How do you get yourslef motivated

GaryWoodfine

When you're at the stage of a project, when all the hard, intricate stuff has been done, and all you're left with is all the labourious donkey craft?

Kind Regards, Gary

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Ed Poore

I pass it onto someone else ;P, or write a program to do it for me :rolleyes:

GaryWoodfine

Yeah I've managed to pass on work to the Junior! But my Senior Dev is off this week, so I've got to do some work!! Bland boring Web Work!!

Kind Regards, Gary

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R Giskard Reventlov

I think about my bank balance.

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Brady Kelly

I leave that kind of stuff until the eve of my deadline. That always proves quite motivating.

GaryWoodfine

LOL, thats how I feel

Kind Regards, Gary

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WillemM

I know the feeling, it's really hard to get yourself motivated when all the fun stuff is done. I'm sitting here with the same situation.. I guess it all comes down to getting things done as I don't have a junior to pass the boring jobs to.

WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "What? Its an Apple MacBook Pro. They are sexy!" - Paul Watson

Lost User

Just do something stupid, like play with whatever you can find on your desktop. That always works in the movies. :) Greets, Gabriel

Ennis Ray Lynch Jr

Send the rest to a Junior Programmer and go take flying lessons. Actually, I mix a lot of the laborious stuff in the middle to keep me fresh for the good stuff and with luck multiple projects allow some meat to go with the potatoes at all times.

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GaryWoodfine

My post count on CP has jumped by 50 this week alone, I normally only manage about 10 - 15 a week, but this week I've been on the forums alot!!

Kind Regards, Gary

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kubben

I find the issue is usually just getting started. Once you start the labourious stuff it is easier to keep going and just get it done. The sooner you start the sooner you will finish. Often I worry that the stuff I really don't want to start is going to take a long time. I often find that it takes a lot less time then I think it will. Ben

Dario Solera

I try to think about the whole project and how it is now beginning to work, finally. Anyway, I suggest you to do some boring work every day, so that you don't have to do it all together near the deadline.

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Marc Clifton

cykophysh39 wrote:

when all the hard, intricate stuff has been done, and all you're left with is all the labourious donkey craft?

That's a very interesting question. In my experience, it's hard to pass on that work to a junior programmer because the hard, intricate stuff requires a sophisticated architecture, which means that someone else (especially a junior programmer) may not fully understand how to work with it. There's a lot of architectural aspects that hide the requirements that are sometimes one step removed from the direct problem. Just as an example, you might be using some declarative code (XML is the rage for that), or you might have a lot of abstraction (interfaces) to plan for things like the maintenance phase, unit testing, mock objects, object factories, etc. These are things that a junior programmer may not fully understand how to work with. I've also noticed that a sophisticated (rich) architecture often means that there are different ways to code against the requirement. And it's always possible to ignore the architecture and create little code islands that are decoupled from the class model. The "best practices" for passing work on to someone else are hardly ever documented or explained, never mind reviewing the work to make sure that the new code leverages the architecture correctly. As a result, the senior programmers often architect themselves into a corner where only they can finish things up. And usually at this point in the project, deadlines and budgets have slipped, so there isn't much time to hold the hand of a junior person. Hand holding can take up as much time (or more!) as doing the work yourself. The psychological effect of working on drudge code starts to have an impact on the code quality too. I sometimes catch myself taking shortcuts because it's faster, ignoring the cool architecture that I've created. This is all particularly poignant as a consultant, when I'm the only person on the project, there is no junior programer, I'm my own code reviewer, etc. As the senior designer, moving into the actual coding phase requires that I wear many hats--coder, tester, reviewer, documenter. And it all gets overwhelming very quickly. Quality goes down, shortcuts are taken, mistakes are made, best practices are ignored, and the vision/mission is often obscured or momentarily lost. It is at this point that the true cost of a software project starts rearing its ugly head. To some extent, that provid

Phil J Pearson

My slef does not need to be motivated. ;P

Phil

The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily those of the author, especially if you find them impolite, inaccurate or inflammatory.

NormDroid

Who's slef, is it your friend? ;)

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Paddy Boyd

I find imaging the niggly, uncomfortable feeling that crops up when you get to a stage when you know you've not enough time and that you've only yourself to blame does tend to help... That and just popping the headphones on starting to batter away at it - starting's got to be the hardest part.

code frog 0

Exercise to the point of fatigue then add caffeine (in grams) iteratively until you feel ready to work/think once the shakes set in you should be about ready to declare yourself properly motivated.:-D

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the North, General of the Felix Legions, loyal servant to the true emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Father to a murdered process, husband to a murdered thread. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next. - Gladiator I work to live. I do not live to work. My clients do not seem capable of grasping this fact.

WillemM

Hehe, that's a good indicator for slow and boring projects ;P

WM. What about weapons of mass-construction? "What? Its an Apple MacBook Pro. They are sexy!" - Paul Watson

led mike

That's a great question! But I'm not motivated to answer it. ;P

led mike

peterchen

cykophysh39 wrote:

How do you get yourslef motivated

I just say, "Yourslef, our customers will love you for fixing this in time!" ;) Seriously: Get it done, get it away from my desk. But sometimes there are days where I just can't. Of yource, a better approach is to not do all the interesting stuff first, but "spread" a little, so when you have all interesting stuff done, you also have done most of theboring.

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