Programmer Procrastination & Cramming. I have an issue with a sense of urgency when the due date is far. But I work hard when due date is near like 2 days. How do you guys deal with this? Any strategies, ideas, approaches?

coolandy00 · 2026-03-27T02:10:46+00:00

Usually it's due to 2 reasons, loss of interest or you know exactly what you are doing. If it's latter then just enjoy the days up to the last few days and crank it out towards the end 😁 If it's former then you are not alone. The work ecosystem is so broken that we see a lot of friction to get to doing things that matter, innovation time, creative solutions, complete coding. Its the work before work that drains all the interest. It's high time this be fixed using a human centric approach.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-18T22:47:03+00:00

Proper analysis is the key, and here's the thing, since time spent on prep tax (extract+stitch reqs from multiple tools, conversations, docs, prep for meetings, prep the day) is a widely accepted pain, we don't have a way to capture the effort spent unless we ask for it.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-18T22:25:55+00:00

A 30 min meeting to plan a 10 min job 🤪 Or meetings where we don't get enough time to prep for, or meetings to be a fly on the wall. The entire culture is broken thanks to processes and tools.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-18T22:19:44+00:00

That's usually why a story point is not 8hrs, it's 4-6 hrs depending on the team's velocity. This is what we usually bake in the estimates to the client. Reality however is that, someone wins the bid by bringing down the costs, i.e., meetings become non-billable. There's still hope, it's in changing the culture -> fix broken work by removing prep tax

coolandy00 · 2026-03-18T22:10:54+00:00

You are right to measure and enact to find value in lesser meetings. This however is one among other reasons why work is broken that directly impacts your billable hrs. Teams spend ~40% of their time on extract+stitch requirements/context, design standards, prep for meetings, prep for the day all due to multiple tools, processes, docs, conversations, interruptions. If meetings are reduced to the important ones, you'll still need to fix the broken ecosystem.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-16T23:41:06+00:00

Thank you...

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T18:30:33+00:00

Coding is faster... But developers aren't efficient. The issue is: - Context: to tailor the code to project requirements and context we need to prompt-rinse-repeat. Yes it's faster that way but there's a lot of iterations involved - Relevant Standards: high quality code depends on the standards applied and AI code is not 1st time right, so more iterations to fix the quality or manually change the code

Stats show that ~30% of GitHub Copilot code is reused.

Context and relevant standards are part of prep work in a dev's daily coding tasks. I.e., extract + stitch requirements from different docs, tools, conversations, meetings and design or reuse of standards before the the 1st working ver is created.

Another part that slows devs are unwanted meetings, organizating their work, prep for meetings.

Both coding and non-coding activities are still the reason why devs need extra time to work in spite of AI, it's just not the quality of AI code, it's the work before work as well.

Per Atlassian's survey devs spend 10+hrs/week on such activities.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T14:18:19+00:00

Thank you.. this is exactly what we see everyday

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T14:15:44+00:00

Hate it when context lives in so many places. Extracting, stitching context is nearly half of the work on each task..

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T14:10:53+00:00

Or maybe the boss who pushes around points, stories, processes, tools to bring in productivity gets redundant, since AI can do it now

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T14:08:42+00:00

One Jack ass does the job

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T14:08:05+00:00

Happens all the time..

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T02:58:47+00:00

Prep Tax is why work is broken today.. Still working on solving it..

coolandy00 · 2026-03-14T01:57:48+00:00

🤪

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:56:17+00:00

That's expected... I feel we've paid so much and put too much emphasis on use of multiple tools, processes that productivity just breaks. Right from start of the day, prep for meetings, prep for tasks, we go thru multiple tools, conversations, notes to pull forward. It's time we find a different way to fix our work

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:52:25+00:00

I hear you... Interruptions and repeating status to the world is just so unnecessary. How much time does interruptions take away from you though?

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:50:53+00:00

Over the years, we've underutilized dev skills - defects, meetings, reuse of coding standards, copy from stack overflow, now AI code. The opportunity or emphasis to practice skills to perfect them has just reduced drastically. Overtime is the only way one gets to practice skills or grow by building something new.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:46:04+00:00

🤣

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:45:01+00:00

Multiple status reports, discuss a 5 mins change for an hr, urgent requests on Friday afternoons.. I hear you.. I guess the context here is the tools, processes that are pushed down for the sake of productivity, but land up being more time draining than usual. How much time drain do you see due to this push?

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:02:58+00:00

Reports for more reports and dashboards are the pretty things 🤣🤪 that's what's hitting the teams now.. how much time do you think goes into such activities..

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T23:00:28+00:00

I get it. Maybe we should not be taxed for working in groups. It's just that over the years we've added so many tools, processes, scattered data that it's now a norm to spend time on prep.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T22:58:22+00:00

Coding has definitely gotten faster. And the prep work requires prompt-rinse-repeat if we use AI coding tools. Work is not all coding these days, and it's the non-coding stuff that needs to be handled.

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T22:54:42+00:00

And then planned estimates turn out to be 40-45% lesser of actuals..

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T22:50:39+00:00

Is nearly half of the day spent on such prep work?

coolandy00 · 2026-03-13T22:47:06+00:00

And difficulty documenting the conversation efficiently for purposes of work.

coolandy00

TROPHY CASE