Animedoro, rough drafting, and chapter a day for productivity

I was browsing YouTube and this video popped up as trending

I found it really cool and wish I had seen this when I was in college. The basic idea of working for 40-60 minutes and then taking a 20 minute break to watch a relaxing anime (or show) is way more appealing than the Pomodoro technique that I have been exposed to in the past. I have already implemented this productivity style for many weeks and added one modification to suit my life style. That modification was to add working out during those 20 minutes while an anime or show is playing. This is an example of my best and most productive 8 hour workday day:

1. Completed current sprint's tasks 2 days ahead of schedule
2. 100 pushups
3. 100 squats
4. 30 vertical rows
5. Full Pilates routine
6. One chapter of "Effective Engineer"

I not only was able to take care of my work, I was able to take care of my physical and health goals as well which I too often neglected in favor of saving time.

There is another idea proposed in the video, which was a concept called rough drafting. To me, that means to incrementally improve on your work, not necessarily rush to get it done. I really enjoyed applying that concept and it has allowed work and coding to not feel as stressful. I feel the best work usually comes out at the most unexpected time of inspiration and trying to force that actually leads to the opposite result.

Finally, the last concept I want to talk about, is doing at most a chapter a day in any individual educational or self-improvement book. I have so many books to read in my personal library that it becomes daunting to read all them all. I experimented with just stopping after reading a chapter in any particular book before switching to another and I ended up reading a lot more than I ever had since college. If you are interested in reading more, I recommend to give that a try.

Recently, I got a copy of the book "8 To Be Great" written by Richard St. John. I plan to read through and adapt the 8 successful traits into engineering as a guide to give inspiration to fellow engineers who are brainstorming ways to become the best engineers they can be.