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Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

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Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#41

Post by ensignavenger »

BeetleB wrote: post #20
ggregoire wrote: post #11

The first part of the book has a really good description of the "modern" work environment and its defects, and how it valorizes superficial work over deep work. I was actually surprised by how identical this description was to my last work environment. - Open space to promote communication and knowledge sharing (and controlling what people are doing), but at the end you are interrupted every 5 minutes by people walki…

>People expect you to have Gmail and Slack open all day and to reply in the 5 minutes. When I was looking for my last job, I explicitly queried about this: "Will it be OK if I check my email only 3 times a day (at work)?" In my previous job, too much work was done through email. Person wants me to do some work and return a plot. I send it to him. Within 5-30 minutes, he has a question about it. I have to respond soon…

-"have to respond soon."

What is it about the email that makes you think you have to respond soon? Is it the culture at the company around email?

I work at a non-technology Fortune 500 in the IT dept. (I work remote, too) and the general expectation is that we check our email 2-4 times a day. Occasionally I go a day going through my inbox once all day, and it has never been a problem.

I suppose it is a company culture issue?

Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#42

Post by ensignavenger »

taway_1212 wrote: post #29
collyw wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the main motivations for me wanting remote work.

With remote work, there can be a constant slew of inquiries on Slack, esp. if you're a senior team member. Trivial things take 5-10 minutes to work out on Slack because of how inefficient typing is versus being in the same room. I guess the ideal situation is to work on something that requires little collaboration, but such positions are very rare. EDIT: They're even more rare that they could be. In cases where a com…

What is wrong with a phone call (preferably scheduled) to work out such details? It seems to work pretty well for me with my remote job. I prefer more complex solutions to be worked out via a wiki-like editable document that everyone can share and discuss, but for trivial things, a phone call works well.

You are right that many more things could be done without so much collaboration with better practices. I think code reviews can help maintain a sufficient spread of knowledge across the team.

Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#43

Post by ianbicking »

Hard work is hard, but I wonder if it truly requires an anti-social approach.

The nice thing if you are working in isolation is that everyone involved in your work environment is probably aligned towards a goal. Or at least we hope you yourself are aligned – and yet even that is hard to manage, as we all know from our own ability to distract ourselves.

An open office, messaging, all those distractions aren't just distractions, they are external influences that aren't designed to help you get YOUR work done. Someone else has a question to help them get THEIR work done. Someone else is monitoring your productivity to help them alleviate their own anxiousness.

I'm not a big fan of pair programming, but I do like how it can lead to better focus. It's like you are focus accountability partners. I also like ad hoc meetings setup for a specific purpose, if the purpose really is important for the participants I think it's productive. And if the problem is really important, I like a meeting where we talk things through and then get quiet for a long time. We don't give up. We don't defer the problem, leave and go our separate ways. Part of doing hard work, in my experience, is loading up the tensions, piling up everything that makes it hard, and then finding the way out. It's not always easiest to do that alone.

Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#45

Post by Rainymood »

dominotw wrote: post #2

>Extending the length of the 25 minute pomodoro. If I’m in the deep work flow, I’ll continue past the 25 minute alarm. Someone told me that its 25 minutes because it prevents you from building too much context in your head that prevents you from taking a break at 25 min mark. You can't do creative work if your brain is filled with lot of context. eg: TDD goes really well with pomodoro because you are only thinking ab…

>Someone told me that its 25 minutes

I used to believe this as well, then I tried 50 minutes, 10 minutes break and I like it way better. Try it for yourself and see which one works best for you!

Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#46

Post by BeetleB »

ensignavenger wrote: post #41
BeetleB wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>People expect you to have Gmail and Slack open all day and to reply in the 5 minutes. When I was looking for my last job, I explicitly queried about this: "Will it be OK if I check my email only 3 times a day (at work)?" In my previous job, too much work was done through email. Person wants me to do some work and return a plot. I send it to him. Within 5-30 minutes, he has a question about it. I have to respond soon…

-"have to respond soon." What is it about the email that makes you think you have to respond soon? Is it the culture at the company around email? I work at a non-technology Fortune 500 in the IT dept. (I work remote, too) and the general expectation is that we check our email 2-4 times a day. Occasionally I go a day going through my inbox once all day, and it has never been a problem. I suppose it is a company cultur…

>What is it about the email that makes you think you have to respond soon? Is it the culture at the company around email?

Yep. They insist they need answers soon.

(They probably do, but they should just come down to my office or have a proper meeting).

Really, as I said, they're essentially having meetings asynchronously through email.

Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#47

Post by KurtMueller »

josephg wrote: post #5
dominotw wrote: post #2

>Extending the length of the 25 minute pomodoro. If I’m in the deep work flow, I’ll continue past the 25 minute alarm. Someone told me that its 25 minutes because it prevents you from building too much context in your head that prevents you from taking a break at 25 min mark. You can't do creative work if your brain is filled with lot of context. eg: TDD goes really well with pomodoro because you are only thinking ab…

I'll be honest; I've never understood this mindset. The idea of purposefully interrupting my flow every 25 minutes, explicitly dropping my context is ghastly. If you could design an ideal hell for me it would involve hard, interesting programming problems and constant (every ~10-20 minute) seemingly random external interruptions. (Its not an accident that I don't have children.) Most of the work I'm really proud of h…

I would say you should adjust the timer to whatever fits your lifestyle.

I've always understood the pomodoro timers as 25 minutes of getting down into the trenches and then taking 5-10 minute breaks to think about whatever you're doing from a high level overview.

Re: Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt

#49

Post by nine_k »

espeed wrote: post #48

Was it Eric Schmidt, Larry or Sergey who said ideally everyone would have the opportunity to do a three-year "deep think"?

...and a flying car, and a pony?

Jokes aside, for most of us, the only person who can give you a three-year "deep think" is yourself. Save up money, schedule off distractions, plan ahead, and have that deep-think semi-vacation.

Doable? Quite probably. Easy? Well, no. You have to already have a lot of concentration and determination to give yourself that large chunk of uninterrupted concentration and determination.

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