If there is one principal criticism I would have of my job at the moment, it would be that I do very little thinking at all. Everything I do at work is basically and simply "doing". I feel that I have lost the art of concentration, of battling with difficult problems, of really thinking things through.

Photo by Karola Riegler photography Flickr

What doesn't help at all at work is that there are too many distractions for me to work effectively. In an attempt to remedy that, I have taken to leaving the phone on its charging station, set to silent, finding an empty meeting room, keeping my email client unopened focussing on a particular task for an hour or two. It seems to work quite nicely, so I'll keep that up as far as I can (or until I get my own office). But the basic problem remains that what I am doing involves very little analytical thinking at all.

I am positive that it a good thing to accept back some strain on the brain, something not felt since university, and that discipline. So, I when I am not just wandering about the site at work looking for meeting rooms (just wandering usually results in me thinking of a solution to a particular problem) I have taken to doing some coding.

The wonderful Code Academy is a great starting point. It teaches JavaScript via a series of little lessons and projects that get progressively more difficult. It is also a bit trendy with those "gamification"badges and points that you can send or tweet to the world.

I am still at the stage of learning the syntax, but already the challenges have got me thinking harder than any problem that I face at work. Clearly, the stakes are much lower than with my largely trivial but business-critical issues. But I am finding it rewarding to do, and in a way that is significantly beyond the scope of those badges.

It remains to be seen if I can maintain the mental loads of coding alongside work, my blogging, and my music and my family, but it's just about doable at the moment, so we will see. As for when I'll barrel on into Project Euler...