Re: FN-FORUM: Slightly OT....

date posted 30th January 2008 15:22

On Wednesday 30 January 2008 16:26:28 Leif wrote:

> I read that the wonderful writer (!) Dan Brown works on the basis of
> writing for half an hour, then going on a treadmill for fifteen
> minutes, then writing for half an hour and so on. That way he can
> maintain high concentration levels.

That explains why his chapters are about two pages long...

> You can only really concentrate solidly for about an hour at a time,

True, and there's a limit to how much you can do. When I was writing C
and C++ doing the sort of stuff that involves building intricate mental
models of what's going on it was about six hours total of real concentration.

It's well-known amongst C coders that there comes a point in the day
when you start to go backwards - an hour spent coding generates two
hours of debugging in the morning, whereas if you just go home now
you'll get it sorted and working in half an hour tomorrow.