My performance on computer tasks changes when people watch me. I suddenly forget how to type.
When I’m coding I find it much easier once everyone else in the house has gone out or gone to sleep. It’s like there’s a little bit of my social brain I have to keep on if there’s anyone who could potentially talk to me and when I can switch that off I can use my whole brain for the task at hand and it’s much easier. It’s not like I’m bad at concentrating. I am that guy who can sit in a noisy open plan office and con…
I remember hearing a story about a guitarist who was trying to play his scales as fast as possible, and an observer described it as the guitarist being so focused “he forgot to breathe”. That resonates with me.
But if I’m sitting around in the evening with the family, I can’t achieve anything like this level of focus. I’ve come to think of it like an airplane or rocket. It uses most of its energy to get off the ground, but once in motion high above the earth, it can stay in motion using a fraction of that energy.
Being around other people who might interrupt is like launching a rocket, and 3 minutes into the flight we have to land because someone wants a snack.
Sometimes when I try to think about something challenging in these circumstances, in a matter of 20 minutes I feel exhausted to the point it’s hard to keep my eyes open, as if I’ve tried to launch a rocket every 2 minutes and have no fuel left, even though I haven’t gone anywhere.