Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

#101

Post by adontz » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 12:11 AM UTC

andi999 wrote: post #59

adontz wrote: post #16

Therapy. For real. In some cultures it's not welcome, but it affects personal development enormously. It's the best investment in your life. Not that you'll solve all your problems, however you'll learn to analyze your problems and learn to find root causes to fight with, instead of symptoms. Being here and now is not easy. You may be anxious, tired, may have some mild disorders, obsessions you don't even know about.

What type of therapy are you suggesting? Any type?

I would say try a session with a few different therapists and see how it goes. There are online professionals, but I have mixed feeling about that. People lay down for a reason, sitting in front of a monitor is not the same.

The very fact that you have to present your life in an understandable structure already helps. Actually, that's a funny story. I was so frustrated that my sessions were useless because I could not describe my problems, that I started rehearsing my sessions. What should I say; what is important; what is not important and should be skipped; what is the best order to tell things. After a few months it was not necessary. So the first useful skill I have got is communicating in a clear manner. Especially communicating about feelings. People usually have no idea how to describe what they feel and jet get angry or something.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

#102

Post by hnbear » Mon, Jan 03, 2022, 5:33 AM UTC

The best approach to warning off interrupters I’ve seen was an engineer at a previous gig.

He built a little literal interior counter with an LED display and button to increment that sat on his desk. He reset it to zero each day.

For every person who came up to ask a question he hit the button, then answered.

He used it as a metric for his manager, and as a gentle passive-aggressive way of pointing out you’re interrupting him. The button pushing had a flourish to it.

That said, he was always very gracious about answering questions.

One of the best infra engineers out there, I’d must-hire him again, interrupt counter and all.

Pretty quickly people learnt to stick to important questions, or chat during downtime, not focus time.

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

#103

Post by thobiasse » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:52 AM UTC

smoe wrote: post #66

Couple of suggestions that have worked for me ymmv: - Disable all notifications by default. Emails, chats, phone, apps, services turn them all off. Very few things in life actually require immediate response. Try to setup, that only notifications for those come trough. - Timebox everything. Instead of just starting doing something, define how much time you are going to spent on doing x (might be a task, fixing a bug,…

> Also, efficiency is not everything. We are not computers that can just chug away on tasks infinitely. Any non trivial work, you won't be able to finish in one sitting. Some interruptions are inevitable and healthy and whatever methodology, you will lose some progress on the way and have to rework things. And it's also about priorities in life. Is the work-related, unfinished task really important / interesting enough to get stuck in your head outside of work hours? Maybe the problem is not getting interrupted, but ability to interrupt yourself and separate different aspects of life.

Very sound advice thank you so much

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

#104

Post by thobiasse » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 8:56 AM UTC

stef25 wrote: post #98

thobiasse wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if I think the same, for you the rest of the day is really "lost" meaning you'd rather work on/do the stuff you were doing between 4:30 - 8 AM all day?

Yes and no ... Being an introvert I need a certain number of hours alone for "projects" :) I'm responsible for my young kids and my ageing parents need more support as well and those are things I don't want to not do, they just take up time. And unfortunately the relationship with my partner probably doesn't get the attention it deserves either. Luckily she's KO until 8AM anyway. I do also love being outdoors going f…

Apart from my parents who are healthy and can take care of themselves we are in the same boat :)

Re: Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

#105

Post by Icathian » Tue, Jan 04, 2022, 3:39 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #61

Icathian wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had some really bad ones too. They definitely exist, but there are some good ones too. If you're still seeing that person I'd definitely recommend shopping around.

Just curious, which area you are from (if you don’t mind me asking) and how much an average good therapy costs per hour? Not in USD, but e.g. in % of a decent income there. Mine is around 3%, non-capital russian 1m city.

Chicago area, USA. It varies wildly depending on your healthcare coverage. For me personally, and most white collar workers, it would be less than 1%. Call it 0.1%?

Unfortunately for those that often need it most, coverage is often not good, wages are very low, and it might well approach 10% of your income.