Freek.dev

A Berkeley Haas study of 200 employees found that AI makes workers take on more, not less. The productivity gains are real, but exhausting.

Read more [hbr.org]

James Brooks recently started a podcast on mental health. In the second episode Matt Stauffer was interviewed.

This week I’m speaking to Matt Stauffer. Matt is a partner at the web agency Tighten, developer, teacher, podcaster and author. Matt and I speak about his experiences with anxiety and depression, being a great employer and other things!

Read more [happy-dev.transistor.fm]

Don't try to manage your colleagues too much.

Employees want to be managed by people who empower them, not manage every bit of their day. The better you get at hitting the right balance between oversight and autonomy, the more likely you are to win long-term fans who will advocate for you as your career progresses.

Read more [forge.medium.com]

Personally, when I want to work on something I just turn off all notification on my Mac.

Probably reached for the phone. Turned off the alarm. Glanced at the time. Scrolled through the Slack notifications. Went through the emails. You will likely continue doing it throughout the day, approximately 2,617 more times, according to some studies. We all do it, and despite all the virtues of digital minimalism, completely giving up those habits is extreme and, arguably, unnecessary. Yet we live in a culture obsessed with productivity and these harmless distractions are wreaking havoc on it.

Read more [blog.nuclino.com]

Benjamin Eberlei wrote a post on why and how he got rid of Slack in his company.

We have moved away from Slack at Tideways over the last three months, because I found Slack is already annoying, even with just a four person team (plus the occasional freelancer). For me, it disrupts deep work phases and knowledge lost in the depth of chat history.

Read more [beberlei.de]

Andreas Creten, co-founder of madewithlove, wrote a good blogpost about a few aspects of their company culture.

There are three requirements for making good products: developers with the right skills, decent product management and ideal working conditions. The reason why so many of us wear headphones has to do with the latter. As a software developer, the last thing you want is distraction: colleagues talking to each other, the sound of a coffee machine, a printer and so on. Distraction prevents you from getting “in the zone”, a state of mind in which you deliver your best work.

https://medium.com/we-are-madewithlove/why-is-everybody-wearing-headphones-522a61de27ca

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In the beginning of the year people tend to compile lists with everything they want to achieve in the next 365 days. But sometimes, instead of wanting to learn or start something new, it's also good to leave an old thing behind.

A little over 2 years ago I started a weekly newsletter for Linux & open source users, called cron.weekly. Today, I'm sending the last issue in what is probably going to be a pretty long time. I need a break.

Here's why.

tl;dr: I've got a wife, 2 kids, a (more than) full time job, 2 other side projects and a Netflix subscription. For now, cron.weekly doesn't fit in that list anymore.

https://ma.ttias.be/im-taking-break-cron-weekly/

There's really no shame in calling it quits on some things to make place for fresh activities. The last couple of months I've seen some people close to me stop doing things they were once passionate about, but didn't fully enjoy anymore. And in each case it turned out for the better.

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James Long gives some solid advice: always keep in mind that there are a lot of things that are more important than coding.

The goal of free open source development is empowerment: everyone can not only use code for free but also contribute to and influence it. This model allows people to teach and learn from each other, improves businesses by sharing work on similar ideas, and has given some people the chance to break out and become well-known leaders.

Unfortunately, in reality open source development is rife with problems and is ultimately unsustainable. Somebody has to pay the cost of maintaining a project.

http://jlongster.com/Why-Frequently-Absent-Open-Source

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Eric L. Barnes explains what Computer Vision Syndrome is, and what you can do to avoid it.

In no point in human history have people been staring at bright screens just a few feet from their face like they are today. Computer vision syndrome or CVS (not to be confused with Concurrent Versions System) is one side effect to this, and it’s affecting millions of people.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reports computer vision syndrome affects about 90% of the people who spend three hours or more a day at a computer, which means almost everyone in our industry is susceptible.

https://laravel-news.com/2016/09/computer-vision-syndrome/

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Yiannis Konstantakopoulos, a designer at Porcupine Colors, wrote an excellent piece on workaholism.

Workaholism is often confused with hard work. Some people who work on the Web seem not only to disregard its dangers, but to actively promote it. They see it as a badge of honor — but is it really? On the contrary, it’s a serious issue that can damage Web teams.

Before we get started, let’s make one thing clear: A “workaholic” is someone who is addicted to work, someone who is out of balance and out of control. Their addiction can make them work for 12, 14 or even more hours a day, every day. No weekends, no vacations, just work. Soon, they neglect their family, friends, health, sometimes damaging them all irrevocably.

https://medium.com/@porcupine/dealing-with-workaholism-on-web-teams-d6e156d82a08#.jyzawevsb

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Developers can appear very unproductive at times, sitting staring at the screen with our headphones on and very little in the way of keyboard clackety-tap. This however is when we are doing our thinking, when we are building up, adding to and rearranging the mental model of how our code will work. This is the biggest and hardest part of development.

Imagine how it feels to have that interrupted at random by a telephone call or somebody walking over to talk to you. It’s horrible.

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Often, when I’m able to slip into a state of flow while coding, I will produce more in a single afternoon than I could in several days of non-flow. Yet this is often an elusive state to obtain. Luckily, research dedicated to this topic in recent decades offers some help. Here we’ll look into both the stages of flow and how to obtain the prerequisites for flow, making it possible in the first place.

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