RE: Throwing out the practices for a night.

Ken,

A couple more reactions to your posting. I'm playing racquetball with my
15-year-old son these days. He is quite a bit better than I am. Usually
I'm okay with that, but occasionally I get up-tight about losing. When I
do that I start thinking about my shots, which naturally results in me
trying too hard and missing constantly. When this happens I just whack a
couple of balls as hard as I can, regardless of whether they are the
"right" shot. This is generally enough to get my brain thinking
productive thoughts. A similar thing happens in baseball, where pitchers
are told, "Stop pitching, just throw."

This seems similar to what you are describing. At work, with the burden
of being a good example and leader, it's easy to think too much about
the rules and too little about the work. Just doing some stuff for a
while is a way of putting the "rule processing" part of your mind back
into its place, as a partner in the process, not the guy in charge.

Kent Beck
Three Rivers institute

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ken Boucher [mailto:bonsai1966-/E1597aS9LQAvxtiuMwx3w@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
> Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 4:52 AM
> To: xpbookdiscussiongroup-hHKSG33TihhbjbujkaE4pw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [xpe2e] Throwing out the practices for a night.
> 
> I think that's what I felt was missing in Kent's except on Energized 
> Work. It really did a great job of reinforcing the troubles with 
> working too much, but it didn't seem to touch on the troubles with 
> working too little and just feeling unproductive sometimes. Both 
> impact my output/hour immensely and if I get too locked up in 
> Energized Work and Pair Programming I just don't get that feeling of 
> productivity that energizes me.



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