The productivity tax you pay for context switching
async.twist.com
async.twist.com
The solution is probably something along the lines of: become more comfortable sitting and reflecting on the current task. Find ways to remain engaged with the current task during the waiting period (reviewing the code, adding more comments, fleshing out next steps, etc.). Don’t give in to a perception of “justified” context switching.
You know where I'm going next. Actually, I found that a quick snooze didn't affect my flow at all.
What I do sometimes is just to go offline. I use iptables to deny outgoing connections on 80 and 443. Then there is nothing to switch to. No emails to check, no nothing. The computer gets really quiet, for a lack of a better word. Uncomfortably so at first, but you get used to it, and after it passes, it's almost calming.
I find the physical and mental tasks context switch is easier than hoping between two cognitive tasks.
I speculate without data that interruption of cognitive tasks with physical exercise is beneficial.
It's tricky managing this, sometimes. If you're working with someone and their context and state is very different, it's easy for them to be blind to whatever my context is, and demand responsiveness when I'm 'tuning out' (staying engaged to what's in-process). My best social behavior there is to gently resist, and then if the heat's rising, comply with whatever I'm being derailed into with gentle inefficiency even if it makes me seem like a terrible dimwit.
In this way it helps establish that something's going on, that I am not in fact effortlessly able to be derailed this way and that. It's not people's responsibility to know my state (particularly if I'm not insisting they keep track of it), but it's my responsibility to be reasonably honest about where I'm at with it.
At that point, it's on the other person to observe :)
Compiling a project is only a nuisance if you don't design it around incremental builds and modularity. Otherwise the only thing your build system has to do is to build the files you actually touch, and link the remaining downstream subprojects that depend on it.
One of the first things I don when starting to work on new C++ projects is check build times, and if rebuild times are noticeable when rebuilding subprojects then I determine what can be done to let that cease to be an issue. More often than not, all it takes to get back decent incremental build times is minimizing interfaces, refactoring some includes with interface segregation, peel off submodules from largeish modules, and that's it.
2. There exists a whole set of latencies in deployment beyond compilation that also apply to interpreted languages.
3. Developer productivity is not measured in lines of code, but in delivered business value and as such is influenced by many other factors beyond how much time you waste on context switching during compilation. That one is usually pretty minor one: you are the first person in my 25 years of career in IT, who mentions this. Maybe you have some specifics in your field of work where it becomes important, but majority of the industry doesn’t think of it too much (and there is incremental compilation).
Parallel builds with makros as afterthought and conclusions to get you back up to speed once they are done
My money is on the fact that execution speed of a program written in compiled language will run circles around equivalent program in an interpreted language.
This also applies to a large amount of other problems, splitting the computation between a slower "high level language" which is suitable for rapid development and low level libraries in a fast compiled language is a good solution.
And of course, you could have fast compiling languages which allow interactive development - just naming Common Lisp as one. You can recompile individual functions witout rebuilding the executable. This could be achived with many languages, but unfortunately it seems that no one bothered to build such systems.
Hmm. Have you gone down the rabbit hole of reading many comments and bobbing your noggin ?
Indeed.
> Have you gone down the rabbit hole of reading many comments and bobbing your noggin ?
In that particular instance, no, I dodged the HN distraction bullet. But there are no guarantees in life.
I am very compelled to start any new task which “feels productive” even in the shortest amount of breaks (also during calls when other people talk etc), it is really tiring. If you also have this strong urge to do so maybe you should check if you have ADHD.
Also I don’t understand your point, it totally depends on how strong the difficulties are whether you might have ADHD or not. „Difficulty in concentrating“ is not a binary metric.
"Implying ADHD is an excuse is a deeply concerning statement." This is exactly what I mean. OP says that we should check if we have ADHDH because we have difficulties starring at a progress bar for a minute and instead want to read the news or other activity. That is not ADHD.
I was diagnosed with ADD as a kid, it make my life considerbly harder and was not to my benefit. Once I left school the "disease" evaporated.
Interesting that it disappeared :-)
I wonder how many kids would not be considered having ADD if they got more say in how their school day looked. Maybe sports before sitting still and reading?
If I need to be productive, again, I context switch into a dedicated workstation that has all my devtools ready, alongside specially configured browsers that I use to test the sites I’m building. These browsers again are separated and highly context specific.
Welcome to modern computing! Context switching is on the menu :)
And since they love to show you ads for things you just purchased, which makes no sense to me at all, then I have to hide my browser windows from that person until December 25th or they'll be able to tell what I got them by looking at the right margin of any page I'm visiting.
Having only one project without interruptions, a closed office door, headphones on with music without vocals and my productivity can even surprise me.
I feel called out because that's exactly what happened. I opened the link, switched over to Signal to message a friend, had a shower, and then came back to the article.
Let's see how many tries it takes for me to finish (coming back to HN makes 2 attempts so far.)
Edit: 3.
So many people I interact with don't understand the toll of interruptions.
> You probably won’t finish this article. In fact, I may have already lost you to another tab in your browser.
I found it funny that the writer teases the reader to do a full read.
I think a lot of what it takes to be able to do focused work is to get better at actively search for context on what you should work on and why, on what problem is worth solving in what manner. Otherwise, I find myself keeping on searching for something or browsing around to give me a sense of purpose. Once I do, though, I don't want to be distracted from it.