Winter break as retooling time
Thursday, 23 December, 2010 — development
I’ve seen a few companies, both tech and manufacturing, use a winter shutdown to schedule plant maintenance. A forced break also acknowledges the reality that a significant subset of their employees are going to be out. Rather than wrestle with project schedules, everything is shutdown1.
The companies I’ve worked for typically haven’t followed that pattern. For instance, newspapers publish 365 days a year. But, if you have an extended chunk of time around Christmas and New Year’s Day, it’s a great time to step back from whatever you’re working on and see what you could be doing better.
This year, I’ve got the following on my docket:
- Finishing a reread of Chad Fowler’s The Passionate Programmer
- Finishing a three-quarter’s read copy of Release It
- Working on a better understanding of RSpec custom matchers by reading David Chelimsky’s The RSpec Book
It is admittedly ambitious, and I’ll be satisfied simply to make significant progress on two of these goals.
Whether I’m in a headspace for software development, photography or something else, the key is taking time to step back from doing and really examine two things: How am I doing what I’m doing? How do I want to be doing what I’m doing better?
This winter break is about closing the distance between those two things.
- We’ll set aside the financial/managerial aspects of forcing everyone to burn time off whether they want it or not.