3 ms·

This critique doesn't really make sense. No matter how the person asks their question your flow is going to be interrupted the moment you open your chat apps.

This critique doesn't really make sense. No matter how the person asks their question your flow is going to be interrupted the moment you open your chat apps. If the person says hello then asks a question a minute later your flow is broken. If the person asks the question right away now you're answering the question and your flow is, just as likely, broken. As far as flow interruptions are concerned, it's not the fault of the person asking a question but rather the invasive design or reliance on chat, or your own patterns of chat consumption. The real solution to this problem isn't to impose some kind of rule that people should stop spending an extra minute to be polite, but rather that we should all adopt conscious consumption patterns around chat, i.e. setting aside time each day when you focus strictly on work and ignore chats for x hours (your role permitting). Rather than letting the chat notifications dictate when you attend to them, you should dictate when you attend to chat notifications, and if it means breaking some important flow you have going the chat can probably wait. Edit: I suppose the only exception to this is when the question is something that requires a one word answer and can be answered instantaneously, but if that's the case that's probably a sign you have larger communication problems in that things that are easily answerable are in the heads of workers and not stored in some uniformly accessible place.

sonofaplum 8y ago
This critique doesn't really make sense. `sleep 60` Because one interruption takes x amount of time to deal with and the other interruption takes x + 60 seconds of staring at a chat window that FEELS like 3 times as long
- voidhorse 8y ago
  That’s a fair point, but the original complaint was about the break in thought flow or activity immersion. That’s going to occur whether you sleep 60 or sleep 10. That happens the moment you decide to interrupt your focus by looking at the chat. Of course there are some roles that require immediate attention to chat messages when they come in, for example if you’re on call or something, but for the majority of jobs you don’t have to answer right away. Instead of focusing on our own consumption patterns and lack of discipline/restraint we like to blame others because it’s easier—if you’re in the middle of something wait to get to the chat until you’ve reached a good break point. This is why it’s also good to adopt rules of use for different communications tech, e.g. x chat channel is to be avoided except for emergencies, or DMs are assumed to be casual and important stuff must be relegated to certain channels etc etc.

sonofaplum 8y ago

This critique doesn't really make sense. `sleep 60` Because one interruption takes x amount of time to deal with and the other interruption takes x + 60 seconds of staring at a chat window that FEELS like 3 times as long

voidhorse 8y ago
That’s a fair point, but the original complaint was about the break in thought flow or activity immersion. That’s going to occur whether you sleep 60 or sleep 10. That happens the moment you decide to interrupt your focus by looking at the chat. Of course there are some roles that require immediate attention to chat messages when they come in, for example if you’re on call or something, but for the majority of jobs you don’t have to answer right away. Instead of focusing on our own consumption patterns and lack of discipline/restraint we like to blame others because it’s easier—if you’re in the middle of something wait to get to the chat until you’ve reached a good break point. This is why it’s also good to adopt rules of use for different communications tech, e.g. x chat channel is to be avoided except for emergencies, or DMs are assumed to be casual and important stuff must be relegated to certain channels etc etc.