'Did you get that email I sent you?'
Ahhhhhh~ No. Please don't.
There's plenty of good advice on this article, but be careful that the things that you do for yourself don't negatively impact other people; that's not be healthy, its being thoughtless and selfish.
I've worked with people that are a clamshell. It's not a very nice environment. Nobody in a company works "on an island".
For what it's worth I'm good at my job and my employer doesn't set unrealistic expectations, work time is work time, home time is home time. I don't blur the boundaries, if you want a social chat that's what lunch times are for.
I've worked with Germans in the past, they are much more like me (I'm English) in that regard.
Or they are a developer. Being interrupted while programming is really rough. It's like being an insomniac and having trouble falling asleep, when someone walks up and starts talking to you riiiight as you're drifting off. Now you're up for another two hours.
Another analogy is you're building a house of cards using your mental concentration - someone distracting you causes you to knock the whole thing down. Oh, and the house of cards is due Friday.
Being interrupted is a universal human problem, there is no need for an analogy for something that anyone who works in a professional (or hell even non professional) job experiences.
Even with programming it does matter what tasks you are working on. Many tasks don't need that much time to get into and out of it, only some do.
Oh, I see. Yes, I would wholeheartedly agree with that. To his point, I would say many people on here don't necessarily think developers are special in that regard, but most people are developers and they are speaking on that which they know.
I'm a developer (obviously) and I couldn't intelligently speak on how interruptions would disrupt a soft skill profession such as marketing, sales or HR.
And with all this complaining about interruptions and lost productivity, its really only the "sexy tech startups" that seem to have ping pong and foosball tables to waste time playing.
If you're doing something simple, then it's just a matter of regaining focus. Sometimes devs are doing simple things and interruptions aren't such a big deal, but when we're deep into a debugging session or something it's more of a problem.
This is not to say devs are the only people who work on complicated problems like this, but plenty of non-technical people in software shops don't, and tend to not understand that interruptions are a real problem sometimes.
I haven't met a single engineer who doesn't recognize that a complex software system is infinitely more complex than any engineering project. Software complexity with its myriad of states is not a joke. Your engineering project, no matter the project, has orders of magnitude fewer variables and possible states. Look into the cognitive load-demands of juggling these multiple layers of complexity and abstractions in your head, and you'll start to understand.
There's a cognitive loading stage necessary before you can do any work. An interruption wreaks havoc on this, and you have to start over; go through the cognitive load phase again. Depending on the code base that can be a substantial process.
I agree with that. But I also think that being in an office full of developers that can't use their "inside voice" is a horrible environment to spend 1/3 of your life in.
My experience has been that, unless delivered in an exceptionally conciliatory manner (exaggeratedly, actually), this kind of request gets interpreted as rude by a lot of people. For me, at least, I think it comes from many people assuming they have a "quick question" or that their "small" request isn't difficult to fulfill.
I started responding to "quick question" with "long answer". That and I also hung a sign on my chair with my official office hours. Neither actually worked, and people thought I was rude, but it did make me feel better to try to push back. ;)
Long term my takeaway is that while too many meetings drain the life out of people, there's also a layer of communication that needs to happen, and when too much interrupting is going on, it's a sign that the right kind of meetings aren't taking place. Now instead of getting annoyed, I start to track the "quick question" categories, and create new channels for the commonalities, ideally Slack or email rather than a meeting, but in person when it gets big enough.
In my experience it's difficult to set the bubble boundaries. Some days I'm working on small tasks and wouldn't mind being interrupted, other days I need uninterrupted concentration. It's hard to communicate that with colleagues. Maybe there should be a general rule — mornings in the zone, then after lunch handle all tasks that require sync-up + training + selling.
I have a phone on my desk that is set to flash, not ring and only then if it's the boss, everyone else just silently rings (and then I get an email a few minutes later "tried ringing, anyway about <unimportant thing>".
and they don't have a clue how destructive they are.
it's such a great example of clashing perspectives. they think they're being friendly and reasonable. the hapless and frustrated programmer thinks they're ignorant, lazy, and annoying.
Best programming job I've ever had and for someone who was damn close to burnout it feels like a holiday!
Our society is at a point where there are large numbers of people who think their feelings trump larger concerns, like those of the workplace, their job, driver/pedestrian safety, and the rule of law. There is a set of ideas that involves executive function, the delay of gratification, the adherence to ideals, and subsuming the petty ego. It's called being an adult.
If you think your feelings trump such concerns, take a good, hard look at yourself. Are you a narcissist? Do you really subscribe to an objective reality in your actions?
If you are hiring people, look for people who are the opposite to the above.
Do you have a manager you can sit down with for ten minutes and explain this dynamic to? It's possible your colleagues don't fully understand the implications of their actions and would happily oblige you if they only knew.
Of course I don't know your situation, and given how dysfunctional some office environments are if may be possible that your options are truly limited. In my experience though there usually are options before brinkmanship.
> Do you have a manager you can sit down with for ten minutes and explain this dynamic to?
Yes, he disagrees with my position.
> It's possible your colleagues don't fully understand the implications of their actions
My colleagues do fully understand.
>...how dysfunctional some office environments are
We just moved into an newly built open office plan RIGHT next to finance (finance has our "loud laugher", you know who I'm talking about). Someone thought this was a good idea....
Not only did that piss me off because I would be in the zone (I usually leave my phone at my desk and close all emal/slack tabs to not be disturbed) when he would totally interrupt for a silly question (a la the "did you get my mail?" question).
Please please don't do this. Nothing comes across more selfish and signals that you feel that your time is more important than mine to me than this.
Just for fun, somebody should write a "track-and-trace" type of website for email. Then whenever somebody asks that question, give them a track and trace code.
Dev1: "Hey, your last commit's message was only 'fixed bugs'. Which bugs did you fix"?
Dev2: "Sure. But I'm working on something right now. Shoot me an email about this and I'll send you the bug list by the end of the day."
There is a reason why we have email/messaging. Many times, it just works better. There are things that are better asked in person, there are things that are better asked in an email.