I used to feel that way about interruptions, but at this point I’m not convinced that taking breaks is particularly harmful to my productivity as a programmer. I’m usually in one of two situations. I’m either stuck on something, in which case taking a break can be helpful, or in the zone, in which case I know exactly what I’m doing and it takes less than a minute to get back into things. The intuition that interruptions are bad for productivity might stem from the fact that being interrupted feels unpleasant.
Of course my experience may not apply to everyone, etc, etc.
I’m reasonably sure it depends on the sort of interrupt. This is based on introspection, so it’s not very reliable, but an interrupt that involves thinking about something different-but-similar is murder, while e.g. switching tracks entirely to reading a book doesn’t seem to be nearly as much of a problem.
Getting up to take a walk is something else again; it doesn’t actually break my concentration at all, I’ll still be thinking about the same problems while walking.
I used to feel that way about interruptions, but at this point I’m not convinced that taking breaks is particularly harmful to my productivity as a programmer. I’m usually in one of two situations. I’m either stuck on something, in which case taking a break can be helpful, or in the zone, in which case I know exactly what I’m doing and it takes less than a minute to get back into things. The intuition that interruptions are bad for productivity might stem from the fact that being interrupted feels unpleasant.
Of course my experience may not apply to everyone, etc, etc.
I’m reasonably sure it depends on the sort of interrupt. This is based on introspection, so it’s not very reliable, but an interrupt that involves thinking about something different-but-similar is murder, while e.g. switching tracks entirely to reading a book doesn’t seem to be nearly as much of a problem.
Getting up to take a walk is something else again; it doesn’t actually break my concentration at all, I’ll still be thinking about the same problems while walking.