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What are some healthy, creative ways to spend downtime while waiting for code?

15 points by spacio ↗ HN
As a grad student I’m often running jobs, either on a cluster or locally, to process or generate data for experiments. They can take a few minutes to ~5 hours to run, and I’ve been working on building good habits whenever I press ‘go’.

Thanks!

15 comments

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eitland
I can relate.

Some options I'd suggest:

- reading a book / listening to an audiobook

-update documentation

- some kind of meditation like activity for shorter jobs

Also, try to make the system send a a reminder when the job is finished.

csnewb
Go to the gym and lift weights or do some cardio.
keiferski
Start using Anki / SRS to learn and consolidate your knowledge. It’s easy to do a dozen cards in a few minutes.
anotheryou
take the time off: meditate, cook food, read
muzani
Learn the Major mnemonic method for memorizing numbers: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_major_system

It's very useful for lots of things, from memorizing license plates to birthdays. There are some "better" methods, but the major system has lots of resources, and it's a balance between time consuming and powerful.

Learning to encode numbers to images is good training, a step towards converting paragraphs of text or conversations into easily stored images. A side effect is you'll be able to remember speeches and other things better. I am often told that I have a photographic memory when people see my notes, but it's really years of practice.

neuroticfish
> a step towards converting paragraphs of text or conversations into easily stored images

If the Major system is for memorizing numbers, what's the link between numbers and text?

muzani
For example, you have a number like 83954276, which you can memorize as farm-bell-rain-cash. Which you can encode in your mind as a farmer selling cowbells at a market during a storm.

The hard part is turning a 8 digit number into a story, but with enough practice, you can do this in milliseconds.

Now I'll take a random excerpt of information from Wikipedia.

"Ham Wall is an English wetland and National Nature Reserve located 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) west of Glastonbury on the Somerset Levels. It is managed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, which helps coordinate conservation issues across the Somerset Levels as part of the Avalon Marshes Partnership"

We can break this down to key points: Ham Wall, wetland, 4 km west of Glastonbury, Somerset Levels, Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, Avalon Marshes Partnership.

Then we can encode this to wall of pigs, murky puddle, sear (04 km), a glass coffin (Glass-bury), a sunset (Somerset), an overdressed person wearing a bird costume (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), Excalibur buried in an apple (Avalon).

With a bit of practice, you combine this into one image, e.g. a wall of pigs in a puddle west of a bird-costume guy searing some bacon at a funeral, with the deceased holding Excalibur, during a sunset.

If you really want to encode this better, more macabre, shocking, lewd details work better, but I'll leave that to your imagination.

kleer001
Every other suggestion is great.

All I can think to add is maybe double check your work? Or check it as its working?

manibatra
I really got into learning how to play guitar. Has been amazingly fun so far. I was having a lot of trouble switching off after work. 30 minutes of guitar and I am in pure bliss. Seems ideal for your case as whenever I have a long running build I pickup the guitar and practice a bit.
origamirobot
I spend the time between compiling my code learning Rubik's cubes. I have the 2x2 and 3x3 algorithms memorized. I started learning 4x4 recently.