Actually doing work - proof by blogging¶

Tags: nelenschuurmans, python

I’m a programmer. Which means it is not always clear when I’m working. What I mean is that, if I’m sitting behind my screen, I might be reading an article about postgres performance improvements, but I might also be reading the news. And clicking on my ipad might mean I’m keeping my python knowledge up to date by reading weblogs, but I might also be reading some comics. Typing furiously on my keyboard might indicate great productivity, but it also might indicate a long personal email.

The other way around, sitting nicely in the living room at home, clicking away on the laptop, might mean I’m relaxing by writing an update on my model railway work on a forum, but it might also mean I’m finishing off a work project in my own time.

“Doing research” is a potential problem for me. I’ve spend a ton of time reading about Ansible and on how to use it. But it was only when I actually started doing something with it that I started to wrap my head around it. So… just reading and thinking is dangerous to my productivity.

I want to be productive.

One of the simplest tricks I can use is to blog about it. Thinking about something for two days is fine, but I should at least get a blog entry out of it. Writing forces me to think things through. It focuses my thinking.

If I don’t blog for a full week, I’m probably not hard at work programming: otherwise I’d have encountered some dreadful mistake I made or some horrible bug, all of which are blog-worthy. Or I’ve started thinking too much about something without taking a higher-level view after a few days (again, resulting in a blog entry).

So… I’ll prove I’m working by blogging about it :-)