Pomodoros with Session 🍅

How Pomodoro logging surfaces hidden workflow friction — and why honest process audits beat self-blame.

😜⏳ Good Tuesday Morning,

Hey functioneers, No battle plan survives contact with the enemy so I am writing this on a sunny tuesday in stockholm. :D

I promised last week that there would be a new video out this week, and there is:

It is not the video I was INTENDING to release (one that I am working on), but I wanted to at least give you a production update.

I talk a bit about how I am thinking about the production process of FFF going forward and man - creating new formats is HARD.

There is also some juicy pain around creative work in there, hah.

🍅Pomodoros with Session

It's been a very hectic week, and when stuff gets serious the thing that keeps me on targets in Pomodoros - its one of the few productivity techniques that has really solidly always worked for me. I switch trackers quite a bit, alternating between physical and digital ones quite wildly.

I lost my trusty Time Timer lately, and as a result I recently found Session, which I find really really nice because of it's calendar integration, prompting for log entries, and automation, putting things in DnD automatically, silencing slack etc (planning to have some Philips Hue bulbs dedicated for pomodoros soon).

Any other 🍅 afficionados out there? Send me an email telling me about your setup, it always fun to read what you all do.

When focus is not enough (and being honest with what you need)

I have been focused and busy these last few weeks, which is honestly very rare for me. It is normally very hard won to get uninterrupted focus, but the time I spent thinking about why the Dawn of The Data developer initiative is important, coupled with the commitment box of having an audience gives a lot of focus fuel.

An interesting aspect that arises from having lots of focus during a week is how inefficiencies rise to the surface. When I am unfocused and tired and spend a lot of time procrastinating, I tend to always blame the delay on the fact that I procrastinate and not really evaluate the efficiency of my process. However, when I spend an entire week almost entierly filled with pomodoros focused on output, and still don't achieve what I hoped, then that arises suspicion in me instead of self-blame.

On the note of pomodoros, I have recently started becoming more arduous with writing logs  in between the sessions  that includes things that took my out of flow. Perfect flow is very very hard to achieve and we should be kind to ourselves that it's not always possible, but always answering the question "What kept me from perfect flow this last session" has led to me doing a kind of_Tomato_-Kaizen this week.

For instance, Github CoPilot is really really good for flow until it isn't/

Now, I love LLM assist when coding - it is remarkable and getting me unstuck, even when it writes dumb shit. I am very TypeScript and Unit Test driving in my style of coding that LLMs really like, so assist works really powerfully for me.

However, when it breaks (connection errors etc) that throws me off - it interrupts my flow. It is very bad for flow to be using tools that you can SOMETIMES rely on. In this case, I realized that sitting on Wifi has leading to a more unrelialbe experience, so I went for a wired network connection, which improved tons of other things. It is quite often that I due to "convenience" don't get myself a wired connection before a session, and a wired connection often make quite a bit of difference to an experience of flow.

This is not an advice to "use a wired connection" but more an encouragement to make notes of disturbances during your work sessions, and spend a session or two during the day of doing something about the distrubances. Can they be fixed, obviated? If not, can you extract yourself from area completely? Usually I find that this is best done with a bit of perspective - for example, I wasted a tremendous aggregate amount of time working on a too old computer (but that "worked fine"). In a moment where one is distrubed by a delay for 30 seconds, it seems unfathomable to buy a new computer (especially when starting a new company and burning savings), but when I started making little notes every time it happened, it became obvious that I was holding myself back in a very stupid way that was actually costing me money in a very real way.

The difference in value output is in my experience MASSIVE between a  pomodoro spent in uniterrupted flow compared to one pomodoro with 2-3 instances of waiting for 30+ seconds. When it comes to flow, the devil is in the details.

So this week, I ask you to do a cognitive experiment - imagine that you get paid $10000 per hour for your focus sessions, but you are not allowed to charge for unfocused work, so if you're interrupted by builds or annoyances, that is very costly.

Your brain and time and energy is very, very precious, so try a week of extreme respect.

Learn to build Git, SQLlite, Redis or Bitcoin (and supporting yourself and FFF at the same time)

Fun Fun Function is sponsored by CodeCrafters, and if you use our referral link

https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=mpj, you get a massive 40%* off.  💛

CodeCrafters is a rather unique learning service -  they provide environments where you pick a programming language (one that you know or one that you want to get familiar with, they have a tremendous amount) and where you build a tool from scratch that you usually just consume, like Git, Redis, SQLite, Docker etc. It's a really cool way about thinking about learning things that resonates with me a lot and it is a product I am very happy to push as a sponsor.

* = As they point out though you really should pay $0 and get your employer to pay it if you have a L&D budget - if you have one assigned to you to spend - CodeCrafters is a solid choice. I will also be straight with you that if you use these links it's very good for my own food budget, many people have asked if there is a way to support FFF financially, and in this case it overlaps with supporting yourself!

I really like how CodeCrafters as company seems to operate - YC backed and have been great to deal with so far,  of the first companies to offer to sponsor Fun Fun Function after Dawn of the Data was released was CodeCrafters, within hours of the release we got an offer to collaborate. It is really nice to have Fun Function be supported by a company with employees that are subscribers of the channel.

If you have any experience with them, please write me at mpj@funfun.email (or just reply to this chronice, as always) - it's always good to know how you as an audience experiences our sponsors, especially our first one.

And  is the link again: https://app.codecrafters.io/join?via=mpj (40% off and all that 😊)

Finally, thanks for being patient in waiting for the Chronicle an extra day this week, I have really started to like writing them and reading your replies, perhaps my favourite part of the work week, actually.

Keep on keeping on, you lovely people.