You can solve this in a simple way: Spend a fixed percentage of your time on fixing your tools, the rest on the actual work. The fixed portion should not exceed 20% or so.
Like that you stay productive and you incrementally improve your work environment.
Obsessing over your work environment is just as counterproductive as obsessing over the work itself. A healthy balance is the main ingredient to increasing productivity in the longer term.
But how long do you spend setting up the time-tracking process that ensures you don't exceed you 20% time frame in a given day/week/month/year? And don't you also have to track that time as tool-time? How do you even do that without your time-tracking system up and running?!
Facetious, i know - but this is a confessional, the OP is basically saying he isn't capable of separating his time out like that - he would get drawn into the optimization process - like an addiction and blow past he's 20% allotment.
If a person is able to maintain the don't go over 20% of your time on optimization then by definition they aren't dealing with the same issue as the OP.
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You can solve this in a simple way: Spend a fixed percentage of your time on fixing your tools, the rest on the actual work. The fixed portion should not exceed 20% or so.
Like that you stay productive and you incrementally improve your work environment.
Obsessing over your work environment is just as counterproductive as obsessing over the work itself. A healthy balance is the main ingredient to increasing productivity in the longer term.
But how long do you spend setting up the time-tracking process that ensures you don't exceed you 20% time frame in a given day/week/month/year? And don't you also have to track that time as tool-time? How do you even do that without your time-tracking system up and running?!
Facetious, i know - but this is a confessional, the OP is basically saying he isn't capable of separating his time out like that - he would get drawn into the optimization process - like an addiction and blow past he's 20% allotment.
If a person is able to maintain the don't go over 20% of your time on optimization then by definition they aren't dealing with the same issue as the OP.
But how long do you spend setting up the time-tracking process that ensures you don't exceed you 20% time frame in a given day/week/month/year
Well, lots of devs have 10 sided dice...
But seriously, this could be determined stochastically per hour or pomodoro.
And for that matter, doesn't 1/5 of your time spent like this sound like you went down the rabbit-hole already?
That depends on what your expected payoff is.
That's what I need - a system to ensure the optimal divide between the time I spend working on optimizing my system and doing actual work! ;)
The point of the article was not to waste time/energy doing that, I thought.