Also be aware of the self-imposed distractions you've added to your life. Do you need immediate notification that someone liked something you shared? Is the funny anecdote you just remembered important enough to warrant switching out of your current context so you can post it to your friends and colleagues? Do you really need something to pop up in your field of view to let you know that your music player changed a track? Are you willing to sacrifice your attention and flow throughout the day because a program detected a change in your environment, regardless of the importance of that change?
-We add these distractions into our lives because we worry that we might miss something important. Programs also come configured with most of their notifications turned on so a user can be reminded of the status of the program at all times. Perhaps it's useful, but for me they are very distracting. In my career I've sat at the desks of many other folks and have cringed at the number of notifications they receive in the short I period was there (a span of ten minutes or less). I've seen folks interrupt their current line of thinking because a notification for a message unrelated to the current task distracted them. What happened to the original thought? They had to mentally switch back to it and remember where they left off, usually at great mental effort.
+We add these distractions into our lives because we worry that we might miss something important. Programs also come configured with most of their notifications turned on so a user can be reminded of the status of the program at all times. Perhaps it's useful, but for me they are very distracting. In my career I've sat at the desks of many other folks and have cringed at the number of notifications they receive in the short period I was there (a span of ten minutes or less). I've seen folks interrupt their current line of thinking because a notification for a message unrelated to the current task distracted them. What happened to the original thought? They had to mentally switch back to it and remember where they left off, usually at great mental effort.
I challenge you to turn off as many notifications as you can and get a taste of what your experience is like without them. That may be as simple as closing out an application when you're done with it, or may be as complex as changing the settings so an application doesn't notify you when new messages arrive. You'll need to play with this and see what works best for your needs and concentration. A good rule of thumb is "what does this thing track that is important enough for me to drop my important work and focus on this thing?." If you can scale your notifications so that only the most time-critical notifications reach you at the appropriate time then you'll be better able to relax and focus into your work. You won't have to parse the notifications to determine if what you're seeing is important or not.
I also am grateful for the work of Leo Babauta of [Zen Habits][5] which provided me the ideas of mindfulness and focus containers. They have been transformative in my own work, as this book demonstrates. I committed to spending at least 10 minutes each morning writing each section, and the results are the work you see before you.
-Thank you to those who helped me directly with this project. Thank you to my mom, Sharon Maloney, for help in my editing of this book. Any mist steaks what remain are an responsibilities of the author. Thank you to Beau Sheldon for reviewing the chapter on mental health and for helping me to better understand and highlight areas where folks struggle. Thank you to my friend, David Revoy, for his amazing cover art and for his inspiration throughout the project. Thank you to Esteban Manchado Velázquez for adding CSS and cleaning up the HTML version of the text. Thank you to the beta readers for your valuable comments and feedback in the Framagit Repository, including (in alphabetical order by handle or first name): Brendan Kidwell, D. Joe Anderson, David Revoy, Eric Hallam, Jer Lance, Matthew Piccinato, Matthew Balch, Midgard, Nicholas Guarracino, RJ Quiralta, Valvin, and Wilhelm Fitzpatrick. Thank you to Paco Esteban and Shreyas Ragavan for editing fixes.
+Thank you to those who helped me directly with this project. Thank you to my mom, Sharon Maloney, for help in my editing of this book. Any mist steaks what remain are an responsibilities of the author. Thank you to Beau Sheldon for reviewing the chapter on mental health and for helping me to better understand and highlight areas where folks struggle. Thank you to my friend, David Revoy, for his amazing cover art and for his inspiration throughout the project. Thank you to Esteban Manchado Velázquez for adding CSS and cleaning up the HTML version of the text. Thank you to the beta readers for your valuable comments and feedback in the Framagit Repository, including (in alphabetical order by handle or first name): Brendan Kidwell, D. Joe Anderson, David Revoy, Eric Hallam, Jer Lance, Matthew Piccinato, Matthew Balch, Midgard, Nicholas Guarracino, RJ Quiralta, Valvin, and Wilhelm Fitzpatrick. Thank you to Paco Esteban, Shreyas Ragavan, and TheOtherNick for editing fixes.
My deepest gratitude goes to my wife JoDee and my parents for their support and belief in me. Words cannot express the love and thanks I have for you.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / commitdiff