41–50 of 97 posts
I block out time when I look at email, jira, and messaging.
From my own ideas, I do not schedule meetings first thing in the morning. I reserve that time to think and do strategic planning.
To go offline in slack should be an option. Talk to your manager or someone at the company. You have a disability, there must be accommodations. What I do is keep any chat and such closed and only accept e-mail. I then have two set times a day where I check it by going through the mailbox. There should be no argument that you can't do this unless you're employed to be always on-call and need to be responsive in 5 min…
I'd rather have one developer take a hit to their productivity to answer a coworkers questions and keep the whole team moving forward than have the team blocked so that one employee can complete their ticket in a single uninterrupted block.
Almost all electronic interruptions are optional. Put them in a dedicated browser identity, a dedicated email identity, a dedicated virtual machine, a dedicated physical machine, etc.
2. Flow is not a magical state. Work is how you get into flow. Work is how you recover from interruptions from a flow state. So just start doing something that needs to be done.
3. Drama is interesting. It is not work.
Good luck.
- Ignore your inbox: Unless you're in a support role, most company emails are not as critical as you might think. All of that noise between blathering newsletters, GitHub notifications, calendar events, various service updates, and alerts from failed CI jobs are mere distractions. You can configure your mail to filter these out or, like I do, not bother checking them for days. If something's actually important, you'l…
As tech lead on my team, I ask them to make it to standup and I'll forgive any other absence. It's 15 minutes, we time box it so we just hang up on second 900 if we even make it that long. My team won't update ticket comments, they wont read emails, they won't read Teams channel questions directed at them. I try to keep these things at a minimum so that I can't be accused of making a point about over-stimulation - I…
You're in a tough position, it sounds. You're a lead, yet likely restricted to leading technology and not so much people. I don't know what your leadership style is, but I've noticed some people are treated like bosses for merely acting the part, so that's something to consider.
Also, what I meant to say was that a person should skip standup if it actually benefits their productivity. They should show up to some standups, perhaps most. Hypothetically, standups could be done well, but I don't usually experience this. I don't think people should never show up to team rituals.
- Ignore your inbox: Unless you're in a support role, most company emails are not as critical as you might think. All of that noise between blathering newsletters, GitHub notifications, calendar events, various service updates, and alerts from failed CI jobs are mere distractions. You can configure your mail to filter these out or, like I do, not bother checking them for days. If something's actually important, you'l…
Adding my voice, if your stand up sucks, I'm sorry, but you will still need to provide some kind of input to those you work with on what you're doing and what you need. Otherwise, don't be surprised at performance reviews.
I've been using the "Hummus" notification for some years because the dings are triggering and hummus is yummy. But in the past couple of months, I leave my audio muted.
"Lofi beats to study to" is actually a really great genre of music to put on in the background as it gives my brain stimulation but is not detracting. It can help me start getting focused on my task rather than looking for something interested in the muted channels.
I don't look at email but a few times a day to hit the "delete" button and ponder how to make a rule to filter out the email I delete on a daily/weekly basis.
Direct people who want your help to your team's public Slack channel. Do not help people in your DMs. This gives the whole team a chance to help and not put it all on you. We went further and the primary on-call person is responsible for being the first contact to our customers in our public channel. The idea is to make it so people not on-call don't get distracted. It's worked.
Now, if you can get your customers to stop asking for help (For my team, this has come down to training them on the things we get repeat questions about, and directing them back to their own team to ask for help before coming to us), and get your team to quit asking for help, you'll be golden.
Edit: Tell people to use threads. It helps reduce pings.
Also tell people not to use @here. Send them an article about why not to use it. Also use passive-aggressive emojis like :pingsock: when they continue to do it in channels with 900 people in them.
I'm autistic, and quickly become very frustrated by distracting sounds and unexpected or unproductive interruptions. Unfortunately, this is a "me" problem, and I've found that I'm the only one interested in solving it. After years of carefully managing/challenging expectations of me, here's what my work situation looks like today. - I work 100% remotely. If I go into the office, I will only be interrupted constantly,…
IMHO, this seems very reasonable.
I'm autistic, and quickly become very frustrated by distracting sounds and unexpected or unproductive interruptions. Unfortunately, this is a "me" problem, and I've found that I'm the only one interested in solving it. After years of carefully managing/challenging expectations of me, here's what my work situation looks like today. - I work 100% remotely. If I go into the office, I will only be interrupted constantly,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMHO, this seems very reasonable.
Only if his expertise is highly relevant and beneficial to the company
Some of the most incredible programmers I’ve had the pleasure of working with were just like this, and I felt like it was my job as their boss to help them keep it that way.
There’s a bias for visibility and not actual work that I think makes it really difficult for those on the spectrum or who have adhd or just difficulty refocusing after getting interrupted have to deal with that doesn’t get a lot of support in the modern workplace. To boot, this culture drives type-a, need to talk face-to-face, achievement focused personalities absolutely crazy.
I can’t tell you have many times I’ve had to say no to some over controlling stakeholder who “needs in person morning status updates” every day. It absolutely killed our code velocity when we tried it and the late night crew thought they were hitler.