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Comment by john_strinlai | Hacker News Reader

>In the end, a 10-minute call can cost me several hours of focus. And I might spend the entire day thinking about it.

does anyone else have their entire day sidelined by a 10-minute call? is that common?

to me, it hints at something else, but i am not sure if i am the odd one out or not.

Yes. I worked in an agile shop some years ago. We did daily stand-ups at 10:00. So, you arrive in the morning, and can't really get deeply into anything because stand-up is coming up. Then stand-up ends and you maybe have a sidebar conversation at the coffee machine, you get back to your desk and now lunch is coming up, so you look for some stuff you can do quickly, maybe read your email, check HN, whatever. After lunch you might get a few unbroken hours to really make progress on something, but half the time it's interrupted by code reviews, planning poker, or some other agile ceremony and the same sort of effect occurs.

If the company does not want you to work, just coast and enjoy. I feel zero guilt when I slack in an overcrowded noisy open plan office too.

Yes. The call or meeting is an inflexible event.

Should I start working on something that requires a lot of active context memory at 9? What if I'm deep in it and then the calendar goes ding for the meeting and I need to get in the call mid-thought?

Can you just stop working on stuff, have a meeting, and pick up exactly where you left off with nothing lost?

I used to be like that early in my career around 25. By now I am nearly 40 and that doesn’t remotely cross my mind. I’ve had to do so many social events that I am numb to it. It used to cause tons of anxiety/rumination though. When in doubt vape hella weed and you will forget about your worries. That seems to be the solution to all of my life’s problems.

> does anyone else have their entire day sidelined by a 10-minute call? is that common?

It's extremely common for me.

It really comes down to the point made in the article. If you have five or six calls already, the marginal cost of one more call is very low. If you have no calls, the marginal cost of one more call is very high.

Yes. Not often, but yes, it happens: when I am working on something where it takes me a few hours of deep focus to complete and I get interrupted, it can derail me for days. What disappears most of the time is engagement, I tend to postpone that work for next day or more.

A twenty-minute call probably costs me an hour in prep and follow-up and resuming a task, but not a whole day.

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