At job, what works for me is making notes. For each task, I start a new page in a note-making software, and put there everything related to the task: link to the Jira ticket, short description, people to contact about analysis and testing, links to relevant resources, etc. Sometimes I also write an outline like “first I will do this, then this”. Then I start working on the task, adding more information as it emerges: things that people told me, things I found in the source code, links to the commits and pull requests I made, etc.
The reason is that interruptions are frequent (both planned and unplanned) and seems like I can’t do much about it, but the thing I can do is make it easier to recover after the interruption. This way I can make a use of a short block of time, by reading about the planned next step in my notes, doing it, and adding a note about the result.
Unfortunately, the same strategy does not work for me in my private life. I am not sure why, but I have a few suspicions. In private life I have to play both the role of the manager (decide what to do) and the individual contributor (actually do it); my current version of the system works okay for the latter but not for the former. The difficult part is to make myself continue working on the interrupted project, when there are so many alternatives.
Without interruptions, this is automatic. It is difficult for me to start working on something, but once I do, I can easily get obsessed, and could continue working on the same thing for days. That is how I accomplished some things when I was single and childless; I knew that the right time for projects was weekends, especially the ones that had a holiday on Friday or Monday. I could work on something for 4 days in a row, only taking breaks for food and sleep. But now that I have kids, I simply don’t get that amount of uninterrupted time, ever.
Interruptions at work are not just difficult for me, but also very unpleasant. It feels like getting hurt in some mental way; having my autonomy violated. Forcing myself to start doing something when I am not in the mood, it hurts. Finally getting in the mood as I am doing it, and then being forced to stop, it hurts again. To have an interruption looming ahead of me means to expect to get hurt soon… that is, if I actually start working on the project. The unpleasant feelings accumulate and result in aversion against the task they are associated with. The more I get interrupted trying on work on a certain task, the more I hate the task. At work, I usually don’t have a choice, and I have to finish the task anyway. In private, this makes me abandon projects, or procrastinate on them a lot.
Not all interruptions have the same effect. Taking a break to eat, sleep, exercise, or take a walk is okay. Those are simple activities, so I can continue thinking about the project in the background. The bad kind of interruption is when I need to think hard about something different, when I need to solve a different problem.
You offer a really interesting point. I don’t think I feel as sharply bad about having to context switch as you do, but it very well could be that I still register a similar bad feeling, and simply react to it by doing nothing as opposed to being productive and then having to go through a context switch.
I hadn’t really thought about it as a response to stimulus like that, but I guess that’s because I have a more subtly bad feeling when switching contexts, so there wasn’t as obvious of a thing to associate my behavior with.
At job, what works for me is making notes. For each task, I start a new page in a note-making software, and put there everything related to the task: link to the Jira ticket, short description, people to contact about analysis and testing, links to relevant resources, etc. Sometimes I also write an outline like “first I will do this, then this”. Then I start working on the task, adding more information as it emerges: things that people told me, things I found in the source code, links to the commits and pull requests I made, etc.
The reason is that interruptions are frequent (both planned and unplanned) and seems like I can’t do much about it, but the thing I can do is make it easier to recover after the interruption. This way I can make a use of a short block of time, by reading about the planned next step in my notes, doing it, and adding a note about the result.
Unfortunately, the same strategy does not work for me in my private life. I am not sure why, but I have a few suspicions. In private life I have to play both the role of the manager (decide what to do) and the individual contributor (actually do it); my current version of the system works okay for the latter but not for the former. The difficult part is to make myself continue working on the interrupted project, when there are so many alternatives.
Without interruptions, this is automatic. It is difficult for me to start working on something, but once I do, I can easily get obsessed, and could continue working on the same thing for days. That is how I accomplished some things when I was single and childless; I knew that the right time for projects was weekends, especially the ones that had a holiday on Friday or Monday. I could work on something for 4 days in a row, only taking breaks for food and sleep. But now that I have kids, I simply don’t get that amount of uninterrupted time, ever.
Interruptions at work are not just difficult for me, but also very unpleasant. It feels like getting hurt in some mental way; having my autonomy violated. Forcing myself to start doing something when I am not in the mood, it hurts. Finally getting in the mood as I am doing it, and then being forced to stop, it hurts again. To have an interruption looming ahead of me means to expect to get hurt soon… that is, if I actually start working on the project. The unpleasant feelings accumulate and result in aversion against the task they are associated with. The more I get interrupted trying on work on a certain task, the more I hate the task. At work, I usually don’t have a choice, and I have to finish the task anyway. In private, this makes me abandon projects, or procrastinate on them a lot.
Not all interruptions have the same effect. Taking a break to eat, sleep, exercise, or take a walk is okay. Those are simple activities, so I can continue thinking about the project in the background. The bad kind of interruption is when I need to think hard about something different, when I need to solve a different problem.
You offer a really interesting point. I don’t think I feel as sharply bad about having to context switch as you do, but it very well could be that I still register a similar bad feeling, and simply react to it by doing nothing as opposed to being productive and then having to go through a context switch.
I hadn’t really thought about it as a response to stimulus like that, but I guess that’s because I have a more subtly bad feeling when switching contexts, so there wasn’t as obvious of a thing to associate my behavior with.