Quick Hack to Make Your Boss (and you) More Productive | Hacker News Reader

Quick Hack to Make Your Boss (and you) More Productive

bothsidesofthetable.com

38 pointstessro10 comments

Whenever I need to ask someone a question about something, I take 2 minutes to do just one more bit of homework on the topic.

The goal to give my brain one more shot at figuring it out on its own. Either I figure it out and I don't have to ask anyone else, or I'm now more informed about the topic when I ask someone a question, and I've moved the topic back to the top of my memory.

When it works, I've learned something, saved someone else from being interrupted, and I get a little kick of "I did it all by myself!" satisfaction. Even when the trick doesn't work, the ensuing conversations are usually much more productive.

This is why I like asking questions by email. It forces me to formulate the problem in one go in as much detail as the receiver might need. A lot of the time I end up not sending the email after that mental exercise. (this is basically rubber duck debugging but less abstract - you can work in the context of a real person not an inanimate object)

Getting things done suggests keeping lists per person you interact with frequently to solve this problem. I keep a "discuss" list in remember the milk and tag entries with the person's name. It's not a perfect process and I need to get better at sticking to it, but it's similar to this...

Unrelated: it's only when working with others who don't have a consulting background that I realise how much I learnt from that phase of my life. I love learning tips from other random industries...

"And the funny thing – by the time you were ready to walk through 7-8 issues with your boss you realize that you had already figured out 3 or 4 of them on your own."

There's a counter argument to this (I'm not saying I agree with it) but it's those extra hours it took to solve something on your own vs. the seconds (or at most minutes) to ask the right person. Of course the article does a good job to point out those seconds aren't free either... but I've had managers make a point of saying "if the problem can be solved by asking the right person than do it" that there should never be a reason to solve the same problem twice.

That may be true, but I suppose the strategy is not to spend much more time on an item yourself once you've jotted it down on a list, especially when you're confident Joe Sysadmin would know the answer straight away.

It's a lot more complicated than that.

For example, if I ask a small question today, I'll get an answer and get with the task quickly.

But I'll only have a small bit of information, so I'll be back tomorrow, the day after, and so on.

Whereas if I spend slightly longer working it out myself, I'll generally understand the system involved, and may be able to avoid a whole series of questions, saving significant time for everyone involved.

Also keep a log book of daily progress/problems. It's good for achievement and bonus: it allows you to answer "wtf did you do last month" questions right away.

A while back I increased my MUA's mail download interval to one hour. The decrease in focus disturbance was immediately tangible, and very refreshing. Coworkers would ask "don't people complain that you don't respond quickly?" to which I reply: It hasn't happened yet. :) At worst, the boss walks over to ask if I've received such-and-such email he sent, but that has been rare.

I'm thinking of increasing to an even larger interval.

I have a policy wherein I will spend a half hour trying figure out problems myself (reading code, etc.) before bothering the local guru. This way, I limit the interruptions I cause and learn stuff myself so less questions arise in the future. Also, I can have a semi-informed discussion if it comes to that.

You have to balance it against yak-shaving though so resist the urge to go much longer than a half-hour.

Four interruptions per hour?! I never realized how good I have it....

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