I came to this conclusion after I worked over 100 hours in a week (including 18 hours on my wife's birthday) to get a major release out for a company that laid off their entire development staff the next Friday. We were laid off because we asked for something completely unreasonable - time to design. Not only that, but we were allowed to interview for our jobs, but only half of us would get it back. After that experience, I realized that it simply didn't matter.

When I do have to work against a deadline, I follow the "Basic Principles"^TM:

1. Always code the smallest portion that will work at any given time.
2. Build on successes.
3. CVS is my personal savior.
4. Testing, even if it's just basic smoke-testing, is more important than development.
5. Test every single change, one at a time.
6. Have a clean development environment that no-one else can mess with.
7. Spend the time to make the computer do as much of your work for you as possible. The investment will always pay off tenfold in the first week.
8. Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff.

Yeah, a lot of those principles sound like XP, but I don't follow the XP paradigm. XP is just a codification of the "Basic Principles"^TM.

Basically, you start at the visible failure condition, and you work backwards until you find the point where things went wrong. Usually, if a bug is hard to find, it's because it's in some area that the programmer assumed couldn't possibly be going wrong ("I already checked the file permissions..."). I have often helped co-workers solve bugs by getting them to test those assumptions.

Ultimately, keeping your cool and staying rational in a stressful debugging situation will usually pay off.

How consistently can you maintain a calm and collected demeanor while management and team-members cry for resources, solutions, and answers?

Though Wargames was a horrible movie, it remains true that the only way to win "Global Thermonuclear War" is not to play the game. Such is the way with project managers and arbitrary deadlines -- yet I still play the game a bit. As hard as it is (heck, I score "ENTJ" on the Myers-Briggs personality profiles -- I live to command & control and NEED that feeling) to avoid straightening the solution out, try to become more layed back, begin providing rope, and let the errant parties hang themselves. If I find myself dealing with bad code, I'll let folks know, and I promise nothing but that I will follow my own process.

Lately I have been getting marginal results by asking for requirements documents, defect numbers, and asking meta-questions like "Are we following the process?". It's not very effective, but at least it allows me to feel like at least *I* am governed by a process, even if no one follows it. Usually the things I ask for don't exist, but it gives me the illusion that I am in control, or brings me closer to it.

My last tip is the best one -- a good audio player, decent headphones, and loud rock music, turned to 11. May I recommend Van Halen? There has even been a bit of research about how music provides isolation from external factors while providing an orienting experience that increases concentration -- sounds like psychobabble, but it works for me. Runnin' with the Devil...

My last tip is the best one -- a good audio player, decent headphones, and loud rock music, turned to 11.

Often I put my headphones on, continue working and then realise an hour later that I haven't turned on any music to listen to, the headphones themselves enough to create a barrier between myself and those around me in the office, allowing me to focus and concentrate on the task at hand.

 

perl -le "print unpack'N', pack'B32', '00000000000000000000001011010011'"

I do that occasionally, I'll play some music, tune out then realise an hour later that my mp3's have finished.. :-)

I like it when that happens. In retrospect I realise I've focused, worked hard and usually when I'm thru' the process I have the desired result.

I also like it that I know myself well enough that I can induce this behavior.

. . . the only way to win "Global Thermonuclear War" is not to play the game.

I'd forgotten that quote, but its words I try to live by. It doesn't always work, but I try :-)

I've worked in a few places where the stress can be very great. Looming deadlines that have the ability to cost the company money, disrupt thousands of customers etc etc.

Of course everyone has different limits and tolerances, however what works best for me is control. I don't have to be in control of the process going on around me (although' I prefer it), however I need to have control over what I am responsible for. I like to get excited about things, and that's ok to a certain extent, however what I don't want is to get in the position where my thought process is chaotic, I'm reading every 5th line, not thinking clearly etc, kind of like an excited panic.

I follow a very structured, analytical and systematic approach to "business", I communicate frequently, and perhaps ironically, slow things down when approaching a tight deadline. I like to keep things slow to keep control and stop the excited panic. Of course slow is a relative term, its not like I'm sitting around doing coffee and the like. I'm also not always after the gold plated solution, just the best and most efficient way to reach the target.

So, slow things down, communicate, and take/keep control of what you can.