This is not one of my usual posts, it's more of a random complaint. A rant that has been sitting in my draft folder for half a year and finally deserves to see the light. Of course it will contain some technical details too (after all, this is a technical blog), but to be honest, I like complaining, so that's what I'm going to do today. In fact, I am known as the "complain" guy among my friends, because I probably spend more time complaining than doing actual work, sleeping, eating and shutting up during movies put together. The reason you've never heard me complain in this blog simply is that I complain so much during the day that there's hardly anything left to complain about in the evening when I write these posts (yes, I adhere to DRY even when I'm whining). So again, if you expect some fancy technical article, stop reading until it is too late, or skip all the way down to the – serious – conclusion. Unless of course it happens that you accidentally are a member of the team at Microsoft that maintains the Zune PC software. Then please, read on, no matter what. :) More...

This is not a post about a particular technical problem. It's about how I manage to get my work done. People actually ask me this question, and since I have put quite some thought into how to structure my day, I thought: "Why not share this with everybody else?" That is why you're reading this. Maybe it helps you too, or at least makes you think about the way you work, to improve your efficiency. Here we go.

Some History

A decade ago, a series of remarkable posts by Joel Spolsky fascinated me. He was writing about what he called "the zone", and from my perspective hit the nail on the head with every word he wrote. Until then, I had never thought about this phenomenon, let alone given it a name. Being in the zone is a state of full concentration, when you work most efficiently. Sometimes people are able to get sucked into this so deeply that they lose track of time and even forget to eat or leave work. When they finally realize that it's 3am, they have finished a tremendous amount of work and don't feel exhausted at all (of course they might be in the next morning or an hour later though). Every programmer who has experienced this will tell you that it's an incredible feeling of elation. More...