>Years ago a sr. eng on my team would find root causes to bugs late in the afternoon and then just go home. When asked why, they said that they knew exactly what they were going to do first thing in the morning and that it got them straight into the flow state for the rest of the day.
This works, but also needs some notes with a "dump" (on the previous afternoon) of all relevant points. For some subtle bugs and complex codebases it's easy to forget some key point, even though you found what the main issue to fix is. So if you already know some subtle points/edge cases in the afternoon, write them down.
It’s a lot of fun leaving notes. When I’m working in the office and the next day is a WFH day I ssh in to my home computer and write my notes in a text file in the home directory. It feels like I am reaching through the computer to my desk at home.
This works, but also needs some notes with a "dump" (on the previous afternoon) of all relevant points. For some subtle bugs and complex codebases it's easy to forget some key point, even though you found what the main issue to fix is. So if you already know some subtle points/edge cases in the afternoon, write them down.