Age quod agis
There has been a lot of studies recently that indicate that multitasking is harmful to productivity. In other words, there are significant switching costs when you mentally move from one topic to another. There is a New Atlantis article summarizing the findings entitled The Myth of Multitasking. Ironically, this story was picked up by Slashdot, one of the larger disrupters of concentration in IT. My high school algebra teacher knew all this a long time ago as he would always tell us, “age quod agis”: do what you are doing.
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Tagged with: health , IT , software
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June 24th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
You can go one by one in your todo list tasks but how do you manage to isolate or mask interrupts?
In my case I have people coming to my place to ask me stuff. There is no way I can mask that. So I have tons of context switching.
And I think in your case it should be even worse.
June 27th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
(I guess one way to reduce interruption is to not respond promptly to comments on your blog.)
If you are having problem with people stopping by your desk, I would ask them to come back at a specific time when you can help them or ask them to send you an email describing what they need. In other words, start saying no (politely, of course). One of the big problems IT people seem to have is an inability to say no. Software developers always promise to meet unrealistic deadlines, not realizing that it reflects poorly on them when they don’t meet them (even though they knew all along they wouldn’t be able to meet the deadline).
Of course, there are lots of other ways to help increase focus, e.g., set aside specific times for specific tasks (especially things like IM, email (turn off that notifier!), coding, and support). Basically, be realistic, be honest, be polite, take public transportation (you can get a lot done on the bus/train), and work hard. Oh, and as you already know, use mutt.