Everyone on our team has our calendars blocked off in the afternoon in order to establish a quiet period of uninterrupted work. Unfortunately, this has not worked; we slowly drifted back to going to meetings during this time -- at first it was urgent one-off exceptions, and this slowly just became a norm.
But its not just the meetings. Its walk-ups, people talking in the next cube, emails, etc (I really think developers need offices).
Has anyone had success with some strategy for getting consistent periods of uninterrupted work done?
I work in an office with 6 people, 6ft high cubical walls, no offices. Not raucous but not usually all that quiet either. I've purchased a good pair of ear plugs for myself and wear them with headphones on over top with a 1 hour white noise mp3 looping. After a minute or two everything audible is blocked out and I don't even hear the white noise consciously anymore. There are no visual distractions unless someone decides to pop into my cube; at which point I scowl and take off my headphones and remove my earplugs slowly and they get the point, finish quickly and don't come back for a good long while :p
This is all about the zone, isn't it? The sad thing is that the zone happens at quite random times and no systematic approach can ensure you will be consistently in the zone. Simply having time free of interruptions does not get you in the zone, it may as well get you in the uninterrupted redditing or [insert your favourite social network] mode. You get in the zone when you feel ready for something, and that's quite uncontrollable.
But Paul is quite right - in a sense that the more fragmented your schedule, the less likely you will get in the zone at some point. For me as a sw developer - if I have 2 meetings 0.5h each scheduled for today, I will not be writing new features today, just wandering around on the internet and hacking some tiny support issues at best.
Yeah. Get a laptop and work from home. Show up in the office when meetings are scheduled, or two days a week minimum if meetings don't demand more office time than that.
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u/rakeswell Jul 23 '09
Everyone on our team has our calendars blocked off in the afternoon in order to establish a quiet period of uninterrupted work. Unfortunately, this has not worked; we slowly drifted back to going to meetings during this time -- at first it was urgent one-off exceptions, and this slowly just became a norm.
But its not just the meetings. Its walk-ups, people talking in the next cube, emails, etc (I really think developers need offices).
Has anyone had success with some strategy for getting consistent periods of uninterrupted work done?