4 ms·

This is funny, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a train of thought so fragile that a single passing phrase wrecked it and I had to start over. The last frame sh

This is funny, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a train of thought so fragile that a single passing phrase wrecked it and I had to start over. The last frame should actually say something like “hey are you ready for our 1:1?” :)

neopallium 8y ago
I have lost my train of thought from vague comments or questions like that. The comment in the article was "…email about that 'thing'". I would immediately think "what thing?", then everything else goes down the drain.
- Doxin 8y ago
  In my experience being asked questions you can retrieve from memory aren't too distracting. Questions you need to even fractionally think about however cause the whole house of cards to come down. "Did you see my email about thing?" is going to get a prompt no from me. "What's 3*9" is going to get you about 30 seconds of huhs and hold-ons before I realize it's an unimportant question (at which point it's too late to recover).
adventured 8y ago
It usually only happens to me when I'm drifting off to sleep and I've managed to come up with a solution to something I've been working on (or otherwise an interesting angle to pursue). Too often instead of taking it down in some manner, I quasi lie to myself that I'll remember it in the morning, so I can continue to fall asleep instead of taking any other action in that moment. The next day it becomes a game of recall.
yetihehe 8y ago
I had situation recently where I was deep in some code, manager went and asked about a problem in second unrelated project. Switching mentally between those two codebases was almost painful and I probably looked quite funny for several seconds. The problem for me is that I've contributed to several different projects in different languages and I'm the most knowledgeable person in my (small) company, so If anyone has problem or doesn't know something, he must ask me. Recently I've found a good way to tame this a little. Asking person is required to write my response in apropriate wiki so that if something was unclear, knowledgebase will be upgraded for everyone.

neopallium 8y ago

I have lost my train of thought from vague comments or questions like that. The comment in the article was "…email about that 'thing'". I would immediately think "what thing?", then everything else goes down the drain.

Doxin 8y ago
In my experience being asked questions you can retrieve from memory aren't too distracting. Questions you need to even fractionally think about however cause the whole house of cards to come down. "Did you see my email about thing?" is going to get a prompt no from me. "What's 3*9" is going to get you about 30 seconds of huhs and hold-ons before I realize it's an unimportant question (at which point it's too late to recover).

adventured 8y ago

It usually only happens to me when I'm drifting off to sleep and I've managed to come up with a solution to something I've been working on (or otherwise an interesting angle to pursue). Too often instead of taking it down in some manner, I quasi lie to myself that I'll remember it in the morning, so I can continue to fall asleep instead of taking any other action in that moment. The next day it becomes a game of recall.

yetihehe 8y ago

I had situation recently where I was deep in some code, manager went and asked about a problem in second unrelated project. Switching mentally between those two codebases was almost painful and I probably looked quite funny for several seconds. The problem for me is that I've contributed to several different projects in different languages and I'm the most knowledgeable person in my (small) company, so If anyone has problem or doesn't know something, he must ask me. Recently I've found a good way to tame this a little. Asking person is required to write my response in apropriate wiki so that if something was unclear, knowledgebase will be upgraded for everyone.