The interruptible programmer

The problem arises when you are focused on something very specific, for example designing a particularly complicated series of function calls, you effectively have to keep a stack in your mind, think about locals, instance variables, whatever, abstract stuff that the brain isn't so well designed at retaining, which becomes very vulnerable to disruption.

If you are unlucky enough to be interrupted while in that kind of state, the spinning plates effectively fall and break - it can almost be painful, and certainly drudging to get back up to where you were before. I've found this tends to take anywhere from 30 minutes to a day of time away from me because getting back in that flow state can be so damn difficult.

I think a lot of the problem comes down to us using the brain for stuff it's not great at.

I’m not sure how you came up with “3” (or for that matter how objects in view of a lion is comparable to “concepts” in the working memory of a programmer). As far as I know this idea was popularized by Errol Morris’s film Fast, Cheap, & Out of Control: http://www.errolmorris.com/film/fcooc_transcript.html

“Dave Hoover:

“The chair has four legs... Now, an animal has a one track mind, For instance, the animal is coming after you with the idea of tearing your head off... You put the chair up, and all of a sudden, he has four points of interest. He loses his original train of thought because this agitates him. He can’t comprehend those four points of interest, so what he does he attacks the chair. He takes his wrath out on the chair. His mind now had been completely distracted from his original thought: ‘Eat the man in the white pants.’

“It’s basically animal psychology. You try to keep the animal afraid of you in that he does not understand you. He does not understand that you’re weaker than he is. [...]”

(The next few paragraphs are also quite interesting, and I recommend the film generally.)

Interesting. I have never heard of this technique. I prefer working in 3 x 45 mins blocks. At 25 mins, I'm just getting into things.

Parkinson's Law - work expands (or contracts) to fill the time available for its completion.

When I was teaching English, for one class, I gave groups a human-slide puzzle activity. A group of 8 were given a number from 1-8 and arranged randomly on 9 numbered squares. They were to re-arrange themselves in order by moving one person at a time to the empty square.

The last group to complete it was having a really tough time and kept complaining to me that they couldn't do it. After all the other groups had finished I announced they had 5 minutes left. They completed it just before the time was up.

I don't necessarily know if programmers need to go so far as embracing interruptions, but I think the author makes a good point. In fact, this is the challenge most introverts face in their careers. How do you remain focused in your inner world without shutting your coworkers out?

Extraverts of course face the opposite problem. How do you remain focused on the outer world world while not becoming completely dependent on your coworkers?