I can only speak for myself in this one, I have seen other people master the balancing world of development without much ado, in my case, is being a lifetime of learning the way that works for me, hopefully my few tips can help you out or amused you to know that I’m still struggling in that battle.
The biggest problem for any developer is that is consumed by the project that works at every single time, developers like to put all their energy to deliver a complete solution using the framework and tools setup to accomplish that task. Saying that, is difficult to come up for air to see what’s around. The biggest sign you have that problem is that after working in a huge project, you realize how many things you have been missing.
Looks like every project always comes with a hard deadline, never seen any project without it, just finding the way to find any other time is an impossible mission.
In previous years I have been consumed by technology and getting that project to completion, now I find myself organizing myself better on the task at hand, being able to break down the tasks to small manageable pieces that will give me a better overview of the complete solution as well as the project deadline. I personally try to have more than one project at the same time, allows me to switch gears and pull myself out of not being consume by the project.
If you can, try to work in project with different tools and technologies, so if you have a ASP.NET project, try to get a dynamic language project consuming other kind of data. Will allow you to completely force you to think differently and not to confuse them. I have mistake before to different ASP.NET projects in C#!
Something really hard to do is to leave a task not completed, I wouldn’t recommend to add time schedules, I would stay on the task until is being completed before changing projects, that will allow you to start with a clean sheet. Not finishing a task for the lack of time, or because you are pushed to move to another project, will cause you distractions. Some developers get agitated when they don’t have the time to fix a bug or something is not working the way they would like.
Overextending yourself is normally what has happen to me, I never say no to a project really, when I get the chance to sit it out or dance, I always dance, probably my advice to myself should be, I need to learn when sitting that one out is the right choice.
I personally use the Windows 7 post notes that you can create for all my tasks, so I can always see them in the desktop, every single task will be added as a new note, I’ll reorganize them in the desktop by priority. Before Windows 7 notes I use actual post-its.
All and all, I keep myself interested by multiple projects, scheduling those are the hardest part, and in the overall schedule of work, family and my time for my pet projects is probably the hardest schedule of all. I guess at that point becomes priorities instead of scheduling. I wonder why I never finish any of my pet projects.
How do you keep your sanity as a developer when not all work is a workflow? I would like to hear from you and what do you use to organize yourself.
Cheers
Al