# Ten Reasons the Author Says They Are Effective at Getting Things Done

DevFeed: [Ten Reasons the Author Says They Are Effective at Getting Things Done](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/i-m-copying-you-since-you-re-so-effective-28331.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<http://fuzzyblog.io/blog/startup/2019/11/18/i-m-copying-you-since-you-re-so-effective.html>)

Author: Fuzzygroup

Published: 2019-11-18T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Scott Johnson](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/scott-johnson.md>)

Topics: [Code](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/code.md>), [coding](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/coding.md>), [Test-driven development](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/tdd.md>), [Software as a service](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/saas.md>)

Tags: [code](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/code.md>), [coding](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/coding.md>), [complexity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/complexity.md>), [developer](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/developer.md>), [effective](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/effective.md>), [productivity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/productivity.md>), [startup](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/startup.md>), [tdd](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/tdd.md>), [time](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/time.md>)

## AI overview

The author explains personal productivity practices, including removing sources of frustration, calculating the value of time, learning from people with greater expertise, and accepting messy code over perfection. The supplied text ends partway through the discussion.

## Source excerpt

A close friend recently said to me: I'm Copying You Since You're So Effective with respect to how much I tend to get done and I thought I'd elaborate on this a bit since I suspect that why I'm effective isn't always apparent. These aren't really in any order other than the order that I chose to finish them. I suspect they are all pretty important. Ten Reasons Why I Think I'm Effective Get Rid Of Anything That Pisses You Off. To the outside world, I'm a pretty chill person. I try very, very hard to never lose my cool and there's a reason for that - I have a bad temper. One of the things I learned early on about myself is that getting upset ruins my productivity. And so what I do is when I find that something pisses me off, I get rid of it - by fixing it. See my upcoming post on Url Soup for an example. Time is The Only Thing You Have So Do the Math on Everything. I'm a father, a husband and a technologist and I started my first company when I was 19 - and I've pretty much been busy since I was 19. This has always made me very, very aware of just how valuable anyone's time is. I don't waste my time and I hate, hate, hate anything that wastes my time. Just as an example, I used to loathe configuring new laptops. Setting up a new laptop, for a developer, is generally about a week long endeavor until I (or any developer I've ever watched) is really comfortable with it. If you assume that a laptop lasts a developer 3 years and you have 30 years left in your career, that's 10 weeks of your life. Once I did that math then I realized that my figuring out how to configure a laptop quickly and easily was seriously worthwhile and I did (and then I open sourced an example). Find People Smarter than You - And Copy Them. I'd love to tell you that it was my idea for how to configure a laptop automatically but it wasn't. I stole this, shamelessly, from Jeff Geerling; but I did (and do) credit him. One thing I learned early on is that when you don't know what you are doing, finding p