Papercuts Everywhere

Before we get into it, lets define what we mean by “Papercut”:

By this definition, papercuts are everywhere.

I find this is exceedingly true. Every action I do has at least one, if not multiple. These are the 5 second load times on a page you have to load over and over. These are the phone chargers that you have to wiggle just right to get it to charge. These are the apps that constantly send notifcations causing a quick break of focus to see another “Place an order today!” message.

Papercut Fatigue

Most people I’ve met do just fine with papercuts. Their brain is able to filter it out — ignore the feeling of the cut. My brain cannot.

Every task is a constant slow bleed of tiny, minor, annoyances that kill speed and drain my mental fortitude. These small problems add up. Big tasks that require significant mental load get derailed over and over. This leads to stress as I cant focus and get things done.

As such, I have begun to eliminate any and all papercuts I find, immediately, with ruthless prejudice.

This means that when I encounter a papercut I:

1. Fully stop what I am doing.
2. Determine the simplest, effective, way to eliminate that papercut.
3. Do so.

A full stop may seem a bit extreme, but I have found that if I do not immediately stop I will not resolve the papercut. I will say “okay, I’ll fix this in a minute”, and then forget about it until the next time I encounter it.

This is a context shift, which I try to avoid, but the papercut was already a context shift — the cost has already been paid.

Maybe for some this sounds very simple. “Yeah, of course just solve the problem when you have the problem”, you might say. For me, especially with ADHD, I have found that without codifing this into a set process I do I never do so. I have had papercuts that I experience regularly (>1 time an hour) last for months before I adopted this “framework” — if you can call it that. Since doing so, almost every papercut is solved immediately. Those that can’t I can at least make progress on solving every time I run into it or make a larger, specific, plan to do so later.

In short, fix the small things, it will make the big things easier.

Recent Examples

Below is a list of recent papercuts I have resolved. These are in no particular order.

• A keybinding in my editor would open a tooling window, shifting the whole screen around. This keybind was awfuly close to an extremely common keybind. Mistypes constantly caused my screen to shift (> 5 times an hour if I were to estimate). Fix: I never needed this window, so I deleted this keybind.
• The outlet near my living room couch was just long enough to have my charger reach my laptop when I am sitting down, but not long enough if I shifted to the left. I constantly found myself having my charger yanked out. Fix: I found an old extension cord in my closet,
• My wife and I both love the house cold in the winter, but I physically can’t type when my hands are cold — an important thing as both my job and hobbies involve typing! Fix: I bought a small desk warmer to keep them hot without heating the rest of the house.
• Drying dishes would leave water either on the counter or on the towel we had under the drying rack. We would have to either constantly replace this towel or wipe down the counter. Fix: I bought a drying rack with a collection pan on the bottom that drains out into the sink.