4 ms·

The switching cost is real. I explained this to folks at Microsoft. Microsoft is kind of bad at allowing for focused work in the scenarios I've observed (not ne

The switching cost is real. I explained this to folks at Microsoft. Microsoft is kind of bad at allowing for focused work in the scenarios I've observed (not necessarily a universal paradigm). I also once kept the "dinner to 3 am" schedule with 10-4 meetings at Microsoft and it was very effective for everything except my personal life. I've lived this both as an engineer and a PM. I tried to set aside at least 4 hrs focus time for people that reported to me, no matter their role. Not many others respect those boundaries.

thrower123 5y ago
A trap that I've been caught in repeatedly over the years is the 10AM, 3PM daily standing meeting pattern, which is almost uniquely capable of preventing any actual work from being done. It often manifests as an Agile/Scrum standup at 10AM that balloons into an hour-long status meeting. This effect worsens as people start to treat that meeting as the beginning of the work-day, and increasingly show up later, and more unprepared. Then, after that meeting completes, there is a brief flurry to handle any follow-ups generated by the morning meetings, and then it is lunch time. People drag back in from lunch, and maybe handle some responses from their pre-lunch follow-ups, and then it is time for the standing afternoon meeting. Usually this just recapitulates everything that was discussed in the morning, since no one has had any time to actually do anything. By the time it finally wraps up at 4:30 PM, everyone's brains have utterly dissolved, and they go home. And then it starts again.
- 100011_100001 5y ago
  10AM standup kills me. I have repetitively asked for that time to be changed but no one wants it to be earlier. 8-8:30 I check on all my chats, emails, plan my day Usually something comes up that I need to address, look at etc...so suddenly it's 9:15-9:30. If I start, 10am will break my flow right when I go deep, if I don't I feel like I wasted 30 minutes. Then 30m-1hr standup....anything out of the standup affects my 11 to 11:30...but then lunch is starting in 30 minutes. So again at the same problem start and break flow or don't start at all? Combine that with a 1:30 meeting or something like that I can't do any deep work till 3pm.
- l8rpeace 5y ago
  I agree it's all about the cadence. How can you get into a rythm with multiple people potentially veering in different directions? Sometimes this is an org chart problem (we're a team but not working on remotely connected stuff), sometimes this is a management problem (giving in to the chaos), and sometimes it's a personal problem (one person's focus pattern is different than the next). What Paul Graham said that resonated with me was WHY he worked late nights...that solitude gave him that focus time.

thrower123 5y ago

A trap that I've been caught in repeatedly over the years is the 10AM, 3PM daily standing meeting pattern, which is almost uniquely capable of preventing any actual work from being done. It often manifests as an Agile/Scrum standup at 10AM that balloons into an hour-long status meeting. This effect worsens as people start to treat that meeting as the beginning of the work-day, and increasingly show up later, and more unprepared. Then, after that meeting completes, there is a brief flurry to handle any follow-ups generated by the morning meetings, and then it is lunch time. People drag back in from lunch, and maybe handle some responses from their pre-lunch follow-ups, and then it is time for the standing afternoon meeting. Usually this just recapitulates everything that was discussed in the morning, since no one has had any time to actually do anything. By the time it finally wraps up at 4:30 PM, everyone's brains have utterly dissolved, and they go home. And then it starts again.

100011_100001 5y ago
10AM standup kills me. I have repetitively asked for that time to be changed but no one wants it to be earlier. 8-8:30 I check on all my chats, emails, plan my day Usually something comes up that I need to address, look at etc...so suddenly it's 9:15-9:30. If I start, 10am will break my flow right when I go deep, if I don't I feel like I wasted 30 minutes. Then 30m-1hr standup....anything out of the standup affects my 11 to 11:30...but then lunch is starting in 30 minutes. So again at the same problem start and break flow or don't start at all? Combine that with a 1:30 meeting or something like that I can't do any deep work till 3pm.
l8rpeace 5y ago
I agree it's all about the cadence. How can you get into a rythm with multiple people potentially veering in different directions? Sometimes this is an org chart problem (we're a team but not working on remotely connected stuff), sometimes this is a management problem (giving in to the chaos), and sometimes it's a personal problem (one person's focus pattern is different than the next). What Paul Graham said that resonated with me was WHY he worked late nights...that solitude gave him that focus time.