Create a personal “ramblings” channel for each teammate in your team’s chat app of choice. Ramblings channels let everyone share what’s on their mind without cluttering group channels. Think of them as personal journals or microblogs inside your team’s chat app, a lightweight way to add ambient social cohesion.
Each ramblings channel should be named after the team member, and only that person can post top-level messages. Others can reply in threads, but not start new ones. All the ramblings channels should be in a Ramblings section at the bottom of the channel list. They should be muted by default, with no expectation that anyone else will read them.
Because they are so free and loose, some of our best ideas emerge from ramblings. They’re often the source of feature ideas, small prototypes, and creative solutions to long-standing problems.
When you’re placed in a high-stakes, time-pressured situation, like live coding, your brain reacts exactly like it would to any other threat. The amygdala gets activated. Cortisol levels spike. Your prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for complex reasoning and working memory, gets impaired. Either mildly, moderately, or severely, depending on the individual and their baseline stress resilience.
For some people, especially those with even mild performance anxiety, it becomes nearly impossible to think clearly. Your attention narrows. You can’t hold multiple steps in your head. You forget what you just typed a few seconds ago. It feels like your IQ dropped by 30 points. In fact, it feels like you’re a completely different version of yourself; a much dumber one.
Live coding fails to measure what we think it measures. It’s more accurately measuring cortisol under stress than coding skills.
The best way to desensitize your brain to stress is repeated exposure.