Build a Focus System for Better Work/Life Balance as a Web Developer

One a side note, about the phone thing, I read this https://hbr.org/2018/03/having-your-smartphone-nearby-takes-... the other day and I totally agree with it. Having my phone close, even when it is turned off, still causes some level of distraction to me. So lately I just leave my phone in a different room when I'm working and I just check it when I take a break, etc. Obviously this wouldn't apply to, say, an assistant, who will probably need the phone to make/receive calls.

Focus music, plus great sound (w/sub) is so effective for me.

I've got ADHD, so while I don't expect 8 hours of productive work from myself, if left to my own sense of "focus" and "discipline", I'm lucky to get 20 minutes in. If I'm emotionally or intellectually invested in something, time loses all meaning. And when the only work to be done lacks that pull, I inevitably get drawn to things which are either not work, or are only tangentially work related and get lost in that for hours at a time, even though it didn't feel that way. I can get lost in breaks too.

I make up for it by eventually getting that "oh shit" feeling and hammering everything out in the early hours of the morning when there is nobody online to distract me. The downside to that though is I end up staring at a screen too long, forgetting to eat or drink, and sometimes making myself physically ill from it all.

So pomodoro gives me a great balance. I write down one task to do, start my timer (in this case I use an instrumental soundtrack that goes 25 minutes) and when the music is done, get up, drink water and have a snack (I try to avoid browsing the internet) and get back to it (I don't use the 5 minute break timer, which is sometimes a problem, but if my mind is hooked into my work by then I'm usually eager to get back to it). The other big benefit of pomodoro is that I can use the first session for planning the other sessions, and that is a great way to plan and prioritize for the day without going overboard and spending 2 hours making a to do list that is too long anyhow. Also if I didn't write out what I was doing every day (even if it's written out somewhere else like JIRA) I would just straight up forget when I come back from a break and have to replan it all out again in my head (which would probably be forgotten again).

Pomodoro also helped me get better at shifting contexts, so since most meetings start on the hour, or half-hour, it doesn't feel like a huge interruption to stop anymore (though I find it's good to have a post-meeting pomodoro session that's half "write down what the heck that was about" and half "give your brain an extra break because meetings are hard".) So yeah, I need a timer. I agree that you don't the overhead of applications at all though. Pen and paper and timed soundtrack (or actual physical tomato timer which used to be something people had just laying around) keeps it dead simple.

Its the business, the business, product team do not know what they want. They are not clear on what it should look like.

Product lacks details, as a engineer we should demand more specifics from product.

Focus drifts when the next action is not certain.

How focused do you think atheletes are? Its because their ends are clear. Ours are loose and highly complex and with compounding execution could cause problems for many.

But product is too lazy to work and be detailed.

If you're one of those people who can work at a high-level of productivity on complex knowledge work without getting distracted or interrupted or losing focus constantly, congratulations.

Most people aren't like you.

And your advice is useless to them, at best.

Most people have a hard time with this and it's getting worse [1]. We didn't evolve to do the kind of work we do today [2], and beyond that, people's brains work differently. Many people with ADHD who started taking medication after years of struggling with focus issues describe it like a light switch in their brain. Why is it so hard to believe that it's a spectrum and that many without a diagnosis of ADHD find it harder to focus than you do?

Those of us who struggle with focus and productivity have heard the vapid advice of "just do it" hundreds or thousands of times. Not only is it worthless advice, it's often actively harmful.

Also, not to point fingers, but some of the people with your attitude (not all or even most) aren't actually all that productive and could stand to take a look at some of these methods.

1. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/121...

2. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/18/modern-world...