What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.
You need technical people as the cofounder/upper management level to push back hard on that stuff. Via quiet separated office areas for developers, policies on 'distractions' during certain times OR when headphones are on OR Slack status is "Do Not Disturb", etc.
Sounds like bullpen office layouts are the problem. We really need to go back to private offices.
Re-potting the plants? Never urgent enough to be top of mind but will become an issue later. Those 15 opened and unread tabs? Let me at em. Painting that spot on the wall? A tad too inconvenient for a normal Tuesday but perfect for the clean up day.
Give yourself a reward for accomplishing these, if you have a roomate/SO, try to compete in a light way, on doing certain things, such as race to see who can do similarly sized tasks first/best/best-outcome etc
How long is it really going to take to glance through those 15 unread tabs? Chances are you'll do a legit sweep of them in 45 seconds and then maybe 1 or 2 things will be worth reading. Before you know it, you just knocked it off your list in 5-10 minutes.
The same can be said for painting that spot on the wall, 10 real minutes end to end and you're done.
Now they are out of your mind instead of piling up between those clean up days where all you think about is "I wish I had time to do all of these things!". I know personally I'm the most happy when my queue is nearly empty.
The tabs are all things I've sent to my phone/home computer via pushbullet because they were articles I was interested in actually digging into and maybe doing more research on the topic later so they do takes some actual time or at least mental energy.
The wall painting and cleaning stuff is all quick time wise but there are other potential costs that accompany it. Painting brings the possibility of spilling the paint or getting it on my clothes or something. I also need to clean up the paint brush thoroughly which takes some time. Same with re-potting plants. What if I spill the soil and it goes everywhere? Big clean up. Yes unlikely but if I've only got 20 minutes on a Tuesday before I head out to do something else I don't want to risk it.
I am the most happy or at least the most focused when I finish all of these things thus the clean up day. It almost feels like there is a part of my brain that is dedicated to these tasks even if they are just sitting on my computer or around the place to be accomplished. It's great to finish them.
But what happens for the week or weeks in between that? Are you also equally as happy because those tasks are out of mind?
For me, I just constantly think about "I should have done...", "damn it, I really should do...", and before you know it, you get overrun by those thoughts and nothing gets done. The only way I've learned how to bypass that is to just do things as soon as possible. Sometimes I'll delay things from the morning to do at night, but I really try my best to do them now.
Then you're just constantly crushing out tasks and getting things done and it builds up a lot of positive momentum.
Sometimes easier said than done I know and I always dread whatever yak-shaving is going to result from easy task. But it's good advice in general.
Most weeks 3 days of work and 1 of work related projects / study would net the organization I work for more meaningful relationship and production. It would also allow flexibility for weeks that needed additional stick time.
When I was at my first corporate job out of college my employer did a 9/80 schedule. So 9 hour days for 80 hours which meant every other Friday off. The extra hour for 8 days and a normal 8 hour day the day before being off was awesome. But it can be even better, I believe.
Does it just take a large, public display of it to be considered? Why is there still such a strong focus on 8x5?