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The cost of interrupted work (2023)
- itsdrewmiller 1y agoMaybe someone should just ask Gloria Mark?
- Waterluvian 1y agoSome days an interruption will throw me off my train of thought, and I spend the remaining six hours collecting discarded bottles and railway ties for hopeful use somewhere, somehow, sometime. Other days an interruption costs me pretty much nothing. I’m still trying to figure out how to tell which of those days I’m going to have and whether to just not log into Slack for the day.
- thecoppinger 1y agoRight there with you :)
- pinoy420 1y ago[dead]
- nashashmi 1y agoSo the average is 23 min 15 sec right?
- Waterluvian 1y agoAhahaha… I mean… gosh, quite possibly?
- bubblebeard 1y agoMy feelings exactly. Whenever I get one of those days I’ve found I get more done away from my desk. Taking a walk in the forest or doing some household chores can really help you get back on track. Of course at times it’s just better to admit altogether this isn’t a day meant for work and spend it relaxing instead. Usually, the benefit of that is a really productive day at work the day after too, everybody wins.
- Waterluvian 1y agoAlmost all my employers and managers have been very understanding about this. But one of my favourites was a manager earlier in my career who picked up that I was anxious about my work hours and ethic. To paraphrase, he said, “the company isn’t paying you to solve problems M-F 9-5. It’s paying you for when you solve them in the shower or on a walk or when you’re putting your kid to bed, and then come into work and implement the solution.” I’ve thought about this for years as I tune my work life balance. I’ve never felt like I’m wrongly bringing work home with me that way. It’s always felt like an incredible optimization where my job gives me these puzzles I get to carry with me and work on when I’m bored or my ADHD addled brain screams for stimulation.
- junon 1y agoYou've been very lucky. I wish I had a similar experience. Managers who truly think that way are beautiful creatures.
- pockybum522 1y agoDo you happen to know if that one is hiring for anything at the moment? Left to solve problems at that pace, I'm pretty sure I could do some great things for them.
- saagarjha 1y agoMost remote work gigs are basically this.
- pastage 1y agoThere are absolutely places where you are chained to the computer in remote positions this is a culture thing not how work is done. We have a nice culture and we are hiring, sadly not remote anymore. I do not think it actually affects productivity in either way. What happens is that people seem to feel better.
- bongodongobob 1y ago
- karmakaze 1y agoI've found one thing that minimizes interruption cost: pair programming. At one startup we pair programmed all day, every day. Resuming from an interruption was almost seamless. Can't explain it, only experienced it.
- SoftTalker 1y agoIf only I wouldn’t prefer stabbing myself in the leg with a rusty knife over pair programming.
- dylan604 1y agoI've never done official pair programming, but I get frustrated when I'm not on the keyboard as I find others think slower.
- glxxyz 1y ago"no the other one, down a bit, no the one above, no go back..."
- airtonix 1y agoup up up up ... you went too far....
- Dilettante_ 1y agoThis is why you need to learn vim commands /hj
- mrbombastic 1y agoCalling out explicit line numbers and zoom annotation tools help with this
- kmoser 1y agoHave you tried plugging in a second keyboard and taking over where necessary? I do a lot of remote work in which my colleague and I work on the same computer and it's quite useful for either of us to jump in with our own keyboard (and mouse). It does take a bit of occasional verbal negotiation to agree on who really knows what to do (and can do it fastest) but if you communicate well then it's pretty easy.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neves 1y agoAs I get older, I feel I take more time to get back on track. I don't feel less intelligent, maybe more experience compensates for it. I probably make less wrong turns. But I have to be more rigid to prevent interruptions.
- heisenbit 1y agoI try to compensate with more and larger screens. Also resorting to writing down key aspects of context and plan. Used to keep it in my head but context switches can derail me more easily now so I need a way to get back again.
- baxtr 1y agoFor me, the difference is whether I had pre-planned my tasks or not. Knowing what I wanted to focus on and achieve from 10-11 am makes it much easier to get back on track. In contrast, when I simply begin working on something, I end up elsewhere easily, even without external interruptions.
- astrobe_ 1y agoFor me, it is more about the nature of the interruption. An easy question that only requires pulling something from memory doesn't cost much. A question that requires some thinking has a huge cost, even more so when you have to check the code or documentation. Sometimes even reading an email/teams notification can throw me off. It's not about the interaction (someone coming to your desk, a call,...), it's about the topic. However I think that in both cases, if the interruption happens while coding, the risk of bug is about the same.
- Dilettante_ 1y ago>A question that requires some thinking has a huge cost [...] It's not about the interaction [...], it's about the topic. For me personally, every interaction with another person requires booting up "Human Mode™", which invariably pushes out any concentration I had on the task-at-hand.
- deepsun 1y agoI noticed it positively correlates with the amount of sleep I got the night before, and negatively with the amount of coffee I drank the week before.
- nicbou 1y agoIt could be that some tasks require you to hold a lot of context in your head. Interruptions clear that context and it must be rebuilt. Or you could be tired. It’s crazy how ineffective one gets with a little less sleep.
- vorgol 1y agoFor me it's a combination of the nature of task, where I'm at and the nature and duration of the interruption. But usually an interruption causes a large amount of penalty points.
- tomrod 1y agoI find a bit of meditation before work and good coffee reliably put me in the latter state, maybe 19 times out of 20.
- el_benhameen 1y agoAny advice on getting started with meditation? Particularly for someone with a busy mind.
- tomrod 1y agoI'm not studied in any particular tradition. I typically take a few minutes to connect with exactly what my body is feeling. The socks on my feet, the cinch of a belt, the wind blowing my hair, the cool or hot of HVAC on my palms and knuckles, the minor ache or pain, and so on. I typically start from my feet and go to top of my head, then back down to my nose. It typically takes me about 10 minutes. Then, I ponder what I remember of my coffee, breakfast, dinner the night before, how I felt when I woke up. Then I imagine how I want to change things. I do this 2-5 minutes. At that point, I plan my day. It works for me. I know there are a ton of different ways to do it, but for me it's simply a time for reconnecting to my internal and external self. Because its the same format with new content (what I feel now, what happened most recently) it feels more like a common exercise routine than a hard thing. But it took a few weeks of frustrating effort to learn to keep focus.
- el_benhameen 1y agoThanks, I like this a lot
- TomLisankie 1y agoDo you think it's related to the level of emotion tied with the interruption? For example, finding out a friend or relative was in a bad accident is surely gonna be more distracting than someone asking if they can borrow a pen for a few minutes.
- glitchc 1y agoI've personally come to the conclusion that the novelty of the thought process is a big factor in recovery. Simply put, if I reach a conclusion that takes a rather unusual road through my mind, it's much harder to get back to after an interruption.
- PaulKeeble 1y agoThis is a really common problem with science reporting in general. Its often the case that the news will say things about the paper that aren't in the paper, often they say something that is completely the opposite of what the paper actually represents with its data. Its become such a common thing and its very common when you can't find the referenced study itself from the article. Sometimes its the authors fault and they said things that aren't supported by the data but the science reporters do this a lot. My basic rule on all science is go at least look at the papers abstract, method and their graphs/data. In 5 minutes you'll be better informed than the pop science article and it gets easier the more you read them. Interruption do impact getting back in but I find it very variable, I actually if I am doing very strict TDD I recover from interruptions well. If I am busy thinking about a design or doing some more complex algorithm performance analysis its all happening in my head and they take longer. I think it is measurable and you could set up experiments to see how long it took to start producing again and if there is a slow start or not on a well defined programming task.
- hinkley 1y agoWhen I work places where interruptions are expected I change how I do my work. So an observer may see them costing me less time but that’s amortized across the rest of my work as a consequence of leaning into interruption. It’s still there, it’s just spread out more.
- monkeyelite 1y agoThis is a great point and a lesson that has taken me decades. If you aren’t given quiet uninterrupted time the company is signaling to you that office time is about managing day to day fires, not deep work. Often you need to protect time to get something done but they literally want you to be doing something other than writing 10k LOC.
- hinkley 1y agoAt the most disruptive place I finally arranged it so I worked at home on Fridays and Monday through Thursday were used to answer questions, attend meetings, do shallow work and do exploratory work for deep work. For instance, you need to do a refactor for a new feature or a bug fix. Is the code going to just let you do it, or will this change require another, and another, and another to get things working again? So most Fridays I knew exactly what I needed to do and I coded for a solid six+ hours. And having already poked around I typically got about twice as much done in that time as I typically would in a day.
- apercu 1y agoI’ve been saying for years that an interruption costs me _at least_ 15 minutes. Knowledge work is not the same as physical work. Both are noble in my opinion, but not the same.
- sublinear 1y agoI think interruptions are similar for both types of work. Physical work does require some concentration as well, but imagine on top of that having to take off all your gear and walk into some makeshift office on site, deal with whatever bullshit they're bugging you about, and then go back out to your spot and get ready all over again. Interruptions for any reason other than a true emergency is just poor planning caused by bad management.
- apercu 1y agoFair, but I guess I meant if I am moving tables around and someone asks me a question and I pause and answer I lose 10 seconds. If I’m deep in a much more complex problem I get a little derailed and almost have to start over.
- sublinear 1y agoSure, but what if the person moving the tables is in the middle of a larger logistical problem? Caterers and guests are coming. More interruptions in the form of calls, texts, and emails don't stop and each is also "just 10 seconds". I think it's pretty rare to find jobs where your role is so clearly defined that all you have to do is move tables. Most work asks that you solve a high level problem nobody else wants to deal with. You probably weren't asked to move tables. You were more likely asked to coordinate a venue for a wedding or something. The people assigned to you who were told they'd only have to move tables end up not finding them. Interrupting them is just as unacceptable because now they have to rush to home depot to buy them at the last minute and they're out of billable hours. They deliver the new tables and now you're the one moving them yourself. Interruptions suck for everyone because there are always leaky abstractions and messy dependency trees. People incorrectly assume some details are trivial and factoring out the pain points is at least discouraged if not considered insubordination. Bad management and bad planning are everywhere.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- kehvyn 1y agoI think the anticipation of interruption caused by meetings might be worse, I end up losing a half hour on both ends.
- weikju 1y agoThis is what kills my days. Other interruptions from coworkers usually are on topic and it’s always a pleasure to help out.
- Cerium 1y agoOh how I hate a last minute rescheduling of a meeting. Feeling like I only have 30 minutes, I didn't start anything deep. Such a waste.
- SoftTalker 1y agoYep. For me, a meeting is half a day lost.
- kelnos 1y agoPre-pandemic, I tended to keep an erratic home-work/office-work schedule. Sometimes I would be at home working, and then leave to go to the office for a meeting, but I'd arrive a half hour before the meeting was to start. That time turned out to be mostly wasted. There was no way I was going to get any deep work done in that time. Sure, sometimes I could do some idle research, stuff that I could get into and out of quickly, but largely it was wasted time. I could have just spent all my time in the office, but the open office plan environment is not conducive to deep work, even without direct interruptions (which there would be, too). I guess the best solution for me would have been to arrive at the office 5-10 minutes before the meeting start time, but it was surprisingly hard to get that right, even with a predictable commute time (bus or walking). On top of all that, I would occasionally completely miss meetings if I was in a flow state before that. I would somehow miss desktop and phone notifications that a meeting was coming up. I guess the solution to that would have been to set an actual alarm on my phone, something that I couldn't ignore, but I never ended up doing that for some reason.
- gherkinnn 1y agoOh, half an hour till that meeting, better not start anything serious. And some smartypants will schedule meetings with 1h gaps between so absolutely nothing will get done
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoReminds me of the Jick Study[0], mentioned in Dopesick. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction_Rare_in_Patients_Treated_with_Narcotics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Addiction_Rare_in_Patients_Tre...
- lttlrck 1y agoThis is adjacent to the post but most (software) engineers I have interacted with are amazing plate spinners and an interruption is just another (ephemeral) plate to spin and it's not even close to 20 minutes recovery time. Unless it's an emergency (boohoo it'll take whatever it takes) or it tickles my fancy more than what I'm doing - which is a me problem.
- dgunay 1y agoWhen some of those plates are unnecessary, it causes problems. I may be responsible for 3 plates worth of work, and be capable of 6 on a really good day. On a bad day though, 3 may be all I can handle and an interruption=dropped plate.
- nashashmi 1y agoSomeone yelling at me costs me 4 hours on a good day.
- spauldo 1y agoSomeone yelling at me costs themselves however long it takes to hire my replacement. I did my time working for overgrown children, I won't put up with that kind of nonsense anymore.
- kelnos 1y agoYuuuup. If someone higher up than me in the work hierarchy yells at me, that's it. I'm out. Life is too short for that. Those people are toxic and I do not want to work with people like that, let alone be "managed" by people like that.
- nashashmi 1y agoDo either of you get a final shout before leaving? You know so that they understand ? Or you create a ripple effect with other employees ?
- spauldo 1y agoNo, on the couple occasions it's happened I just told the boss immediately that I quit, I gathered up my stuff, and left. In both occasions it was witnessed by coworkers so they knew what happened.
- ungreased0675 1y agoI’m not finding it in a quick search, but I believe I’ve read something by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi about the time needed to get into a flow state after being interrupted.
- didibus 1y agoI think the original source is a 2006 Gallup interview with the researcher Gloria Mark you can read here: https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/23146/too-many-interruptions-work.aspx https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/23146/too-many-inter... > GMJ: How long does it take to get back to work after an interruption? > Mark: There's good news and bad news. To have a uniform comparison, we looked at all work that was interrupted and resumed on the same day. The good news is that most interrupted work was resumed on the same day -- 81.9 percent -- and it was resumed, on average, in 23 minutes and 15 seconds, which I guess is not so long.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 1y agoWhat was the bad news?
- didibus 1y agoThe full interview is all in the link. But specifically the bad news was: > But the bad news is, when you're interrupted, you don't immediately go back to the task you were doing before you were interrupted. There are about two intervening tasks before you go back to your original task, so it takes more effort to reorient back to the original task. Also, interruptions change the physical environment. For example, someone has asked you for information and you have opened new windows on your desktop, or people have given you papers that are now arranged on your desk. So often the physical layout of your environment has changed, and it's harder to reconstruct where you were. So there's a cognitive cost to an interruption.
- airtonix 1y ago[dead]
- kaffekaka 1y agoI interpret this and the article as saying that those 23 minutes are not spent trying to resume the original task, but on the interruption itself and the other intervening tasks that are worked on before returning to the original task. If that interpretation is correct, those 23 mins are not wasted in confusion but simply spent on other things. Do i read it correctly?
- thomasfedb 1y agoIf it was actually 23mins, and not modifiable, then a myriad of important professions would be completely unviable (e.g. medicine). That is to say, it seems doubtful that the impact of interruptions can be meaningfully summarised in a single figure.
- firesteelrain 1y agoOr those tasks just got prioritized lower and lower.
- necovek 1y agoI always assumed that would be an average, meaning it takes 5s for some and 2h for others. Again, the actual quote is not specific enough, but that would be a very wild and easily dismissed claim.
- throwaway346434 1y agoFrom: https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/CHI2005.pdf https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/CHI2005.pdf (sample size: 1x company, n=24, lots of limitations discussed at end of paper) "When people did resume work on the same day, it took an average length of time of 25 min. 26 sec (sd=54 min. 48 sec.). This may seem like a relatively short amount of time, but it is also important to consider that before resuming work, our informants worked in an average of 2.26 (sd=2.79) working spheres. Thus, people’s attention was directed to multiple other topics before resuming work. This was reported by informants as being very detrimental. In some cases, the physical or desktop environment is restructured, which makes it more difficult to rely on cues to reorient one to their interrupted task. For example, a blinking cursor at the end of the last typed word can enable one to immediately reorient to that document, whereas if other windows have been opened, it can be hard to remember even which document had been worked on." And "We found a trend that showed more externally interrupted working spheres are resumed on the same day (53.3%) compared to internally interrupted working spheres (47.6%), X2 (1)=2.97, p<.09. Externally interrupted working spheres are resumed on the average in a shorter time (22 min. 37 sec., sd=53 min. 52 sec.) than internally interrupted working spheres, (29 min. 1 sec., sd=55 min. 43 sec.), t(987)=1.92, p<.055." So no, it does not say 23 minutes and 15 seconds in that paper. But to say: "the paper never goes into details regarding the recovery time between finishing the interruption and getting back to the original task." is flat out incomplete, because they are reading the followup paper to the original work in isolation; and haven't considered that a number of reports summarized the findings of that (22 m 37s) as "about 23 minutes". The way it is written implies the research is all wrong, rather than more accurately stating "I can't find the exact source of a quote but it's broadly 22-23 minutes, not 23m15s afaict". There is also some irony in "ctrl+f", "23" being explained as the methodology for review on the topic of attention span for complex tasks...
- godelski 1y ago> The way it is written implies the research is all wrong I think you read the words from the article but I think you missed their entire point. I think you're actually demonstrating their thesis...
- godelski 1y agoIt's interesting to me to see so many people here responding to the title or how many that "read" the article are making small quips. Interesting because it is an active demonstration of their entire point.
- kelnos 1y agoI think it's unfortunately very common for people to come here into the comments without having read the article. I'll admit I do that sometimes, mainly to get an impression as to whether or not the article is worth reading in the first place, but sometimes I'll end up getting drawn into the discussion here, having not read the article at all. But I can't imagine posting a toplevel comment without reading the article.
- godelski 1y agoTo be fair, this post is also a perfect litmus test for reading comprehension. The thesis is never stated out loud. But I'm finding what's more interesting is the people that clearly read the words. When I commented, this comment was much higher up[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000416 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45000416
- RossBencina 1y agoA search for "Gloria Mark 23 minutes" is interesting reading. At this point I would suggest going to the source, establish contact with Gloria Mark or a relevant student or co-author and ask whether Dr Mark can confirm that it is an accurate quote, and if so, whether it is a published result. One approach might be to develop the enquiry through a potentially sympathetic third person such as Cal Newport.
- didibus 1y agoThis is the source: https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/23146/too-many-interruptions-work.aspx https://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/23146/too-many-inter... Gloria Mark said it in an interview in 2006.
- glenstein 1y agoFor a lot of us that would definitely count as a source. They seem to be credible, they seem to be quoted in a credible media outlet, they seem like an experts on the topic, they seem like they're talking about a real and specific piece of research. So I think that would count for a lot of us. But for purposes of this particular article they're looking for a printed primary source of the research itself rather than a quote about it.
- didibus 1y ago> When people did resume work on the same day, it took an average length of time of 25 min. 26 sec (sd=54 min. 48 sec.). From the Gloria Mark paper: https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/CHI2005.pdf https://ics.uci.edu/~gmark/CHI2005.pdf That's the paper source. And the researcher when interviewed verbally gave a slightly different number in the same ballpark of 23 minutes and 15 seconds instead of 25 minutes and 26 seconds.
- syenvdh 1y ago[dead]
- byronic 1y agoI actually thought this was going to reference the (earlier) 2000 Spolsky post (point 8 from https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-steps-to-better-code/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/08/09/the-joel-test-12-s...), which is itself dependent on the 15 minute per-person interruption cost (higher than 23m15s in aggregate time)
- mojahidsaha11 1y ago[flagged]
- linhns 1y agoNice post but please improve the website design for mobiles.
- Dilettante_ 1y agoWorks fine for me?
- linhns 1y agoProbably because I still use a small iPhone from 2020
- davidmurdoch 1y agoThe WSJ link doesn't wrap and forces the viewport to be zoomed out.
- drsopp 1y agoConversely, I often think about the value I add by being interruptable, by helping my colleague with something that might save him more time than I lose. Good for the company.
- kaffekaka 1y agoThis is a valid point. But another aspect of interruptions is if they add to the experience of stress, and thus contribute to a toxic work environment.
- wiseowise 1y ago> Good for the company. Unless you’re C level, this thought shouldn’t even cross your mind. Look after yourself.
- lexicality 1y agoWell, no, the thing that should never cross your mind is prioritising the company over yourself or other human beings. The entire reason the company is employing you is to have you do things that are good for it. If you want them to keep employing you (and also to give you more money) then you should be looking out for things that are good for the company, doing them and then making sure that management knows that it was you that did it.
- wiseowise 1y agoThere are things that are good for the company and things that are "good for the company". Saving others time at the expense of yours is the second.
- Simon_O_Rourke 1y agoAs a manager a lot of the annoying interruptions I put down to, and I chafe at using the word, a lack of hustle. Okay, so I view my job as primarily giving devs some strategic direction and priority, but also unblocking them from getting work done. On the later, the kind of interruptions I get are from folks who just don't want to do and figure some things out for themselves. Need access to a database... Go ask infra support. Don't know who wrote this API client, go look in git. There's folks who just don't bother to go search for these things themselves.
- forgotusername6 1y agoIf you're a manager, and those requests are coming from your team, isn't that just part of the job and not an interruption? Giving direction and priority is not a full time job, surely.
- kelnos 1y agoIt depends on the question and situation, though. If someone comes and asks, "hey I need access to the Foo database", and your answer is, "you need to talk to the ops team about that; there's a form on Jira for that", and that fact clearly documented and easily discoverable on the internal wiki (or whatever), then this is just a case of a lazy person who wants someone else to solve their problems for them. But sure, if internal documentation is garbage and it's difficult to find information or understand who needs to be asked to get something done, then yep, manager is gonna get hit with these sorts of requests all the time, and just has to deal with it. Part of the job.
- machomaster 1y agoBut how large is the internal wiki, how well is it updated, how easy is it to find the information? If it takes 10 minutes to search for info and 1 minute to ask, then the latter is a more efficient way. That's the job of the manager, to make developers more efficient, give them more time, preferably uninterrupted.
- awalsh128 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- germandiago 1y agoFor me interruptions are really, really harmful. I try to focus several hours in a row or almost the full day in a row as much as possible. I just check the mail in checkpoints, 2-3 max. 4 times per day if I am focused bc anything else would be too productivity-lowering. I think I am more sensitive to interruptions than most people maybe? This is mainly when programming. For other tasks it is a bit more tolerable.
- Gys 1y agoIllustrated: https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/2rmir6/why_developers_hate_being_interrupted/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/2rmir6/why... (I thought this was on xkdc and was looking for it some time ago without success. Found it now)
- hosteur 1y agoSo is it on xkcd?
- rzzzt 1y ago"Citogenesis" is an xkcd comic: https://xkcd.com/978/ https://xkcd.com/978/
- teddyh 1y agoOriginal source: <http://web.archive.org/web/20131030072159/https://heeris.id.au/2013/this-is-why-you-shouldnt-interrupt-a-programmer/ http://web.archive.org/web/20131030072159/https://heeris.id....>
- davidmurdoch 1y agoI've been cited on Wikipedia once... and that's when I truly understood why you can't trust Wikipedia.
- teddyh 1y agoRelated: Don't Wake Up the Programmer! <http://web.archive.org/web/20090305002805/https://alexthunder.livejournal.com/309815.html http://web.archive.org/web/20090305002805/https://alexthunde...>
- drzaiusx11 1y agoWhen I'm in a flow state during complex problem solving, an interruption will cause something akin to visceral pain for me. I've learned to mask and just deal, but it kills the thread holding all the context in my brain. I wouldn't know how to measure the loss in a productivity sense, but depending on the problem it can be much more than 20m to recover...
- davidmurdoch 1y agoI've been trying to articulate why switching our OSS project from using public GitHub issues to private Jira issues (behind auth that requires logging in with 2FA again every 48 hours) is bad for programmer productivity. Upper management quite literally doesn't believe me. To them, "flow state" and the visceral pain getting pulled out is it causes is completely fictional.
- wiseowise 1y ago> is completely fictional Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Code maintenance, flow state, software quality is what techies invent to slack off instead of doing their job.
- drzaiusx11 1y agoDon't worry, non-techies will just vibe code the techies out of their jobs
- davidmurdoch 1y agoI can't tell if this is satire or not
- wiseowise 1y ago(it is)
- oceanhaiyang 1y agoWhy is the entire blog aligned to the left on mobile? Even the background is to the left. Though this article mostly discusses exact time, I find this idea very interesting in relation to my dissertation. Minor distraction probably causes me to waste a few minutes to tens of minutes to get focused again. Having a child and a partner that need help when I’m working from home has trained me to be able to power write in 1-2 hours what others do in a day. A bigger distraction like an issue causing stress might distract me for half of my work day. It’s not that I don’t want to continue but it’s hard to get back onto task just as one was.
- vjvjvjvjghv 1y agoI will schedule a daily mandatory meeting to discuss this problem. And at the weekly summary meeting we will to get to the bottom of this.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- wonderwonder 1y agoDepends on the interruption. Someone just messages “hi” and then waits for me to respond is going to take a while to recover from due to the massive level of frustration I get from it and the wasted pleasantries just to find out what they want. “Hi, quick call?” The day is over, I’ll try again tomorrow “hi, do you know what module x is populated in?” 3 minutes and im good to go
- jll29 1y agoIt's great how you attempt to hunt down the source, and document your chase. I often scold my students for doing poor research on sources, not reading them, not going back to the originals, because quite often, someone never said what is commonly attributed to them. The process of active reading means the reader sometimes ascribes something to an author that is really their own idea.
- SteveAlexander 1y agoIt's on page 44 of Multitasking in the digital age by Gloria Mark. https://archive.org/details/multitaskingatte0000glor/page/44/mode/2up?q=%2223+min%22 https://archive.org/details/multitaskingatte0000glor/page/44...
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]