Black Is The New Productive

This is just such a wonderfully perky headline isn't it; imagine it read by a voice with the intonation of a fifties commercial:

You Thought You Couldn't Be Productive When Feeling Depressed, Just Wait Till You Read This

Imagine somebody depressed sitting in the corner of his own mope, perhaps thinking 'oh no, I can't be productive' (funny already), but then the words of the headline lends a glimmer of hope, and the phrase 'Just Wait' reignites his flame: 'Yes, I can't wait to read This!'. This person obviously has no problem suddenly turning into an optimist. Funny to me, at least. So I may not be clinically depressed.

From my own experience I would theorize that generally, productivity simply drops to a fraction, say, 25%. I am sure you can still be productive, but at a lower level. It might help, though, to take care to remove the kind of obstacles that get you especially hard when you're depressed or unmotivated.

I'd like to maybe write about that. It seems that a big part of being depressed makes it hard to focus. Or, to stay focused once you start thinking. The thoughts wander. So, firstly, keep thoughts from wandering. Or, make it really easy to get back into your work.

Quick feedback is probably a good answer to keep from wandering, and maybe also make it tempting in a gamification sort of way, to keep coming back to just implement one more feature, fix one more bug. E.g. tests must deliver results in seconds. If it takes 20 seconds for setup, thats 20 seconds to wander in.

Allow being consistent, to avoid sliding into long-term thinking. Shouldn't need to be thinking about how to organize code too much.

Need to be learning should be kept to a minimum. For instance, learning a framework. Learning is uphill, and extra steep when depressed.

Need to be debugging is bad, debugging is also mentally straining. Allow only clearly understandable error messages, etcetera.

Things like the above. Actually, kind of makes sense for anybody, not just the depressed. Just being tired is close to being depressed.