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But after years I reckoned developers do not need to be motitvated, they are motivated when they start working – otherwise you wouldn’t have hired them, would you? They are actively demotivated. Companies need to stop demotivating them.

This quote was something that really struck home. I read the article titled "Developer Motivation and Satisfaction" while working at Kodak and during a time when was very unhappy in my position. Changes the company was making were causing enough strife within me to make me consider leaving.

My favorite quote is:

They don’t have to motivate their employees. They have to stop demotivating them.

This hit the nail on the head. I still loved what I was doing for Kodak, and I still loved working with my peers at Kodak. I just hated working for Kodak. Being forced to work in a certain manner and having certain tools and restrictions dictated to me without any explanation really rubbed me the wrong way.

The prime example was email. Everyone in the Kodak Victoria office read their email then filed it away in case it was needed later. We did a lot of design, documentaion, and customer bug investigation via email so it was a treasure trove to us. The IT department mandated that we could no longer store email more than 30 days, unless it was special then we could file it in a certain bucket that allowed it to live for 2 years. Oh, and we were also being restricted to 1GB of storage and no external PST file support.

Because of this I had to drastically change how I handled email putting a much greater emphasis on thinking about an email before filing it. This caused a larger amount of my day to be dedicated to email and this was something I did not like.

Soon after the article above, I read "Unchain the Office Computers!" on Slate.com.

It explained why these new restrictions were hurting my morale.

Here's why: The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively.

Another quote:

This jibes with Pink's argument that it's a sense of autonomy—rather than money—that drive employees to work hard. People work best, he argues, when they feel they're being left alone to do their jobs. But it's hard to feel that way if your computer is constantly throwing up roadblocks in your path.

Because of upcoming restrictions, many people in the office actively researched ways around them. That killed productivity for a while, but also made us hate departments within the company. This again is a morale killer.

As a tech worker who has suffered under these conditions I now feel free. I will no longer work for a large company with these crazy restrictions. I have seen the light. To all managers out there I say this: you have attracted some excellent motivated talent; don't screw it up by demotivating them.

Over the years I have had temporary issues with tendonitis. I've seen my doctor a couple times, but it never amounted to anything. For a few days I take some ibuprofen, adjust my workplace ergonomics slightly and the issue goes away.

A couple years ago I was having a bout of tendonitis, and I decided to mouse goofy. That is to say I switched my mouse to the left side of my keyboard. The first few days were very awkward, but I got used to it.

I also read this article on Lifehacker on why it is a good idea to mouse with the non-dominant hand.

The linked article on Lifehacker posits that doing this stimulate neural connections between the brain hemispheres. I don't know if I would go that far, but I haven't had a single flare up of tendonitis since I switched.

I find it fascinating that when I sit at my computer at home I immediately reach for the mouse with my right hand, and when I am at work I reach with my left. For me mousing with my left hand seems to put me in work mode.

Another Lifehacker article claims that you can boost your willpower and increse your stamina for focusing on tasks by brushing your teeth with your non dominant hand. I think I might try this some time just to do something different.

All on my own I came up with another non-dominant hand mind trick. Whenever I am warming up to play Ultimate, I catch with my left hand. Over the years I have gotten pretty comfortable catching with either hand. I started doing this since I found that there are times in a game where you can only catch with one hand.

A couple weeks back the office I work in lost the network connection. Technically we had a network, but DNS was slow to resolve, and we definitely couldn't get to the Internet.

I had a bit of an epiphany about how I work during this outage. I could still work slowly, but I certainly wasn't effective. I decided that I subconsciously solve problems.

My habits are to work for a while, but when I hit a stumbling block in what I was trying to accomplish, I would change contexts entirely and hit a blog, Twitter, or some other site for a couple minutes.

During this break from my work, my subconscious would solve the problem, or at least get me refocussed and when I resumed my task I would pick up and continue right where I left off.

Not having the Internet actually slowed my work down considerably (and not because I couldn't Google the answer).

Several productivity sites I frequent all suggest that the Internet is a distraction and it must be blocked to allow yourself to realize your full productivity. I don't fit that mould.

The other day on ThinkGeek I saw they had something called a Mimo Mini. This is a small gadget, totally USB powered, and highly geeky (I think). This gadget is a USB powered mini monitor. At 7 inches diagonally, it adds a bit more screen real estate.

On a whim I decided to buy one. After making the purchase, and waiting for my delivery, I got it set up.

Setup is extremely easy. Run the installer, click OK a couple times, plug in the monitor, and that is it. There are some tweaks you can do to arrange where WinXP thinks it sits, but other than that, you can start using it right away.

On my main monitor I used to run a Rainmeter system display. I also had to run a small utility to block windows from maximizing over it. I re-arranged my Rainmeter skin to fit on the Mini, and now I can maximize on my main monitor again.

I also run the Task Mangler on there too. This allows me to keeps tabs on what is eating up the most amount of RAM (usually this is Visual Studio, or SQL Developer). I am also keeping the minimal version of iTunes there too.

TechNewsWorld has a review ( warning: advert splash screen ), where they suggest a few other interesting usages. Twitter client, photoshop palette holder, Yahoo Widget holder, are all good ideas.

I've had the Mimo Mini for less than a week, but already I am loving it. I keep it in landscape mode, but it can also be swiveled to portrait mode.

One thing I have been experiencing at work lately is that my office is mostly comfortable, but not 100%. The things that bug me are crappy lighting (something I can change), and a finicky temperature.

Currently, the only lighting in my office is one crappy overhead fluorescent. I need to change this, and get a good full spectrum desktop lamp that I can move around to suit my needs. This is sheer lack of time that is prohibiting me from fixing this.

The temperature problem is tricky though. So far today I am comfortably warm and cozy. I am wearing a t-shirt, a thermal top, a hoodie, and a down vest. Yesterday my hands were cold all day, and this was a big distraction. The problem here is that I don't control the temp in my office alone. The control is outside my office, and affects 3 or 4 larger offices. Making myself warm makes others hot. Not sure if there is a compromise somewhere, but having difficulty typing because my hands are too cold is no good.

I find that I can get distracted by my environment. Cold hand and poor lighting make me think about ways to fix it, cause me to fixate on those problems instead of my work, and generally make me not want to go to my office. I think I need to fix this.

I got spoiled while working at VoiceMobility. I had my own office for a very long time. It was great, and I loved having my own office, a space I could call my own. I could close the door when I needed to think or to concentrate on my work. I could play music without using headphones. I had my personal space so I could call my doctor if I needed to, and not have someone else listen in to my conversation. It really was bliss. This setup allowed me to feel extremely comfortable at work, which is something that I feel is crucial to being productive. Allowing me to firewall myself from others was something that I really needed to do once in a while at VMI.

Moving to NewHeights I was placed into a pretty crappy cubicle. The lighting was horrible, the was no A/C in the summer, no heating in the winter, and it was cramped. The working conditions were pretty bad, and I think that my productivity showed this. Still, it was a place I could call my own. Then I got moved to a worse location. I was in a large cube with 3 others, but my desk was right beside the entrance to the cube and this made my back to the entrance. The directors office was right next door, so this lead to an endless stream of people, and an endless stream of interruptions. Again, my productivity took another nosedive.

My final workspace at NewHeights was in the same cubicle, but I had a new spot so I wasn't facing the door. It was a lot better, but the downside to a cubicle is the ambient noise. I had a great view, but I could still hear the conversations of others. It was adequate.

My move to Kodak brought me to another office. I am sharing this one with a long time friend, and so far it has been great. It is a corner office with lots of large windows that let in a lot of light. It is warm and inviting. I love working there. Since I share the office, I still wear headphones, but I have found that it is quite nice to have someone to talk to once in a while, and someone handy to ask questions of.

The point of this is that as an employee I like having a place I can call my own. It is essential that I am comfortable and that helps me to be productive. Minimal distractions and interruptions also boost productivity. Personal space is important to me, so having that back is great.

When I worked at VoiceMobility I was fortunate to have an office. I loved my office. It was my home away from home. It was my space to work in. It was comfortable. I controlled the lights, I controlled the temperature (to some degree), I controlled the sounds levels inside my office. The most important thing about my office was that it had a door.

When I really needed to get things done I could shut the door, and drown out the office sounds. I could turn up the music, shut out the outside world and concentrate. Co-workers seeing the door shut immediately knew I should not be disturbed.

When I left the voice mob I lost my office. NewHeights has offices for some developers, but not all. Many developers or QA people share offices. I think most software developement offices are like this, and I think it is a shame. Working in the cube that I have is way more distracting. Some days are definitely worse than others. The last few days I have found particularly bad as there have been hallway conversations on the other side of my cube wall. Aside: I need to be more assertive in those situations, and ask the people to move to a meeting room.

After moving to NewHeights I stumbled across LifeHacker. This website is dedicated to helping computer users to avoid the pitfalls of computer related distractions, and to get to the task at hand. It is a large collection of tips and tricks to enable to be "Getting Things Done".

After reading their article titled: Firewall your attention at the office, I have been thinking a lot about this topic. I have followed some of the sites tips, but this article really resonated with me.

Some tips I have taken away from this site are:
1) Automatically checking email happens every half hour. I turned off all notifications of new email (no popups, no sounds). In fact I disabled all "toast popups" that many apps seem to be fond of. I kept the ones that inform me of critical issues. I wish there was a way I could disable the windows system tray popups too. They are very distracting.

2) I use a feed reader to follow webpages and blogs. Only at certain times of day will I run RSS Bandit. This is configured to only update feeds once a day, except for some emergency information feeds, and all my internal to work feeds. While it is not running I resist temptation to start it.

3) I listen to music with headphones (added benefit: partially drowning out background noise). I work better to music, so this is definitely a win-win for me.

4) I use the "busy" status on MSN Messenger, and I set my phone to DND mode when I am concentrating. This doesn't always work as some people still MSN me, or just walk to my desk to ask me a question when I don't answer the phone.

5) I also try to arrive early to work. I find I can get a lot done while most of the office workers are not there. Less people around can only mean less possible distractions. Of course sometimes the resources I need are not there either, and that will always be a problem.

I think my biggest problem is teaching my co-workers. How can I easily (and nicely) tell everyone that when my headphones are on, my MSN is set to busy, to stay the hell away and let me work? Many people at my office don't run MSN, so can't see my status. Others don't phone or email their questions, but instead ask them face to face. I can't get around this one, and this is the most distracting to me (more in a second).

As far as regular background noise goes, this LifeHacker suggests noise cancelling headphones. I am tempted to try it, but the problem I see is wearing those headphones for several hours. I can't wear the ear bud style headphones for more than half an hour any more. How can these be more comfortable? Instead I have a pair of ear muff style headphones whose biggest problem is that my ears can't breathe, and get quite hot at times. Another LifeHacker article has a list of iPod etiquette for at work. Most are good rules (and common sense), but I know I break the one about "head bopping".

So, how do I re-inforce/teach co-workers when they can and can't interrupt me? Wearing headphones doesn't work. Phone on DND doesn't work. Busy MSN status doesn't work. Ignoring them while I concentrate doesn't work. Many of the upcoming interruptions I acknowledge the co-workers presence, but indicate that they will have to wait until I finish what I am doing. I'd love any tips/tricks anyone out there has.