Be lazy for five minutes

Context switching is your enemy. Sometimes you just slow down in order to really crush work. I'm switching projects or starting up a slow morning. I really need to refocus my brain. If I jump from one task to the other, the outcome is going to be frenetic and disconnected. Whether you're starting your day or starting work on a new project, it looks exactly the same inside your brain. I'm able to reduce context switching cognitive load and convert my time into highly productive sessions in a few minutes by following these simple techniques.

Developers can struggle with sometimes is "Hey, there's lots of work to be done" but you get stuck in the noise. You start doing other things that priorities creep up.When that happens you know you could either let yourself be succumbed to the thousand things that you could potentially be doing in one day or you can practice with a ruthless focus. What needs to be done in the lap in the next 12 hours?

Reset - Do Nothing 3 Min

What I do is I set a clock for 3 minutes and I don't do anything. No music, nothing. And just sit and I tell myself that I can't do anything for five minutes. Try doing that.

But before you go in there, think of the one thing you have to do that day for work or for your job or for whatever it is that's probably difficult and you might not want to do it but I want you to focus on that. For 3 minutes I need you to think about that but you're not allowed to do anything else. No music, just silence. Just sit there eyes closed not touching anything. No external stimulus.

Go ahead I'll wait

That exercise can be incredibly painful. I close my eyes. I looked up at the little timer I had set and I could see that one minute had gone by but it felt like five hours. Okay if you're like me you heard every creak in the house, every water drip, you saw every blinking light at your desk potentially. While you try to focus on some work, it's easy to be distracted even in the silence of 3 minutes

Visualize - 2 Min

Now that you've reset your brain a little bit, what I want you to do is now I want to visualize the one task in your job is to produce. I want you to think about it what the outcome is, how amazing it is. And visualize and really feel how good it feels. Only think about this for 2 minutes. What is the impact? How are people going to thank you or praise you for the work that you did? Or what's the good it's going to bring out? Make this emotional more than anything.

Actionable - 1 Min

Now, write down a goal that you can accomplish in 10 minutes. That means it should only take you 5 minutes and then another 5 if you have problems. This is what I call your little baby starter goal. You do something really simple. Write a simple user story for this. Here's a simple example.

"As a developer, I would like to have a logo added to my header component in my application so it shows the brand and has a good title and subtitle for what we're doing."

Minimize

1. Get your phone off your desk and put it on focus

2. Close all your other windows down. No I didn't say minimize. I said close them.

3. Use a tool like Stream Deck to configure everything to really cut down your cognitive load