will arrange my work for my brain. As we all know, when we sleep, our brains are constantly working. So you 'd better arrange some work for it. For me, the following things are very effective: I outline what I want to write the next morning. Just like writing a note. I found that writing it on paper is more effective than writing it on a computer.

Or, I will look at some programming/algorithm problems. Similarly, the framework is described on paper or written out. Surprisingly, you may find a solution in the morning! I wrote a picture of something like this in a neat, unformatted, and envelope-sized notebook. Writing on blank white paper makes me more inspired. I went to bed between and. The sooner the better.

This is my daily routine. Of course, some changes will happen when I go out, and I will spend a lot of time working on the way. I have not told you what I have done over the weekend. I will talk about it in future articles.

I 'd like to hear other people's stories about their schedules and how they improve their productivity.

Original English version: daily routine of a 4 hour programmer

Http://www.aqee.net/daily-routine-of-a-4-hour-programmer/.

Programmers who work 4 hours a day