#9 Hatched Chickens

I’m big on finding efficiencies in my workflow, it’s kind of why I started HyperDraft. That said, there’s a rabbit hole you can fall through when you’re trying to optimize for efficiencies. When I first heard my friend Louis Marshall use the phrase “min-maxer” I got it immediately. A “min-maxer” is a person who tries to optimize either a particular task or everything that they do to gain a desired result. It’s the person that’s looking for the perfect diet, the perfect amount of sleep, the perfect coffee, the perfect everything. They are extremely focused on a perceived optimal end result. The interesting thing is, by focusing so much on the result, they lose focus on the process because they are constantly focused on turning the dials. There’s a danger to this approach because you start becoming easily distracted and have a hard time focusing in on process from a higher level without being given constant feedback. This is the proverbial missing the forest through the trees.

I’ve noticed this when I’m coding and I’m constantly compiling code (the processing of having the computer interpret the code that I’ve written in order to build a program that can be run on the system). It takes a few minutes each time I compile and I have to wait there while the computer does its thing. In web development, there’s a relatively new (let’s say in the past decade) of allowing for “hot reloading” of web pages and web apps. Hot reloading is the process of compiling code constantly as the it is being updated or saved by the developer in order to present what would be the final work product to the developer. This allows programmers to make tweaks to the code and see the results instantly.

In cooking terms, think of it like a chef tinkering with their recipe and every change immediately starts the processing of generating an end product for them to taste. Sounds convenient doesn’t it? Well, it is and it isn’t. It feeds our desire for instant gratification under the guise of helping us prevent issues in our code (or cooking) by allowing us to taste test the results. Here’s where the problem lies:

By focusing too much on the end result, you are not intensely focused on the process, and the process is what yields the end result.

When I find myself succumbing to the desire to constantly generate results to gain insight into whether or not my code works, I fall back to the process of outlining to avoid being mired in the minutiae of the results. This lets me think through the overall process — “ I am currently at Location A and need to get to Location D. Location B should look like this and Location C like this. Ok, A to B requires the following steps, and I expect the results from process A to B to look like this.” It may seem obvious (or tedious) but the process of outlining helps me streamline my development process. This keeps me from straying from a path and constantly course correcting. This also provides the added benefit of helping me of solving the problem non-linearly, so I can solve the problem of getting from B to C if I’m stuck on A to B.

So, whether you’re cooking or coding and find yourself not being as productive as you’d like, try putting away the laptop and hot reloading features. Outline your logic on paper. You might find yourself a great deal more efficient as a result.