Does having live coding sessions make you more productive?

Recorded January 15th 2021 – watch the full episode on YouTube.

How has regularly working live on Twitch with people watching helped or perhaps hurt your productivity?

Mayuko Inoue: Ooh, good question. For those of you don't know, the Twitch streams that I do are co-working, co-studying streams where I set Pomodoro timers. These are basically 25- to 50-minute timers where you work during that period and then we take a break. I play chill, lo-fi music. I made it at the beginning of the pandemic because I missed having coworkers, and I think other people probably did too. So I wanted a place where we all hang out and chat together and do work together. But I think it's actually helped my productivity because it holds me accountable for sitting at my desk for X amount of hours during the day. And it's made work more enjoyable.

Often on the streams I don't show what I'm doing on my screen because of personal information, and I don't want to leak what video I'm making next and stuff. But often I'm doing work editing a video or writing a video, sometimes I film a video. Last week I painted my room on stream, and there are just things where I do pretty labor-intensive things on stream.

And so yeah, it's helped me to just sit and do stuff. And doing Pomodoro timers with other people makes it feel like I'm at a cafe or something, but still practicing good social distancing and not giving COVID to people. I know for some people it's a little distracting, but for me it's been working a lot.

This transcript was recorded as part of Swiftly Speaking. You can watch the full original episode on YouTube, or subscribe to the audio version on Apple Podcasts.

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