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 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 was there (usually the span of ten minutes or less). And 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 is important enough that it would warrant me dropping my important work in order to change my focus to this thing?". If you can scale your notifications back to where only the most time-critical things send you notifications 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 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 is important enough to warrant me dropping my important work and focusing on this thing?". If you can scale your notifications back to where only the most time-critical things send you notifications 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.
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+One of the reasons I've heard for folks keeping their notifications on is that they might receive something that requires an immediate response. We've created cultures where we feel a need to respond to messages the moment we receive them. I'd argue that most of the messages you receive during the day don't require the attention you're giving them, and certainly not the level of attention that warrants interrupting what you're doing to view and respond to them. You may be better served by scheduling several periods of the day where you do nothing but check and respond to your messages. Schedule these as infrequently as you can. Some folks recommend two or three times a day, but even setting a limit where you check your messages once an hour can make a vast improvement compared with how many times you're already checking your messages. You'll need to judge how often you check your messages based on your needs and your work culture. Also consider the person you're responding to. Does it make sense to give this person a quick, semi-thought-out response or does this message require more time to simmer in your mind before you respond? Giving yourself time to think about a your response may give you additional insights into a problem that aren't readily apparent in the moment. This could mean the difference between one well thought out response versus a deluge of half-thought-out back-and-forth brainstorming via your messaging application. Responding to everything as it's received is very stressful and requires huge amounts of attention that could be better placed on your programming work.
-One of the reasons I've heard for folks keeping their notifications on is that they might receive something that requires an immediate response. We've created cultures where we feel a need to respond to messages the moment we receive them. I'd argue that most of the messages you receive during the day don't warrant the attention you're giving them, and certainly not the level of attention that warrants interrupting what you're doing in order to view and respond to them. You may be better served by batching the periods where you check your messages as infrequently as you can. Some folks recommend two or three times a day, but even limiting yourself to checking messages once an hour can make a vast improvement compared with the number of times you're already checking your messages. You'll need to judge how often you check your messages based on your needs and your work culture. Also consider the person you're responding to. Does it make sense to give this person a quick, semi-thought-out response or does this message require more time to simmer in your mind before you respond? Giving yourself time to think about a problem may give you insights into a problem that aren't readily apparent in the moment. This could mean the difference between one well thought out response and a deluge of half-thought-out brainstorming via your messaging application. Responding to everything as it's received is very stressful and requires huge amounts of attention that could be better placed on your programming work.
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-It may seem challenging and foreign to live without notifications and without the need to respond to everything message and notification. But if we value our attention and our focused sessions of programming enough then it becomes necessary to give ourselves as much of that as we can.
+It may seem challenging and foreign to live without notifications and without the need to respond to every message and notification. But our attention is limited. Maintaining our focus throughout the day can be challenging and stressful. If we can limit the number of distractions we receive throughout the day then we give ourselves the freedom to not have to work as hard to keep our attention attuned to our programming tasks. We get to say "not right now" to our distractions and handle them at a more appropriate time.
projects / themediocreprogrammer.git / commitdiff