In Clean Coder, I read a section called Focus-Manna. According to the author, programming is an intellectual exercise that requires extended periods of concentration and focus. Well I totally agree with this idea, and I believe that the focus is a resource we spend during the day as the author mentioned.

Author warns us about the similarities of this section with the RPGs(Role Playing Games) at the beginning. Well, in every line in this section, I found myself thinking about similarities between WoW(World of Warcraft) and that line. This is why I decided to write a blog post about resources in WoW characters and humans.

Every character in WoW has a resource to cast some abilities during the combat. Death Knights have runes, Warlocks have soul shard fragments while software professionals have focus. Everything comes with a price, every code snippet we write during the day costs us some of our focus and we need to spend it wisely. In the game, there is a mechanic called generators which helps you to generate more resource. Unfortunately, there are not so many ways to generate more focus in real life. How do we generate resource to produce more code?

In that section of the book, author has some opinions to generate more focus. First one is obviously to sleep. After a great sleep, you will feel refreshed and you will be ready to create. Sleep is the main generator for mammals. In my opinioin, the rest of the list are just little boosts.

Even though it doesn’t work for everyone, the next one is coffee. Even the smell of the great quality coffee provides a little boost for me. Avoid too much caffeine, it will dehydrate you otherwise.

Rest of the list is more personal. Depending on who you are, talking with a college or listening to the music you like can provide a little boost.

Apart from the list, feeling of achievement provides a boost for me. Therefore, I chunk my responsibilities to the little achievable tasks. TDD also helps me since the red green refactor cycle provides that feeling with smaller portions.

If we were playing a game, I would want you to dump your resource and generate more with your generator spells. Unfortunately, there is only one major generator in real life, hence we need to spend it responsibly. I try to adopt the Law of Two Feet for every occasion to make most of my resources.