I formulated for myself how I manage to get a lot done (actually, I don’t). It’s not a fact that it will work for others. But still, here are the points:
1. Do what you like. You need to do what your heart is in at the moment. If you force yourself, efficiency drops tenfold.
2. Sports anger as a catalyst. You need to treat failure not as a tragedy, but as a personal insult from the task. Anger is the quickest way to enter a state of hyper-focus, turning “didn’t work out” into “oh really, now watch me”.
3. Seamless switching. As soon as energy in one task has waned or the task is done — leap to the next funnel that beckons right now. It might not always be work-related. For instance, I might play the piano, draw, program, write a book, or do work.
4. Completing. Take a chunk that you can chew and bring it to a plus-minus norm. Don’t drop it midway, while there’s still momentum. Finish and refine – that’s a task for the next “high”.
5. If you can’t break through a wall — don’t smash your head against it. Mark the point of stopping, say “I’ll remember you” and retreat to return with a different tool or a different mood. The main thing is to keep this “open gestalt” in active memory and not tuck it away for too long.
6. An external promise is sacred. If you promised a deadline by Monday, personal comfort (like sleep on Saturday) is sacrificed. This pain teaches you to filter promises in the future. Your word must have physical weight.
7. The plus one principle. Always do a bit more than expected of you. How much more is a question of context, resources, desire, but the delta should be tangible.
8. The principle of useful output. Any product of activity should be in a form that can be delivered. The English word for this is ‘deliverable’. Simply getting to grips with something is not a product. But understanding it and documenting it in Confluence is a product. A letter, an article, code – anything.
9. “You gotta, Fedya, you gotta.” Perform mandatory ceremonies and necessary bureaucracy as an inevitable evil that simply has to be done anyway. Need to pass some stupid training every six months? Allocate an hour for it and suffer through.
10. Have the best tools for the task. If you don’t have them, strive to possess them and learn to use them.
Three more principles, which seem unteachable but are very helpful:
0. Don’t get irritated and don’t irritate others.
1. The ability to instantly separate the important from the junk, and the urgent from the hustle. This is an intuition that only develops with years “in the field”. And total curiosity – the ability to find excitement in any topic. This applies to everything – including who to talk to and when to go to the store.
2. If you’re bored — it means you just haven’t dug deep enough. Interest is a matter of immersion scale and having the right people, books, YouTube videos, etc. Eventually, there simply are no topics that seem boring.
3. Lifetime learning principle. Any project is a legal excuse to become smarter at someone else’s expense. Look for what ignites you in routine and what you’ve long wanted to learn. See a task that would be more elegantly solved with a script in Haskell, a language you’ve never seen before? Then today, we are learning Haskell. True, enthusiasm should not bury the deadline. You need to deliver results, even if the experiment completely fails. Promise foundation first, then decorate with the new skill.
These principles have a downside. For instance, I progress very slowly in playing the piano because good progress requires two other principles that don’t “get along” with my principles above:
1. The “one more lap” principle. If you sat down, and got tired after an hour, you need to spend two more, and then you can get up.
2. The “clenched teeth – go” principle. If you’ve taken on learning something, do it regularly, preferably at the same time, and if necessary, through “I don’t want to”.
Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev. 