I absolutely hate it when the boss comes to me and says that one project or the other is priority and that I shouldn't work on anything else. I just don't work well that way. I like to have two projects going especially if one is hardware and one is software. Gives a nice break for the old brain. I have to get up from the chair and move around so I like to find things outside the realm of coding in which to contribute.

The feast or famine cycle is the same with any act requiring creativity. It's the same whether I designing circuits, coding perl or making little metal widgets. It takes some time to get your head around the problem. Then there is a burst of creativity followed by a period where you just feel 'dumb'.

I started on the hardware end of things where we had a daily journal and had to turn in a copy of our notes at the end of the week. So note taking is ingrained into my work habits. I even keep journals at home. The notes assist in coming back to a task after some interruption. I find as I get older that notes are indispensable in those situations. Some days I'm very glad I took copious notes. Other days I'm very disappointed that I didn't take enough notes.

There is always discussion about bottom-up verses top-down methods, but I switch back and forth between the two depending on my state of mind. On days when my brain feels 'thick' its nice to have a structure to work within. One other days, especially after looking at a problem for a while, the code starts coming out and you can't stop it.

I had a boss once, we worked together at two different companies and got along famously, that insisted that no projects ever be 'rewritten'. He claimed that rewrites took to long and the product was always inferior. Yet you look at a crappy piece of code long enough and you just have to dig in and fix it. I rewrote several of his projects. He never knew until it was too late.