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How Ideas from Human Psychology can help Programmers? Do you want to program at your peak performance? Do you want to enjoy programming job? What are the tricks to get unstuck from hard problems? How can you push your cognitive capabilities? Turning into Psychology can tell us answers. Like a hero of a movie, the programmer’s life has villains, diversions, fights, and emotions. Are you ready to become a programming hero? 1. Achieve Flow State In the famous book , Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi reveals that the secret for achieving Peak Performance is doing work in an optimal state called . Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience flow Flow is optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and capable of performing at top level. During flow, people typically experience deep enjoyment, creativity, and completely involved in an activity for its own sake. Flow also happens when a person’s skills are fully involved in overcoming a challenge that is just about manageable, so it acts as a magnet for learning new skills and increasing challenges. To achieve a Flow state, you got to balance between the difficulty of the activity and your skills. Learn the skills in advance ✅ If your work requires a new skill (may it be a new language or technology etc..), don’t try to learn and do the work simultaneously. Being familiar with it would avoid anxiety and help attain flow state. So, learn skills in advance to ensure you have the right level of skills for the challenges in the project. Make it work first, then make it perfect ✅ The challenge will be harder if you try to write perfect code and you might get stuck. So to reduce the challenge, just write the first version of the code that works without worrying about it being bad. Then, it will be easier to refactor and make it good. Divide and Conquer ✅ Another trick is to break up your complex work into small manageable tasks so that you will have control. So the idea is to level up your skills or decrease the challenge to attain flow state. Game designers use this technique to keep the players hooked. They make the difficulty of game levels appropriate to the player’s skill so that players neither feels frustrated and nor bored. In the flow state, programming will feel like playing a game. 💡 If you achieve flow state you will be the hero . But wait, there is a villain. 2. Win Focus Flow experience may not occur in the first few moments and you will need to stay focused to get immersed in the work. Cal Newport takes about the importance of focused work in his book Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. Deep Work: Set aside time for Deep Work ✅ You can set aside some time for focused work. To avoid distractions, turn off all notifications on your computer and phone. If you are not good at self-control, try Pomodoro technique. Pomodoro Technique ✅ Pomodoro technique provides a system to perform deep work. Source: https://name-fame.com/motivation/pomodoro-technique-boost-study-work/ Basically, you work on a task for 25 minutes with zero distractions. Then, you take a short 5-minute break and move on to next Pomodoro. After 4 pomodoros, you can take a long break. You can easily find Pomodoro apps on the internet. 💠 Don’t be too strict with Pomodoro schedule. If you are in a flow state, you don’t have to force a break when the 25 minutes is up. But there are other good times to take a break for a walk which I will discuss later in this post. This is great for external distractions. what about internal mental distractions? Commit your thoughts ✅ Our mind usually gets distracted by thoughts of unfinished tasks, regardless of their importance. Because open tasks tend to occupy our short-term memory until they are done. But thanks to follow-up research. We now know that, Zeigarnik’s We don’t actually have to finish tasks to convince our brains to stop thinking about them. All we have to do is to write them down in a way that convinces us that it will be taken care of. After your work, you should not only commit your code to source control — But also write down your thoughts (e.g next steps, todos etc ) in a good place. 💡 A programmer’s journey not only has villains but also diversions and interruptions. Source: https://www.big-red-digital.com/news/general/the-paradox-of-choice-why-the-choosing-a-website-partner-neednt-be-stressful 3. Minimize Choices The life of a programmer involves making a lot of decisions and it interferes experiencing the flow state. In his book , Barry Schwartz describes how more choices lead to anxiety. He used numerous examples, from shopping to career options to romance, to show that less choice can not only increase our productivity but also our freedom and make it easier to be in the moment and enjoy it. The Paradox of Choice Source: http://vpcoder.com/index.php/2016/03/13/how-to-start-learning-coding-effectively/ He was primarily studying the behavior of shoppers but the same principle applies to programmers. We can use some techniques to reduce the number of decisions we have to make. Think about it when picking a language or framework ✅ Many people admire the Go language because there is only one way to do something (like writing loops). Also, one of the reasons that people hate the Perl language is there are too many ways to do the same thing. So consider the benefits of flexibility vs restriction when choosing a language or framework. If there is the only way to do something, you don’t need to worry about enforcing best practices. Collect essential materials up front ✅ Programmers often have to look up code examples or documentation to do the work. This not only causes context switching but also creates a burden to pick a right example or API. So, collect the necessary materials in advance so that you don’t have to look through the numerous google results and decide the right one. Have a design before writing code ✅ Try to make the important decisions and design before you begin writing your code. This will help you focus on solving the problem at the hand instead of wasting your energy in making decisions. 💡_What If I have procrastination or got stuck on a problem? Do you need a fight?_ 4. Don’t fight against Willpower Studies on highly successful people have proven that success is not the result of strong willpower and the ability to overcome resistance, but rather the result of smart working environments that avoid resistance in the first place. There some techniques to avoid the fighting against willpower. How to avoid Procrastination? Instead of forcing ourselves to do something we don’t feel like doing, we need to find a way to make us feel like doing what moves our project further along. ✅ Have well-defined tasks The primary reason for procrastination is defining your goal at high level. Writing down specifics of what will you do, when and where to do it provides far more chance for actually doing it. Also, your brain thinks it’s too hard if there are not enough details. So having a meaningful and well-defined task beats willpower. ✅ Head start on next task People usually take a break or call it for the day when they are done with a task. But, it's a good idea to begin or make slight progress on the next task. Because you would have a better idea of what to do when you start your work on the next day. This will help you avoid procrastination since you are not starting something new. The same idea can be used while reading a book. Instead of closing a book when you are done with a chapter if you just read the first page of next chapter, you are likely to pick up the book again. How to Get Unstuck in solving hard problems? Similar to willpower, you don’t have to think hard to solve a tough problem. You can tune your mind so that solutions can come automatically to you in surprising ways! ✅ Break for a Walk Letting thoughts linger without focusing on them gives our brains the opportunity to deal with problems in a different, often surprisingly productive way. While we have a walk or a shower or clean the house, the brain cannot help but play around with the last unsolved problem it came across. So you will likely get an idea if you simply walk away from your computer. ✅ Sleep on it Go home with an unsolved problem. Don’t try to force yourself to solve it, instead just sleep. Your subconscious mind will work on it and you will likely have a solution in the middle of the night or when you wake up in the morning. Many times solutions for my problems appeared in middle of the night or first thing in the morning or during my shower. ✅ Try to work on different problem or project. Sometimes solutions to problems come automatically when you are not thinking about it. So, instead of pushing against a hard problem, redirect your energy towards another productive goal. With this method, to work on different things simultaneously, you never encounter any mental blockages. 💡 There is still something missing. Life becomes beautiful only if there are also emotions. Similarly programming too. 5. Practice Empathy Empathy is an important skill that will lead to greater success and happiness in personal life and profession. Practice empathy in programming too. Programming is not just logic. It is expressive like an art. Write maintainable code ✅ Keep in mind that the code you write will be read and maintained by others. Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute ― Harold Abelson, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs Follow the best practices of coding style like meaningful variable names, smaller methods etc. You shouldn’t program look like in this comment 😃 //When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing//Now, God only knows Make sure code you write has a low cognitive load for other developers so that it’s easy to maintain. Write useful comments. Here is a funny comment I came across 😆 //// Dear maintainer://// Once you are done trying to 'optimize' this routine,// and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,// please increment the following counter as a warning// to the next guy://// total_hours_wasted_here = 42// Use simplicity in design ✅ Whether you are designing an API or user interface, make it easy for your users. The basic principle you can follow is Simple things should be simpler. Complex things should be possible. Practicing empathy will not only help you but also make your team productive and users happy. Summary You may be already using these techniques. But knowing reasoning behind them using psychology can help you do them productively. If you hate programming or considered quitting, using these ideas from psychology might transform you as a happy programmer. When you see programming through the eyes of psychology, you will appreciate it’s beauty and enjoy the art of programming. Thanks for reading. 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Want to become a Happy and Productive Programmer? Use these 5 techniques from Psychology

Download a PDF of the “ Map of Amazon and its impact on Modern Marketing ” here to zoom in “Amazon is like pornography…everywhere, hard to define, but you always know it when you see it.” is changing. In a time of , incredible , imaginative canvases, and serious cultural and social conflicts, marketers, suppliers and agencies face increasing complexity and competition. While the industry is ripe with different “thought leadership” conversations about “what’s next” offering simple magic solutions, the one consistent thing is that sooner or later someone will mention . Marketing data abundance technology Amazon Since its incorporation in 1994 and via a close escape from being called “Cadabra”, Amazon.com Inc, the US-based retail giant, has grown to become the world’s largest internet retailer despite an explosion of competition. It is only the second company to exceed a market capitalisation of $1 trillion in intra-day trading. Indeed Amazon’s scale now seems to be its . only threat As Amazon adds new categories and new businesses, it has rapidly become both the enemy at the gates and the new hope for doing business. But what is Amazon? At we have been having many conversations and working sessions with clients and colleagues that touch upon Amazon and its impact upon marketing. What is fascinating is that whether you are an Amazon expert, a customer, a Marketplace seller or even a media insider, everyone has a different perspective. Amazon is so vast, with so many subsidiaries, brands, verticals and products that you are rapidly reminded of the infamous “ ” parable. Digitas blind men and the elephant In the marketing industry there is often a tendency to project partial knowledge as whole truth, and perhaps only God or Jeff Bezos can truly know Amazon, but based on conversations, many articles in the trade and mainstream press, detailed reports and even some (public) internal Amazon material, we sort to lay down a primer, the basic starter knowledge if you will, of how Amazon is changing marketing. The world needs less PowerPoint. Instead of writing another report or slide deck we combined research and sources into a Concept Map similar to our previous . Only a little bit bigger. Map of Modern Brand Building “With a concept map, a viewer can see both the forest and individual trees. The big picture is clear because all the ideas are presented on one surface. At the same time, it’s easy to dive in and see details and how they relate.” Four nodes began to appear in the map. What is Amazon, its pillars and how it creates value across the globe. The increasing competitive impact for marketers in CPG, Auto, Fashion, IoT, Electronics, Home Services and Entertainment (both from Amazon and from 3rd Parties on Marketplace including those causing “the China Crisis”). The behind how Amazon is affecting and transforming the Customer Journey in terms of customer expectations. 5 Convenience Principles The growing Amazon Advertising and Media services that brands and sellers can make use of to build their brands and reach new audiences. This “ ” does not claim to be exhaustive and only covers one and half of Amazon’s three primary pillars (Prime, Webservices, Marketplace). It does not go deep into AWS, healthcare, AI or Finance. Map of Amazon and its impact on Modern Marketin g And yet it reveals two competitive forces that Amazon’s has unleashed to transform the marketing value chain: and . customer obsession Experiential Competition Perceptual Competition Despite Amazon’s disruptive ways to distribute products and change customer relationships, it’s the “real world” activations that often make its competitors most worried is about new, practical ways of selling. This type of competition promotes customer experiences that replace others or reposition them within the customer journey. It is about offering accessibility, simplicity, service convenience, personalisation, purchase convenience, and channel flexibility to improve sales activation, fulfilment, useage and repeat purchase. It is not just about “time well saved” but expectations met or exceeded. Experiential Competition New, newsworthy ways to access the Amazon ecosystem open unexpected ways to cross promote products and gather data to improve the experience As Benedict Evans observed, new customer journeys lead to new kinds of decisions that change what gets bought and then further change how it is sold. Experiential Competition is driving these changes. This can lead to Amazon famously selling more private-label batteries than Duracell or 55% of US consumers starting online product searches on Amazon rather than Google. And it can lead to infamously rigid industries like Automotive being forced to reimagine the purchase experience more around people than dealers when Hyundai opens a in Amazon Vehicles. virtual showroom While there are many “magic bullet” tips and tactics out there promising marketers short cuts to delivering great experiences, too few channel the Amazon Experiential Competition lesson of “ ”. sell something the customer wants to buy, at a price the customer wants to pay, with the service the customer expects In the meantime Amazon, in a repeat of its famous externalisation strategy, is to drive these experiential customer journeys — on and off platform. It is poacher, gamekeeper and the person selling the bullets. offering marketers and agencies a new toolkit and APIs But if you solve a customer problem with technology and tactics alone you’ll own that solution until someone improves the technology. If you solve the problem with a brand story it is untouchable. This is where Amazon is most dangerous. This is the power of Prime and . Perceptual Competition The Power of Prime: Amazon’s most important product is not a product but a membership that’s grown from shipping and offers to events and innovations changes customer expectations. It means you set the bar regardless of whether your product or service competes in the category in question. Building on great customer experience it creates a meaningful and distinctive brand with cultural relevance, esteem and saliency. Occasionally it can involve . The result is greater mental availability for your brand, driven by broad reach, emotions and associations — effectiveness not just efficiency. Perceptual Competition the odd Super Bowl ad Amazon’s position as a dominant Perceptual Competitor is reflected in its $1,000,000,000,000 market value and a brand value of $207.6 billion. It is a result of selling not just low priced products with excellent customer service, but “ .” Perceptual Competition means competing on and Touchpoints ROI Tracker studies show that this is increasingly a better indicator of market share success than spend or share of voice. the thing it has always sold the most — to investors, customers, the media — excitement brand experience rather than CX, Making shopping frictionless: Innovative ways to gain attention, scare the competition and position them as inferior and old fashioned The key proposition that enables Amazon to bring its brand, many products, experiments and channels together is Amazon Prime. Bezos said “ ”, but it is more than good value — it is a brand experience flywheel. we want Prime to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member Prime’s ability to funnel new ideas to loyal customers drives growth and innovation. Amazon’s first forays into scalable grocery delivery via AmazonFresh and AmazonPantry were only available to Prime members as was its hyperlocal 1–2 hr delivery service Prime Now. Prime’s flywheel unites personalised, efficient discovery with rewards, these generate momentum with more shoppers (and sellers) which helps reduce prices while cross subsidising content, that then further builds traffic, which increases discovery and improves the rewards etc… Perceptions of trust enable Amazon to develop a growing range of own brands, with services to help customers enjoy them and new ways to pay for them. It helps them succeed and helps Amazon move on if they don’t. By combining an aura of innovation and novelty with a simple subscription Amazon can generate more customer, investor and media excitement than a . Costco membership Building on the trust created by the value and convenience of Amazon’s core shopping services with compelling digital content from Prime Video, Amazon Studios, Music Unlimited, Twitch or Audible then provides a competitive moat for the Amazon business, increasing ecosystem reach and audience lock in. “Amazon Studios is making original content for Prime Video…from a business point of view for us, we get to monetize this content in an unusual way. Winning a Golden Globe helps us sell more shoes and it does that in a very direct way…. We’ve monitored that Prime Video customers renew [Prime] at higher rates, and they convert from free trials at higher rates.” Entertainment moves Amazon out of “just” the shopping journey, increases lock-in and offers opportunities to improve the customer experience with data insight The continuing quest to increase the power of Prime led to what for many CPG and retail businesses was : the $13.7bn takeover of Whole Foods, the multichannel grocery retailer with over 470 stores. Structural change happens in a category when >20% goes online. Even Amazon don’t believe this will happen in grocery, but instead phsyical retail can have a structural impact on digital propositions. The Whole Foods takeover offers Prime members better prices, more omnichannel opportunities to buy and pick-up, a stronger health assortment and a last mile delivery boost. It also offers non-Prime customers a very prominent real-world demonstration of what they are missing. the tipping point of “Amazon Anxiety” Already Amazon has cut prices on high volume stables by up to 43%, installed Amazon lockers and introduced Prime savings and in-store benefits. However, while a new efficiency-first ideology has increased sales it has also caused a “ ”, with . culture clash greater centralisation and lay-offs The “destroyer of physical retail” is a bigger name in bricks-and-mortar than Sears and JCPenny with new opportunities to increase the value of Prime and reward members Ultimately the forces of and that Amazon has unleashed on marketing and its value chain have helped create an “expectation economy” that brands and businesses must navigate to survive. experiential perceptual competition We may need a bigger (boat) . map If you’d like to explore Amazon, the changing marketing value chain and how customer journeys are evolving further, or join one of our upcoming workshop sessions, or even if you’d like the wall-sized version of the map, then contact us: amazonmap@digitas.com — — — — Sources: , Datamonitor, Amazon Shareholder Letters, Amazon Media Group, Bloomberg, CNN, Digiday, Feedvisor, Mintel, The Drum, BCG, Publicis Media, Warc, Global Web Index, New York Times, Techcrunch, Adweek…and others. CB Insights

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