On Writing & Coding

[Stephen King vs George RR Martin, Cyberphobic Sunday Writing, The Goldman Sachs 15 Minute Rule, Coding Like a Writer]

2025.03.30

XCIII

Two weeks ago, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed with BirdDog. We had a lot going on, some churn, many features being pushed, pending contracts, all that. 

I took a step back, though, & realized that I needed to be a bit more intentional with everything I was doing. 

Rather than sitting in front of the computer all day in a reactive, waiting for something to happen mode, I reminded myself that I should be intentionally spending my time on the highest leverage things, not letting the abstract idea of "work" grow into an unslayable hydra that would consume all of my time.

Most specifically, the biggest thing I've done that's given me a lot more focus & has already started making me better at what I do, is treating coding like an art or a craft, rather than a job.

And, since I practice writing as an art every Sunday, it's a natural craft for me to compare coding to.

This post is heavily influenced by Cal Newport's book Deep Work. 

[Stephen King vs George RR Martin]

You might've laughed out loud when I said I'm treating coding like an art. You might think I've thrown in the towel & am going to be the kind of person that lives in a commune & refuses to do any work because the world "wouldn't get it."

What comes to my mind is quite the opposite of the struggling artist archetype, however--when I think of art, I think of unwavering commitment & dedication to a craft. 

There’s a cool video of Stephen King & George RR Martin on stage together. Both authors are world renowned and wildly successful, although according to a cursory glance on the internet, Stephen Kind is worth ~6x as much as Martin ($500M vs $80M). 

Anyways, in the video, Martin asks King how he writes so much. King says that when he’s writing, he'll simply write 6 pages a day, everyday. This blow’s Martin’s mind, who more or less says it has to be really “right” for him to push out work.

Both men are incredibly impressive, but for me, King’s dedication to his craft, 6 pages a day rain or shine, is what I think of when I talk about an artist--someone who has an unwavering, otherworldly commitment to their craft.

Luck is always a factor in life. But, if you work like King you need less luck than if you work like Martin.

[Cyberphobic Sunday Writing]

Every Sunday morning, I wake up, I stretch, I brush my teeth, & I write until this blog post is done. 

Sometimes it takes 2.5 hours, sometimes it takes closer to 5. 

Either way, I don't do anything else except pace outside, play with my cat, and drink coffee until it is done. Sometimes, I'll stare off into space for a bit.

Notice what's not in there--checking email, text, or social media. 

In the past, I've allowed myself to google search things, but I very recently found that even this could send me down rabbit holes. So, I put an embargo on searches until the blog post is nearly done & I need to cite sources or add numbers. 

I find that when I have any options that "seem" productive, like going on the internet to look something up, I have a tendency to abuse it and start looking up random stuff.* The problem is not that looking up random stuff is bad, it can be good and fun. The problem is looking up random stuff to give myself a thing to do that is not the thing I am trying to do--write. 

When I stare off into space, I don't open pandora's box in the same way I do as when I go on the internet. In cyberspace, entities are actively fighting for your attention.

*How much force would a gorilla have to strike the earth with to make a rhino bounce up off the ground? It came to me in a dream, I swear...

[The Goldman Sachs 15 Minute Rule]

The trouble with extending my wax in the ears writing practice to programming is that I have a million roles for BirdDog, not just coding. 

The Goldman Sachs 15 Minute Rule: Employees must respond to emails within 15 minutes or less, no matter what.

While we don't religiously follow the Goldman Sachs rule, it's important that we're responsive to clients & prospects which means having slack & gmail & text pretty frequently available. I tend to respond immediately when I see something and really do strive to acknowledge relevant messages within an hour. 

On top of that, we find our prospects on LinkedIn, which means posting & commenting & engaging on a social media platform. In other words, an insatiable algorithm that greedily feasts on our attention & time also happens to have a positive roi if we play it right.

Finally, I am a solo dev, so if something breaks, I have to be there to fix it.*

Together, this means that it is super easy to get caught up in a reactive state & ultimately do nothing except wait for the next stimulus.

At the end of the day, though, this is a good way to get burnt out. It's critical to be attentive, but it's also super important to know what the highest leverage things you can do to move forward are. 

For me, this involves treating things like LinkedIn proactively (trying to write as many comments as I can with a 5 minute timer vs just arbitrarily 'checking' it) &, more to the point of this article, prioritizing time to improve the product with code, rather than reactively fixing things.

*I realized this very quickly so I have a very strong emphasis on building robust code that gracefully handles & logs errors so it can move on.

[Coding Like a Writer]

So, when I do sit down at the keyboard to write code (which is still a lot), I am much more intentional about committing to coding uninterrupted* for the next 60 minutes. And, if that 60 minutes goes by & I got a message, I'll quickly respond to it when I come up for air. If there’s nothing else that needs attention, I’ll go back in for another bout of time.

The point is, I'm finding balance so that I don't bottleneck anything else while still being able to focus in on coding with a level of respect similar to how I treat writing.

And, despite all of the tools out there to make programming “easier” & abstract us away from it, I am treating it like an art that requires attention & focus, just like I treat writing.

Accordingly, I've deleted cursor & use Zed now**. While I still have GPT open in another window when coding, not using an AI first tool helps me to rely on it much less. After all, I wouldn't ever dream of using auto complete or GPT to write these blog posts for me… why would my code be any different?

Also, I don't listen to music when I write, except the occasional long instrumental loop. Likewise, I’ve let up on bouncing between songs rapidly when coding & am tending to listen more to one hour edits of songs I like or even putting on Vinyl for superior impulse control.

Together, these things make me more focused, & I seriously do think a better programmer—they certainly don’t make me a worse one. Friday late morning to Saturday night, I wrote, tested, and pushed 882 lines of code into prod, including half a dozen routes, integrating our lookalike service, doing some database migrations, and making a number of logic improvements to our system.

Overall, my coding is now much closer to my writing practice--treated as an important thing that is prioritized & committed to when I'm doing it. And, it's much closer to the Stephen King method than the George RR Martin's method... rather than waiting for the stars to align, it's a commitment to doing it now.

I don’t know what your craft is, dear reader, but I’m sure there’s a way to treat it like an art form.

Live Deeply,

*Barring true red alerts that require less than a 60 minute response time, which are very rare

**Vim motions + pyright for type checking are seriously overpowered. The latter is just another Rust gateway drug.