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Time management essentially breaks down into two parts: Eliminating Distractions and Planning.
Planning begins with estimating and ends with scheduling. Long term scheduling won’t help you stay on task as well as short term planning. One method for this is The Pomodoro Technique. You can get some software to help you do the pomodoro technique.
Eliminating distractions has more to do with what you’re doing than with what others are doing. Checking email, answering the phone, instant messaging, social media, and internet browsing can typically be postponed.
There are some great tips in The 4-Hour Workweek
I also recommend that you try working from home or from a cafe near your office. It gets you away from the people who need your help, but can really wait, without completely isolating yourself.
Finally, keep track of what you spend your time on with Rescue Time.
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Estimating your workload can be tricky, but most management, marketing, and sales departments want to know when new features or bug fixes will be out so they can project where what they’ll be able to sell in the future.
You can estimate on the following scales:
- T-shirt sizes
- Fibonacci Numbers
- Algorithmic/Exponential scale
- Linear scale
You can estimate in several units of measurement as well:
- Points (Complexity)
- Hours
- Days
- T-shirt sizes
Overall, estimation can help you inform timelines, identify problems in features or your development cycle, and open discussion on tough features.
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Ron Stephens has been programming python as a hobbyist for the last 10 years. He’s a technologist, hobbyist, poet, and manager at a firm that makes hardware for satellites. He is the host of the python411 podcast and the awaretek podcast. He has tried many different languages including Perl, Ruby, Java, and Python.
During his exploration of programming languages, he has read and recommends:
When asked about what philosophies, approaches, and principles python developers adhere to he mentioned the Zen of Python.
We discussed podcasting and education. If you’re looking for Grammar Girl, click here.
If you want some python tutorials, check out Ron’s Tutorial page.
For new developers, Ron recommends:
For advanced developers, Ron recommends:
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Agile Retrospectives are a great way to keep your agile methodology on track. There are a lot of ways to do retrospectives. I go over my recent experience with retrospectives and discuss some of the things we did right and what I have learned over the last few weeks while researching this topic.
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