"Just 20 more minutes..."
On taking notes at the end of workday
Here's a really good post by Alikhil that probably resonates with a lot of us:
One evening, I felt like I had finally cracked a tricky part of our infrastructure. I thought, “Just 20 more minutes and I’ll finish it.” Of course, those 20 minutes stretched into well over three hours. By the time I left the office, I was tired, hungry, and frustrated—without any real progress to show.
Instead of doing this, he argues that we should take those 20 minutes and jot down notes for tomorrow.
I've adopted this practice here and there over the years, and occasionally I need a reminder like this to try it again. It's been my experience that I get better results by doing so, but the urge to do "just one more thing" is hard to overcome.