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Comment by MarkLowenstein | Hacker News Reader

Look at this like playing Tetris. If you're at the bottom on a fresh screen, you can lay out nice layers and drop that vertical in for four-liners at a pretty regular pace. Optimal results, and you can handle the less-convenient pieces and unfortunate sequences predictably. Get in the middle ground, though, and it gets stressful to keep it under control. You make mistakes which worsen the problem. Once you're stacked near the top there's not much that can save you.

So it is with the time you allow for scheduled activities. You want quality and predictability? Slow down.

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I really like this comparison - it conveys the feeling of urgency and overwhelm without dramatizing. Will be using it. Thank you.

I like your analogy, but how do you find the perfect balance? I mean, you can play tetris at level 1 forever, but it is not ideal for productivity (unless you are really at level 1). You have to reach the level that you are comfortable enough with the speed of the falling pieces.

Is it experience? You have to review the tasks periodically? You use some kind of metric?

Sometimes I think I'm too slow, and sometimes I'm too overwhelmed and I only acknowledge it after some non-trivial time passes (or, at least, that is my perception).

Well in the classic Tetris community, this used to be the central aspect to pay attention to during plays: how conservative (burning often to play low) vs how aggressive (building high to maximise Tetris rate) people play. This is traditionally impacted by the score difference: you play dangerously to catch up to your opponent. This probably translates to a useful productivity metaphor.

But in recent years there's been an escalation in agressivity, mostly due to hypertappers. This probably translates to the modern wide spread of hero coders; the analogy continues with hypertappers getting their hands burned out young.

The real interesting change in classic Tetris is with rolling (distributing the load on 4 fingers), which allows people to play even higher and more dangerous but without destroying their hands. I don't really know what metaphor this brings us though.

One way the analogy breaks in an interesting way is that you _know_ when you're able to hypertap, whereas it's pretty easy to convince yourself you're a hero coder for long enough to leave those who follow a total mess.

Excellent summary!

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