If any of my neighbours are spying on me today they might be wondering why I am working standing up by the window with my laptop on a chest of drawers. The reason is this article: “Sitting is killing you” (linked removed at content authors request, due to google backlink issues). I’m not getting all tin-foil hat after reading this, but I have been wondering what to do about my home “office” set up recently, and have been concerned about the amount of time I spend sitting (well slouching, if we are being honest) at a desk. I need to find the most comfortable height and see how I get on with it, so this blog post is being written standing up as the first of many experiments!
I think it’s fair to say I lost my developer mojo for a while earlier this year. I don’t think it was any one particular thing, maybe a combination of feeling slightly burned out, working on a few projects where I felt restricted and frustrated by the technology, which lead me to feeling dread instead of excitement at the prospect of a new project. I started to question whether I should be a developer and whether I should start to look into a career change.
Well luckily my mojo came back a month or so later – around the time that some changes in the scope for a project led me to using my own “micro” php framework instead of a large cumbersome one, to speed up progress. The initial feeling was one of failure that I had been beaten by the mysteries and learning curve that I had been trying to overcome, but this was soon overridden by the feeling of excitement about being able to create something.
It’s fairly simple – to get development satisfaction I have to feel creative in what i’m doing, and feel like i’m learning something. Churning out website after website using a monolithic framework or CMS does not give me that satisfaction. I can’t always choose my projects, so when I find myself working on stuff that doesn’t excite me, I have to make time to work on other stuff that does, no matter how busy I am.
It’s a principle google use with their “20% time” – where employees can work on their pet projects. It’s not just to indulge people – the creative energy generated by letting geeks do their stuff spills over into the day to day work. I don’t have an employer to allow me this privilege, so I have to make time to do it myself. I’m hoping some good stuff comes out of this – but as a by-product rather than the goal.
Nick Morgan 2011-05-19 10:05:02
I know the whole subject can seem quite trivial but to anyone who is a) deskbound at work and b) needs to focus for extended lengths of time in the same position I think it is pretty important to be able to move around. My experience is that sitting at a desk seems to make me want to stay sat down and I end up collecting all my desk oriented activities together. Anything that can force me to move around has got to be a win.
Robin Layfeild 2011-05-27 10:04:28