To find out what techniques work for you in a field of practice, you often need to think about how you think. To decide what it is that drives your learning processes, and then adapt your practices to suit that.
For example, I tend to get more done if I’m already getting something done. Success breeds success. If I don’t feel like I’m succeeding, then I’ll break off and do something else (like write a blog post in my lunch break). I don’t think that’s unique to me, though, as common phrases like “on a roll” and “in the zone” seem to imply being in a state where progress begets more progress.
Cognition scientists know this, too. The authors of Yes! describe an experiment in which they tried two types of card in a hotel to get guests to reuse their towel instead of having them laundered every day. One contained the message that if a guest reused her towel, the hotel would make a donation to an environmental charity on her behalf. The other said that the hotel had already made the donation, and all the guest had to do to complete the story was to reuse her towel.
The second card was more effective. It implies that progress has already been made: that the guest has already succeeded (albeit vicariously) in making a donation. Success begets success, so the guests are more likely to make continued progress: i.e. to reuse the towels.
That is, I think, why TDD makes me work faster than when I’m not doing TDD. Because I can see the green lights, because I can see the little nuggets of success that will go together to make the feature work. It turns “I still haven’t posted the message to the server” into “woo! I just configured the URL request”. It turns “still losing” into “yet another win”. It doesn’t trick me into thinking I’m making more progress, but it does let me see that progress is being made.
