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Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#11

Post by Cthulhu_ »

gurkendoktor wrote: post #5

pkorzeniewski - your post is dead. I work from home 90% of the time and I find it really hard not to be distracted by technology (social media). I think that overcrowded offices and technology are two orthogonal problems here. But the trend still seems to be for technology to add more noise. OS X comes with a super-chatty Notification Center that increasingly brings in noise from your phone, smart watches are distrac…

> How can we fight this trend?

Do Not Disturb -> On. I'm not sure if that's a setting that propagates across all Apple devices automatically, but, the option is there.

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#12

Post by Cthulhu_ »

For me personally it's not so much incoming notifications that distract me, but my colleagues. We're a small team of iOS and Android developers (about seven people total), and there's an almost constant buzz of random activities about various subjects - 90% of which are not directly relevant to me, but sometimes they are.

Plus I have a colleague that Demands I Look At His Code Now from time to time. On the one side I want to indulge him, on the other - could you wait until I'm not in the middle of something? Or not show me an update every five minutes? The headphones are there for a reason.

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#13

Post by manigandham »

CthulhuOvermind wrote: post #4

I don't get it. They used a metric of looking at different screens as a lack of focus tool, and yet I've just had a nice 2 hour long session of developing a script, where I kept glancing between the script and the output on 2 monitors to see if I had fixed it. By their metric I was not focused, and yet I was just telling my colleague I had a great 2 hour long focused session

They probably mean task-specific application window, not actual computer screen as many people even today just have a single monitor. Also I doubt they used software developers for test subjects.

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#16

Post by The_Brads »

I don't really feel any better off having read this. It's informative sure, but it makes me wonder how often Ian Hardy was distracted when he wrote it. Just imagine what the life of a pencil pushing journalist working for the BBC within the billboard clustered highrise capital of the world (New York) would actually be like.

I'm going to take a rough guess he's not well off, especially given the quite blatant product placement for "Focus", the music streaming service. Does he go home satisfied every night with the 500 words his boss tell him to push out?

Sorry... I'm being mean now. I do agree, totally, social media is the devil and it's destroying the minds of my family, both senior and junior, professional and unprofessional. It's mind melting gobbledy goop that I wish would die to make way for more intelligent discussion on forums such as this one.

Thanks for the post though, it's got me thinking, not about stuff that I haven't already thought of before. Not even something I necessarily relate to, but it's got me thinking about what not to turn into.

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#17

Post by dublinben »

wslh wrote: post #7
sasvari wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[..] I find it really hard not to be distracted by technology (social media) [..] How can we fight this trend? There is an obvious solution for at least part of the problem, isn't there?

> There is an obvious solution for at least part of the problem, isn't there? Not without spending a lot of time configuring applications. Now I find Android more difficult to configure than Windows Advanced Server. For example, in the past Twitter only notified you about tweets for you, then they started to play with the discovery stuff and send you all kind of tweets that may interested you. Sure, I can go to the c…

Apps that you don't install can't bother you with notifications. The solution to your problem is readily apparent.

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#18

Post by ohitsdom »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #12

For me personally it's not so much incoming notifications that distract me, but my colleagues. We're a small team of iOS and Android developers (about seven people total), and there's an almost constant buzz of random activities about various subjects - 90% of which are not directly relevant to me, but sometimes they are. Plus I have a colleague that Demands I Look At His Code Now from time to time. On the one side I…

I think there are a lot of ways you can help out the "look at my code now" guy. Even a simple "give me a few minutes to finish up what I'm working on" could go a long way. If you do it regularly enough, it should be a constant reminder to him that you have work too and he may start asking you to look "when you are free".

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#19

Post by ohitsdom »

wslh wrote: post #7
sasvari wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[..] I find it really hard not to be distracted by technology (social media) [..] How can we fight this trend? There is an obvious solution for at least part of the problem, isn't there?

> There is an obvious solution for at least part of the problem, isn't there? Not without spending a lot of time configuring applications. Now I find Android more difficult to configure than Windows Advanced Server. For example, in the past Twitter only notified you about tweets for you, then they started to play with the discovery stuff and send you all kind of tweets that may interested you. Sure, I can go to the c…

I think the "obvious solution" hinted at was to get off social media.

For me, I started to hate Facebook. Too much time spent on it, too little value. But enough value to not delete my account. I ended up deleting the mobile app and was shocked at how positively that impacted my habits. Now I'm only on Facebook a couple times a week, and it provides slight value while not becoming a time sink.

Re: Losing focus: Why tech is getting in the way of work

#20

Post by netcan »

PG's articles on this topic is very good, IMO.

The level of stimulation around us has gone way up. Our ability to deal with it culturally and psychologically has not gone up the same way. Whether the answer is to limit our exposure, envelop discipline or whatever, I think it's up to the individual at present to figure out a way.

The scary trap is: It's easy to consider procrastination/distraction a little problem. It is not.

Maybe we need to treat "distraction" like dieting or quitting smoking. That's disconcerting because we're horrendously bad at dieting and overcoming addiction.

People commonly use the word "procrastination" to describe what they do on the Internet. It seems to me too mild to describe what's happening as merely not-doing-work. We don't call it procrastination when someone gets drunk instead of working. - pg

http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

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