Work from home has basically fixed this for me. Disable your works preferred messenger notifications and set a few times during the day that you will check them. Same goes for email.
Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
41–50 of 105 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#42I cry a single tear of joy, then shuffle back to the black and green glow!
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Therapy is not a silver bullet. While it can be helpful, I found it incredibly awful and frustrating when therapist tries to describe and justify things that are happening to you by trying to tie something from your past. You can always do that with any person and any circumstance. Client: „I am annoyed by the interuruptions“ Therapist: „Maybe you dont like loosing control because your mother havent given you a titty…
My experience with CBT was that it eschewed chasing down causal issues from your past, and rather worked more towards understanding how you’ve ended up, and to give you the tools to counteract your automatic thoughts and behaviours. I found it incredibly helpful, what I thought were my issues turned out to be symptoms of a more foundational issue and understanding that gave great insight into why I do things the way…
I am hearing this several times now that I should try cognitive-behavioural therapy and get away from Freudian crap. Thanks!
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#44Any time I'm working on some code I open a GitHub issue for it. I then make comments on that issue as I go, recording decisions I make and things I try and "next steps" I need to take and links to API documentation or example code that I need.
I try to ensure there's as little relevant information as possible that's exclusively in my head.
This means I can recover from an interruption - "get back in flow" - much faster than if I kept everything in my head.
More importantly, it means I can have an order of magnitude more projects on the go at once. I sometimes return to an issue I first opened more than a year ago and can productively start working on it with just a few minutes of review of the previous comments.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Therapy is not a silver bullet. While it can be helpful, I found it incredibly awful and frustrating when therapist tries to describe and justify things that are happening to you by trying to tie something from your past. You can always do that with any person and any circumstance. Client: „I am annoyed by the interuruptions“ Therapist: „Maybe you dont like loosing control because your mother havent given you a titty…
A year of therapy weekly here. That’s just BAD therapist, whom you can leave right away without a privilege of explanation. It’s hard to find a good one, but when you find em, your mind will “shit bricks”. My (experience-based) way to detect a good one: They can prescribe. That means they are a real doctor and not a “great courses plus grad”. If they work with drug addicts, good. They only ask, never theorize, nor cr…
I kid you not I got an explanation about feeling sad and depressed around birthday once: "when we are born we are separated from our mothers and that event deeply traumatizes us for life". Really? an underdeveloped brain of a baby is already traumatized at birth? Maybe you're right, maybe I just have to switch.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#46As someone said, you confuse interrupted with distracted. I medicate my distraction away by microdosing lsd. 10 microgram every 3 days. There is now quiet in my head. Look into it.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#47When the pandemic restrictions were lifted in my country, I took an on site gig as a consultant for a large corporation.
My boss interrupted people all the time to spout nonsense that usually was not related to work. I quickly found out there was an extreme productivity differential when compared to my previous job.
The way I cope with being interrupted is by making it clear I don't want to be interrupted for no reason. If the issue persists, I tell my boss about my small network of recruiters. If the interruptions persist, I reach out to some of those recruiters, and get a contract somewhere else.
Over the years I have found that some corporate types are so far removed from reality, that they don't understand how many engineers actually want to get things done. Working remotely has been a blessing for my career.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#48I work from home and the Gnome desktop has a simple toggle to turn off all notifications.
I check slack when I feel like it and if there are messages, I answer them.
I feel very little stress compared to when I was in the office and people were talking, walking and laughing around me constantly. It was impossible to focus for 5 minutes.
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
A year of therapy weekly here. That’s just BAD therapist, whom you can leave right away without a privilege of explanation. It’s hard to find a good one, but when you find em, your mind will “shit bricks”. My (experience-based) way to detect a good one: They can prescribe. That means they are a real doctor and not a “great courses plus grad”. If they work with drug addicts, good. They only ask, never theorize, nor cr…
I kid you not I got an explanation about feeling sad and depressed around birthday once: "when we are born we are separated from our mothers and that event deeply traumatizes us for life". Really? an underdeveloped brain of a baby is already traumatized at birth? Maybe you're right, maybe I just have to switch.
Heh, my last time one basically told me to “think about it, maybe it’s something there” for an hour in a variety of ways, mixed with cool stories of his own. I had a feeling that I’m a better therapist than him because he didn’t even pick on my own work and suggestions towards “the method”, which I’ve got relatively fluent in.
(I had to switch recently because my best doc took a long break for an educational mission. And I can’t blame him, it is a pure necessity.)
Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?
#50Work from home has basically fixed this for me. Disable your works preferred messenger notifications and set a few times during the day that you will check them. Same goes for email.
I tried this, but my work uses MS Teams, which doesn't honour do-not-disturb. When you set DnD on, the app STILL flashes it's taskbar icon, creating a distraction. The only way around it is to mute all the noisy teams channels, and to remember to unmute them later. Also, being @-ed in a chat totally overrides DnD as well, and the sales guys have worked this out, and @ people constantly all day long.
I even tried not having Teams running when I was 'in the zone' only to end up being called on the phone to check 'whether I was working today'... :(