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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

You take out 2-5 minutes out of every 30 minutes??? After those 5 minutes I would need 30 minutes just to get back into my context.

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A 3 minute interruption e.g. a phone call risks dropping the context. But if I just step out of my office chair and do some excercises I'm sure I could keep the context in my head while making a few pushups. Since I'm not really distracted perhaps the break can be a thinking break. Some times it's hard to avoid "thinking with your keyboard" and use your head. When I'm stuck on a really hard problem I go for a walk or take a shower or something. I think this could be the same thing.

Taking a short exercise break like this is also a great procrastination killer for me.

When I feel the urge to distract myself I'll just get up and do some kind of light bodyweight exercises that require coordination and balance, and then I'm ready to continue the work I was starting to dread.

It could be even better than that, it could be used to solve distraction problems we already have: if, during compile breaks (I'm sure some other professions have similar downtime), instead of slacking off on hn or trying to squeeze in some multitasking productivity we'd just do some body stuff, our brains would retain focus much better than without that exercise. It could be even better than that: if, during compile breaks (I'm sure some other professions have similar downtime), instead of slacking off on hn or trying to squeeze in some multitasking productivity we'd just do some body stuff, our brains would retain focus much better than without that exercise.

If anyone reading is into launching maker stuff: consider putting some hardware/software pair on crowdfunding where the hardware connects to a workout detector (kettle bell with accelerometer, treadmill, DDR mat, whatever, my personal favorite would be a comically big crank on a resistance unit, even just a smartwatch with an accelerometer would do) and the software hooks into the computer's power management, detecting heavy load and enforcing some extra throttling unless the workout detector is worked. I believe that this could fool our motivation/reward system quite nicely.

Everyone is different and has different routines. If I'm in the middle of important work or experiencing flow I will not break it. But we all do have repetitive tasks or housekeeping work to do. This is the time I do it.

As always, experiment and adjust

Exercise, stretching, and things like that don't need to take you out of your context at all. You can continue thinking about your work while you do it and come back to the work ready to go and maybe with some problems solved.

that's standard pomodoro timings which are globally popular

true. The reasoning was pomodoro technique to keep the mind/eyes fresh (20-30mins) + a time-frame that is enough for the body to restore all the necessary "ingredients ". (> 15-20mins)

I think volition is the difference. Me wanting to get up and get some water and stretch my legs is something I plan on doing and carry it at a time that I chose. Me being interrupted by someone to ask me something while I'm deep in thought or/and trying to make a feature click is not the same.

The equivalent for sedate people like us might be a couple of squats or one push up. If you do it every 30 minutes it has to be maintainable. It could even be walk and get some water. (You get a free squat if you had to stand up, just sit down slowly when you get back)

Do you ever just stop and think for a moment after reading or writing something? I do, taking small pauses to think in between looking at things is a regular part of my workflow.

When I do pause, I can stop and do a few pushups. It helps me focus a bit better, and there's no context loss because I'm not doing or thinking about anything new. It's not much different from leaning back in my chair to think for a minute.

Depends on how complicated your context is. I try to strive to keep it as simple as possible so distractions don’t matter that much.

Thing with repetitive exercise is you don't need to think about it and actually there can be time to think in your original context without the distraction of, in my case, the IDE and code I'm working on.

Am I an anomaly? I hear this often among engineers but I don't seem to have this issue. I can literally pick up from the line of code or document I left off from last evening. The only type of work where I need to "rebuild context" is when dealing with financial spreadsheets.

I find it depends heavily on both the nature of the problem I'm working on and my mental state, and also the nature of what I switch to.

If I haven't slept all night, context switches are total killers.

If the problem requires me to keep in mind a ton of factors and dependencies while I develop (design or code), context switches can be quite bad.

If the distraction require me to drag up a ton of context from a couple of weeks ago, then it can be quite bad.

If I'm well rested and someone comes with a technical question that's hard but limited in scope, it's mostly fine and I can get back to it within a minute if not less.

You aren't unique. When I was younger, an interruption meant that I lost my flow, but not my train of thought.

Now I'm a little older and have a brief pause where I think back to where I was, but it's still pretty quick.

Yes, I believe this is unusual.

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