Interesting article on how we work

Matt Wagner matt.wagner at redhat.com
Mon Apr 9 13:41:55 UTC 2012


On Thu, Apr 05, 2012 at 09:44:56AM -0400, Jason Guiditta wrote:
> I posted this to irc the other day, but I think everyone's attention
> was too splintered for it to be noticed, so I thought I'd try sending
> to list. http://blogs.hbr.org/schwartz/2012/03/the-magic-of-doing-one-thing-a.html
> 
> LinkedIn sent me this link 2 times before I bothered to read it, but I
> found it definitely applies to me, and I suspect many of us.   In
> particular, I find myself spending a lot more time reading and
> responding to emails and irc conversations than focusing on the task I
> want to be working on.  I am going to try out some of the ideas
> outlined in this article, possibly setting aside certain blocks of
> time during the day to focus on irc/email, but am not sure yet how
> that gets scheduled without making me unavailable for discussions.
> Perhaps they can be a bit more scheduled and less adhoc?  Anyway, if I
> am unresponsive in irc, it is likely because I am trying to focus for
> a block of time  ;)

I've noticed myself doing the same thing -- often ending up working on
multiple things in bits and pieces, leaving my attention fractured, and
leaving me with an impressively long list of work in progress, but a
rather pathetic list of tasks actually accomplished.

I experimented for a while with Pomodoro[1], and it worked really well
for me. (But then I ended up with some highly-collaborative tasks that
didn't really work well with Pomodoro, and fell out of the habit.) I
wasn't necessarily a faithful adherent to every little detail, but I
mostly appreciated the concept of 25 minutes of focused work on a single
task, followed by a five minute breather. I found that there were few
things that actually required an immediately reply, so if I set my nick
to matty_dubs|busy I could ignore IRC and email for 25 minutes. I'd
actually like to get back into that habit...

The one thing I struggled with is whether this is something you can do
full-time. For collaborating with other developers over IRC, Pomodoro
really doesn't work. I also think it's very valuable to be able to pop
into #aeolus and ask questions or bounce ideas around and get prompt
feedback. So I wonder if Pomodoro better lends itself to being a
part-time strategy for chopping down tasks, with a more traditional
"Talk on IRC and check my email and write code" workflow for part of the
day.

-- Matt

[1] http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/



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