Improving Productivity through Feedback and Introspection

In his talk titled "Five More Minutes," Amos King shares his journey of learning to work smarter rather than harder. Amos discusses the common habit developers have of saying 'just five more minutes' to finish tasks and how this often leads to prolonged delays. He emphasizes the importance of receiving feedback and introspection for continuous improvement. Amos introduces concepts like Kaizen, which promotes continuous improvement, and shares his personal techniques for managing time and tasks, including maintaining a programmer journal, effective retrospectives, and his method called 'Power Hour.' Additionally, he advocates for test-driven development (TDD) and pair programming as methods to sharpen focus and receive real-time feedback, respectively. The talk underscores the importance of building habits around receiving and acting on feedback promptly to avoid delays and improve efficiency.