Is it normal for a programmer to be a workaholic, love routine, sometimes be tired and dumb about it?

Question

Work organization

My head seems to work (as I was convinced in the end), I can design architecture and I can also do mathematics (if I force myself), but there is a peculiarity, I like to work with my hands, even almost more than with my head.
I have a bunch of skills to repair everything and everything, and I do everything myself.
And apparently crazy patience is connected with this, including tolerance for routine.
When performing tasks such as manually manipulating data, colleagues try to build the process like programmers - here I will use Find-Replace, here is such and such a macro, here is such and such a tool.
And sometimes I do the same, and sometimes I prefer everything with handles and handles. I rarely even use Find-Replace. And even more so, you don’t always want to master some new “work accelerators”.
I think that this also affects the code that I write - I can not always understand that my code is inconvenient to read and inconvenient to work with, because I myself am a person who is "uncomfortable only to sleep on the ceiling", and colleagues- it's not like that.
Secondly, I don’t follow occupational hygiene, I can hardly sleep and work for weeks, while seemingly showing productivity, but doing everything is extremely stupid.
How to solve these problems?
And have you met such programmers?

Answer 1

I propose to summarize the problems in one and solve it.
The generalized problem is called discipline. Discipline is hard work for willpower, and so it is reduced to habit formation and rigid adherence and enforcement of what constitutes a habit.
You need to get into the habit of setting a hard time limit on any task .
Washing dishes, repairing something, reading a book, code, contributing to a pet / open source project, family - for everything you need to introduce a rule, devote at least N time per day / week / month.
The habit must be introduced gently and smoothly, starting with taking control and tracking the working day, then expanding the review by the day, and after a few weeks you can already take control of the week.
It may take more time, because the habit that maintains discipline requires you to call a spade a spade and not deceive yourself.
Productivity and busyness are often confused with productivity and effectiveness, and if the symptoms that you often confuse the first with the second are obvious to you, then it's time to stop and:
1) get back to the basics - re-read books that are fundamental to you, for example, for me this is Perfect Code, Extreme Programming and Time Management for System Administrators; if there are suspicions that instead of a pattern you are using an anti-pattern, then it's time for total work on the bugs;
2) start writing down each solution of the problem for the day, the most important thing is to indicate the start time andend time , if you do not keep a diary (in any form, a very generalized log of activities for the day is enough);
3) rest and breaks (coffee break, smoke break, break) must also be noted , and it is important not to confuse rest and pauses. Rest is focused on restoring the body after physical or mental stress, while breaks are focused on avoiding flow and alternating activities, which results in saving the resources allocated for the day.
For intellectual activity and engineering related to design, design, coordination, the flow is harmful, and you need to make sure not to forget to emerge. The alternation of activities and tasks allows you to accumulate stress more slowly, because a change in activity gives rest to different parts of the brain and parts of the body as a whole at different times.
The problem of burrowing into work/task is solved by introducing a strict limit on the duration of work. Set silent and vibration-free alarms on your smartphone with breaks of an hour + 8 minutes with a 5-minute offset to the next alarm. Later you optimize for yourself, it’s just important to enter the habit of putting everything on pause, throw everything out of your head on paper or in a text file and breathe fresh air for 5 minutes, drink tea, etc.
The problem with the greed of allocating time to optimize work is solved by the usual counter 1-2-3. If you are faced with a problem for the third time, then you are aware that there is a pattern, and since it is mathematically proven that optimization now will save time, then you calmly allocate time in your diary for optimization today.
As you begin to instill the habit, you may initially be demotivated by the amount of time you spend on trivial tasks and the amount of free time you have on a weekday. But you must understand, this is the power and strength of discipline: the time in the day is strictly limited, the physiological and intellectual resources for the day are strictly limited, every day you are in the store, where you are both a buyer and a seller, every day you have auctions, tradeoffs what I will do today, and what I am putting off, if I have been putting off the whole week, then why there is not enough time will be obvious if you keep a log, accounting for time wasting in your diary. This is the only way to understand whether the task is inadequate, or just a month is not suitable for this task.
You may also be confused by the numbers that will show you your productivity, but on the contrary, you should be glad that you have finally discovered the problem, it remains only to classify it and solve it; most often this happens because you are not fair to yourself, for example, to classify the fact that you solved the task you have strict rules, and you do not neglect the task from time to time, refine, detail, add subtasks, strive at every step at the ideal; at the same time, you have absolutely no check for the adequacy of the task, maybe you don’t need to solve it at all, there is no recalculation of deadlines - as a result, you have a double standard, when it’s very easy to set a task, how to hang a load on your neck, but it’s difficult to complete the task, because you need make it perfect. The way out is discipline, time limit.
In order not to overwork, you need to do only the most necessary right now, to take as few risks as possible at the current moment, to postpone making decisions as late as possible - but here you need to be able to call a spade a spade - it's one thing when you avoid risk , another thing is when you avoid responsibility. If you do not have a time limit, what else can make you ask for help or start working on mistakes, validate your knowledge, habits of yourself?
The time limit is the most powerful tool with which you can gain discipline and solve any organizational problems in your personal daily activities.

Answer 2

I can advise you to take one task (for example, in any CMS, add some kind of your own quantitative calculated server indicator before the text: "display the number of articles with a given word", for example) and let the programmers and you do it for a while.
See the difference in time and understand why it happened!

Answer 3

I can hardly sleep for weeks and work, while seemingly giving out productivity, but doing everything is extremely stupid.

When you don't sleep, your brain stops working normally and is only capable of dull work. That's why he gives out rewards when you let him do it.
More rest.