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> Thinking is an activity too—don’t undervalue it. Make time and space for it in your daily work schedule. This is why I find it impossible to work effectively

> Thinking is an activity too—don’t undervalue it. Make time and space for it in your daily work schedule. This is why I find it impossible to work effectively in open-plan offices. I'm often looking off in to space, thinking. But I feel compelled to make clickety-clack noises on a keyboard, continuously and unproductively, lest people think I'm not working.

pasquinelli 9y ago
walks are helpful for that, but then you can't do that too much for the same reason you can't sit and stare.
tunetine 9y ago
And here I am trying not to look pissed off at everyone around me because they're sitting there doing little to no work, talking, and making noises.
- zubspace 9y ago
  I'm working in a small office with 4 to 5 developers. I actually enjoy the company and don't mind the occasional phone call or chat. Sometimes I can overhear another conversation and add my 5 cents to it, which I believe to be valuable. We also use slack and 'idle-ping' other team members first and keep conversations in slack if possible. This works quite well, too. Recently we had an intern, which had a very annoying tic: While listening to headphones he now and then started to sing/whistle/hiss along, quietly but audible. It's strange and a personality thing, but it took quite a few days until I snapped and told him to stop. It also started again after a couple of days and I had to tell him again. There a two things to note: For some people it takes a lot to complain about something and for some people it takes a lot to change a habit. In a large office this can be problematic.
  - majewsky 9y ago
    > Recently we had an intern, which had a very annoying tic: While listening to headphones he now and then started to sing/whistle/hiss along, quietly but audible. It's strange and a personality thing, but it took quite a few days until I snapped and told him to stop. It also started again after a couple of days and I had to tell him again. I shall confess that I'm guilty of this, too. It helps, though, that everyone in our open-plan office has good headphones, so usually not too many people notice. (And yes, I realize the bizarreness of this entire situation.)
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Open office plans are great till they aren't, and then fixing them is difficult to impossible. They are bulwarks of busywork, the enemies of deep thought, the land where every coworker gets to put their two cents in and believe it was helpful.
c22 9y ago
You should install a covert clickety-clack noise maker in your keyboard, or just under your desk.
- ven_bug_trap 9y ago
  Nah, just bring a Model M to the office. Everyone will hate you, but a couple of words an hour will secure their belief in your productivity.
superplussed 9y ago
I love when CEOs talk about how they set aside dedicated time for this, Jason Fried comes to mind.
- RegW 9y ago
  Yes, and how important it is that they play golf with the other C-Levels during the working week. Somehow I don't feel the same rules are going to get applied to the rest of us.
tiglionabbit 9y ago
You could write down what you're thinking while you're thinking it. I usually use a google doc to organize my thoughts. It frees up active memory to get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper where you can see them and no longer fear forgetting them.
- coldtea 9y ago
  >You could write down what you're thinking while you're thinking it. That would be a solution to a non-problem ("looking busy").
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    It's a good one, too. I use Emacs for that, but because I use Emacs for almost anything and have a rather low font size set, cow-orkers doing casual screen glancing can't even tell if I'm coding, working through TODOs, requirement docs, or if I'm IRCing or reading my mail.
  - keithpeter 9y ago
    I need to make marks on paper while thinking through things - I often use a mind map so the outcome of a session might be a single side of A4 printing paper with a diagram on it but that could be the basic plan for a year's teaching on a course.
  - lmm 9y ago
    It clearly is a problem that the grandparent feels the need to solve. Often it's worth making small changes that improve your own life even if those changes are inherently throwaway.
MaulingMonkey 9y ago
> But I feel compelled to make clickety-clack noises on a keyboard, continuously and unproductively, lest people think I'm not working. Easier said than done, but some unsolicited suggestions: 1) Acquire the self confidence that your results will speak for themselves, appearances be damned. 2) Realize your coworkers also value thinking, and recognize it properly. 3) Realize your coworkers are probably too busy worrying about their own appearances. 4) Any busybodies not too busy worrying about their own appearances can see through your unproductive busywork anyways ;) 5) Consider journaling / take stream-of-concious notes / mind-mapping. Might slow your thinking down some, but might compensate for memory some too.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > 5) Consider journaling / take stream-of-concious notes / mind-mapping. Might slow your thinking down some, but might compensate for memory some too. I found myself unable to focus on thinking in the office, when there are other people present. I learned to compensate for that by doing my thinking in writing - I just start dumping my thoughts and talking to myself through my text editor. It feels a bit slower, but it does wonders for concentration and for short-term memory.
  - Danihan 9y ago
    Same, exactly.
  - criddell 9y ago
    Is a text editor more effective for you than pen and paper? I like a text editor because I can type faster than I can write, but something about writing on a paper works better for me.
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      Pen and paper can reflect my thinking better, but I'm an order of magnitude faster with a text editor than with handwriting - and the benefits of keeping flow and writing at the speed of thought more than compensate for lesser expressive power.
TeMPOraL 9y ago
This is exactly why some people look busy - to make time and space for thinking by projecting a "I'm busy - don't interrupt me" shield around themselves. I know I'm guilty of doing that quite a lot - some people are focus magnets, i.e. they have a supernatural skill of sensing when you're trying to think, so that they can come and interrupt you with bullshit requests.
eeZah7Ux 9y ago
By doing that you are only encouraging the "look busy" behavior in others. Please don't. The world does not need yet another million SLOC. We need to think a lot and type little.
- curun1r 9y ago
  This is why I encouraged my team to go on periodic walks throughout the day. I've always found that thinking can be easier when you move your body a little bit and getting out into the sunshine can improve your mood and cognitive abilities. If you can type at least 60wpm, as any professional dev should be able to do, the sitting at your desk part is just data entry and only needs to be done for a fraction of your day. Getting organizational buy in, though, was a lot harder. At review time, when we were measuring employees against each other (don't get me started on the stupidity of stack ranking, but that was the system we had to follow), other managers would try to use it against my team saying that they're always away from they're desks and trying to compare them against their own team's long hours and heroic firefighting of production issues. It took me about 18 months of convincing before I got our directors to realize that my team was producing just as much functionality, with much more complexity, and doing it while seeing a fraction of the production issues that other teams saw. I had to get testimonials from our support team along the lines of, "we don't answer many questions about their stuff, it just works." By the time I'd left, I'd just started to get through that busy isn't a virtue and hard work is only a good thing if it can't be avoided. Time spent reflecting is crucial to doing the least work necessary. Skipping that time will only create the appearance of productivity.
jamaicahest 9y ago
>> Thinking is an activity too—don’t undervalue it. Make time and space for it in your daily work schedule. >This is why I find it impossible to work effectively in open-plan offices. That, and the fact that open-plan offices are, in my experience, a noise hell. There's always seperate 2-3 conversations happening in the room, some of them about actual work, but disturbing 20 people nonetheless.

pasquinelli 9y ago

walks are helpful for that, but then you can't do that too much for the same reason you can't sit and stare.

tunetine 9y ago

And here I am trying not to look pissed off at everyone around me because they're sitting there doing little to no work, talking, and making noises.

zubspace 9y ago
I'm working in a small office with 4 to 5 developers. I actually enjoy the company and don't mind the occasional phone call or chat. Sometimes I can overhear another conversation and add my 5 cents to it, which I believe to be valuable. We also use slack and 'idle-ping' other team members first and keep conversations in slack if possible. This works quite well, too. Recently we had an intern, which had a very annoying tic: While listening to headphones he now and then started to sing/whistle/hiss along, quietly but audible. It's strange and a personality thing, but it took quite a few days until I snapped and told him to stop. It also started again after a couple of days and I had to tell him again. There a two things to note: For some people it takes a lot to complain about something and for some people it takes a lot to change a habit. In a large office this can be problematic.
- majewsky 9y ago
  > Recently we had an intern, which had a very annoying tic: While listening to headphones he now and then started to sing/whistle/hiss along, quietly but audible. It's strange and a personality thing, but it took quite a few days until I snapped and told him to stop. It also started again after a couple of days and I had to tell him again. I shall confess that I'm guilty of this, too. It helps, though, that everyone in our open-plan office has good headphones, so usually not too many people notice. (And yes, I realize the bizarreness of this entire situation.)
- valuearb 9y ago
  Open office plans are great till they aren't, and then fixing them is difficult to impossible. They are bulwarks of busywork, the enemies of deep thought, the land where every coworker gets to put their two cents in and believe it was helpful.

c22 9y ago

You should install a covert clickety-clack noise maker in your keyboard, or just under your desk.

ven_bug_trap 9y ago
Nah, just bring a Model M to the office. Everyone will hate you, but a couple of words an hour will secure their belief in your productivity.

superplussed 9y ago

I love when CEOs talk about how they set aside dedicated time for this, Jason Fried comes to mind.

RegW 9y ago
Yes, and how important it is that they play golf with the other C-Levels during the working week. Somehow I don't feel the same rules are going to get applied to the rest of us.

tiglionabbit 9y ago

You could write down what you're thinking while you're thinking it. I usually use a google doc to organize my thoughts. It frees up active memory to get your thoughts out of your head and onto paper where you can see them and no longer fear forgetting them.

coldtea 9y ago
>You could write down what you're thinking while you're thinking it. That would be a solution to a non-problem ("looking busy").
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  It's a good one, too. I use Emacs for that, but because I use Emacs for almost anything and have a rather low font size set, cow-orkers doing casual screen glancing can't even tell if I'm coding, working through TODOs, requirement docs, or if I'm IRCing or reading my mail.
- keithpeter 9y ago
  I need to make marks on paper while thinking through things - I often use a mind map so the outcome of a session might be a single side of A4 printing paper with a diagram on it but that could be the basic plan for a year's teaching on a course.
- lmm 9y ago
  It clearly is a problem that the grandparent feels the need to solve. Often it's worth making small changes that improve your own life even if those changes are inherently throwaway.

MaulingMonkey 9y ago

> But I feel compelled to make clickety-clack noises on a keyboard, continuously and unproductively, lest people think I'm not working. Easier said than done, but some unsolicited suggestions: 1) Acquire the self confidence that your results will speak for themselves, appearances be damned. 2) Realize your coworkers also value thinking, and recognize it properly. 3) Realize your coworkers are probably too busy worrying about their own appearances. 4) Any busybodies not too busy worrying about their own appearances can see through your unproductive busywork anyways ;) 5) Consider journaling / take stream-of-concious notes / mind-mapping. Might slow your thinking down some, but might compensate for memory some too.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> 5) Consider journaling / take stream-of-concious notes / mind-mapping. Might slow your thinking down some, but might compensate for memory some too. I found myself unable to focus on thinking in the office, when there are other people present. I learned to compensate for that by doing my thinking in writing - I just start dumping my thoughts and talking to myself through my text editor. It feels a bit slower, but it does wonders for concentration and for short-term memory.
- Danihan 9y ago
  Same, exactly.
- criddell 9y ago
  Is a text editor more effective for you than pen and paper? I like a text editor because I can type faster than I can write, but something about writing on a paper works better for me.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    Pen and paper can reflect my thinking better, but I'm an order of magnitude faster with a text editor than with handwriting - and the benefits of keeping flow and writing at the speed of thought more than compensate for lesser expressive power.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

This is exactly why some people look busy - to make time and space for thinking by projecting a "I'm busy - don't interrupt me" shield around themselves. I know I'm guilty of doing that quite a lot - some people are focus magnets, i.e. they have a supernatural skill of sensing when you're trying to think, so that they can come and interrupt you with bullshit requests.

eeZah7Ux 9y ago

By doing that you are only encouraging the "look busy" behavior in others. Please don't. The world does not need yet another million SLOC. We need to think a lot and type little.

curun1r 9y ago
This is why I encouraged my team to go on periodic walks throughout the day. I've always found that thinking can be easier when you move your body a little bit and getting out into the sunshine can improve your mood and cognitive abilities. If you can type at least 60wpm, as any professional dev should be able to do, the sitting at your desk part is just data entry and only needs to be done for a fraction of your day. Getting organizational buy in, though, was a lot harder. At review time, when we were measuring employees against each other (don't get me started on the stupidity of stack ranking, but that was the system we had to follow), other managers would try to use it against my team saying that they're always away from they're desks and trying to compare them against their own team's long hours and heroic firefighting of production issues. It took me about 18 months of convincing before I got our directors to realize that my team was producing just as much functionality, with much more complexity, and doing it while seeing a fraction of the production issues that other teams saw. I had to get testimonials from our support team along the lines of, "we don't answer many questions about their stuff, it just works." By the time I'd left, I'd just started to get through that busy isn't a virtue and hard work is only a good thing if it can't be avoided. Time spent reflecting is crucial to doing the least work necessary. Skipping that time will only create the appearance of productivity.

jamaicahest 9y ago

>> Thinking is an activity too—don’t undervalue it. Make time and space for it in your daily work schedule. >This is why I find it impossible to work effectively in open-plan offices. That, and the fact that open-plan offices are, in my experience, a noise hell. There's always seperate 2-3 conversations happening in the room, some of them about actual work, but disturbing 20 people nonetheless.