It can be a personal project I'm working on, work related matters, events coming up that make me nervous etc...
What do you do to let go of these without loosing progress? Do you also feel frustrated to stop working on something before it is finished?
One is being interrupted, the other is being distracted. Being interrupted is external, while being distracted is internal.
So which one is it you're having problems with?
Personally, I have come to accept that there will be interruptions. Colleagues asking for help, someone asking a question, some boss calling an unexpected meeting, my mother phoning or whatever. Some of these you can avoid; like you could have a rule to always communicate meetings in advance. But at least a part of these will be unavoidable. How many depends on particular circumstances; e.g. being a senior engineer in a mostly junior group means you were specifically hired to be interrupted to a considerable extent.
One thing that sometimes helps me with interruptions is using 5-10 seconds. That is, when someone comes I just ask for 10 seconds, I make a gesture or simply say "10 seconds" or whatever, and then proceed to sort of "unload". I write down the precise point I am at and the exact upcoming action I was going to take.
On the matter of distractions, it depends a lot more on yourself and the success of anything you try will be very dependent on how you are.
In this front, one thing I do is scheduling. I want/need to do X... but I have to do Y now. So, I slot it into an appropriate time. e.g. "This weekend I want to make progress on that personal project". So "this weekend". This means: a. not now, and b. I have sort of secured a time for it, I don't have to worry about it because it has an assigned place.
Again, in this area what works for others may not work for you. But also, as someone has already mentioned, if you can't manage to learn how to do this on your own, reaching out to a therapist or other professional help is a valid solution. They may provide more specific tools and techniques.
When I have an idea or thought that might interrupt, I write it down quickly on an ideas board or my notes for later and discard the thought.
When I get tired I sleep. When I'm working on something I am in a flow state. When I feel myself leaving a flow state (or bored?) I take a break. Progress is unpredictable. There is no such thing as finished, only ongoing or back burner or dead.
Obviously I would like to be left alone while working, but I have handicapped and mentally ill people to care for my life is acutely interrupt-driven. My work is immensely enjoyable so I can recover pretty fast most of the time.
In the days I did work in an office, I found that I got an enormous amount of work done on evenings, weekends, or very early mornings. This required having a spouse who understood that work was important because it supported both of us.
So the tasks/todos are rubber balls and its ok to drop them. And do not worry about losing them. If they are important they will bounce back at you. There are only a few balls that are made of glass.
- Disable all notifications by default. Emails, chats, phone, apps, services turn them all off. Very few things in life actually require immediate response. Try to setup, that only notifications for those come trough.
- Timebox everything. Instead of just starting doing something, define how much time you are going to spent on doing x (might be a task, fixing a bug, preparing an event, solution exploration, etc.). When the time is up, take a step back, revise your work and decide whether it is done. If not, define what is missing, its importance and the corresponding time box. This really helped me getting lost in rabbit holes.
- Try to work in a way that is more resilient to interruption, so that it can more easily be left aside and picked up later. E.g. only doing one thing at a time, breaking up tasks, planning the day in advance in the morning so scheduled meetings don't come as surprise, etc.
- Communicate and manage expectations. Whether co-workers, family, partner, if they interrupt you, they usually don't do so maliciously. But if their interactions with you bother you, you need to talk to them to find a solution. Just being grumpy about it won't help.
Also, efficiency is not everything. We are not computers that can just chug away on tasks infinitely. Any non trivial work, you won't be able to finish in one sitting. Some interruptions are inevitable and healthy and whatever methodology, you will lose some progress on the way and have to rework things. And it's also about priorities in life. Is the work-related, unfinished task really important / interesting enough to get stuck in your head outside of work hours? Maybe the problem is not getting interrupted, but ability to interrupt yourself and separate different aspects of life.
1. In a work situation where I'm relatively senior, I've proactively communicated that I like minimally-interrupting notifications (email>slack>IRL). Even when someone taps me on the shoulder, they're a little sheepish about it, and I can request 30 seconds to jot down a note about where I left off. I also just feel more in control of the situation.
2. At home, I keep a note of the interruptions and talk to my wife about the overall issue after the 'crisis' has passed.
3. When I feel like I can't get something out of my head, I use Siri to write a reminder. I use https://rememberthemilk.com/ but almost anything will work. A poorly thought-out, awkward, run on sentence for the task title, and then if I have more thoughts bursting outof me, I can add those as notes over the course of the day. What's important to realize is that you'll have to 'groom' the task before you can actually do it, but getting it off your chest is priority #1, and if you're supposed to be mostly doing something els eyou won't have time for that in the moment.
More generally, it's all about insisting on 30 seconds to record some placeholder, even if it feels impolite to whoever is interrupting you. I'm 99.9% sure this will not get you fired, and it's worth whatever tiny annoyance it might give them - they should share the annoyance burden of the situation after all! In all likelihood, just having that shred of control will help you feel a ton better and potentially make people think twice about whether they need to tap you on the shoulder in the first place
Overall, I don't engage with $JOB more than 8 hours on any given day and never on a weekend. It works for me, and my boss nor team have complained so far. I'm not sure how long the party will last, though.
I take some pre-emptive measures to limit the impact: me wearing headphones is a visual sign that I am focussing. I have Sony WH-1000XM3 which are a game-changer for me: I can enable the noise cancelling when I need quiet, have music when I need it, and my housemate can see I am focussing. "Headphones on" is a verbal phrase we both use that means "only urgent or important stuff, please". Next step up from that is ear defenders (3M Peltor in black and red), which is simply "leave me be". I can't do too much in the Peltors since my tinnitus kicks off…and it's a bit disconcerting listening to your own pulse with a background "EeEeeEeeeEEEEeee" for too long.
Edit: and if I'm "headphones on" this time of year, my office is quite dark. Housemate flashes the main light on and off once to indicate they want to talk non-urgently, and I will raise my first finger to respectfully acknowledge with "1 minute, please", get to a point where I've made enough notes to be able to carry on, then take my headphones off, and then have the conversation.
Some of this may come across as being a bit pompous, but it works for both of us equally well.
Edit #2: if you're young and out at live gigs, get ear plugs. Tinnitus is no fun _at all_.
So be kind, handle the interruption politely and happily, remind the interrupter that you're working and then take measures so that it is more difficult for you to be interrupted in the future.
Either that or just ignore the interruptions. Slack can be silenced, as can phones. No need to always tolerate them.
More generally, if distractions are bothering you or are making you nervous, I would recommend meditation. Meditation is the practice of focussing on the present. Try the waking up app (https://wakingup.com/), it is a good reason-based introduction to the practice and theory of meditation.
Before you consider the various answers offered here, consider that attention is the key executive function of consciousness, and the ability to marshall it is a core aspect of what we call “self”.
Everyone is different, in ways that we cannot always control, or even perceive.
When you consider other people’s methods, be aware that your attention mechanisms may work differently and respond differently, whether you like it and want it that way or not.
“Attention” is a hardware module that comes with no instruction booklet.
without loosing progress?
I always write down both the plan and the progress. For strategic plans and sudden realizations I’m using personal Trello. For at-the-moment tactics I just have a piece of paper and few pens on my desk. Circles and text and arrows and notes, you know. And somewhere in the middle there is always TODO.txt or a variant of `grep -r "TODO\|FIXME\|XXX" .`. Which of the latter two I’m using depends on whether I want to draw a map and navigate it (research-mode) or to set a short-term plan (do-it-mode).
For upcoming events that depend on my action, I make sure to plan beforehand with the ios builtin reminder app and then fully rely on it. If these don’t depend on me (someone to arrive in a hour or maybe four), I just learned to not give a fuck until it happens with CBT, and then I spend a minute to write down all the relevant progress/action/situation info to pick up later.
If I don’t write it down, it’s not worth it, and vice versa.
Also interested in advice from others.
My boss interrupted people all the time to spout nonsense that usually was not related to work. I quickly found out there was an extreme productivity differential when compared to my previous job.
The way I cope with being interrupted is by making it clear I don't want to be interrupted for no reason. If the issue persists, I tell my boss about my small network of recruiters. If the interruptions persist, I reach out to some of those recruiters, and get a contract somewhere else.
Over the years I have found that some corporate types are so far removed from reality, that they don't understand how many engineers actually want to get things done. Working remotely has been a blessing for my career.
Then I spend those 5 minute capturing context. This makes it easier (not easy, but easier) to return to the task after the discussion.
Another good thing to do is limit chances to be interrupted. Sign out of slack, close your email. Check these once every few hours. Oftentimes someone will ping you then solve their own issue with further research.
The above answer the headline question, but the deeper one comes in your text. "How can I live in the present" is how I interpret that. I don't know how to answer that, but focusing on the shortness of time you have on this planet has helped me be more present.
If there’s something blocking my progress in a task, I write comments below the task’s card (using whatever kanban software). Then if I leave it to do something else, I’ll be able to replicate the last state in my head by reading the comments
My approach is to choose to not let these conversations slip. I do this by writing down whatever I need to on a piece of paper next to me. I find that because I'm working alone I don't get the feedback I need. By writing it down I can switch back, and this serves a purpose other than to simply not forget it. It allows the thought to continue and I don't get stuck. Maybe I write a list, maybe I write a task, maybe a diagram. Many times it's a question.
Because the internal dialogue flows better my other present at-hand work can resume sooner after the interruption. In the meantime, I'm having a debate on the side about whether it really is a better idea than what I'm doing, and it gives me room to consider things in a more reasonable way, without the pressure of mental logjamming.
I switch back and forth. Each time I am giving the proper focus needed.
Also, these are generally for me not troubling or repeatedly negative thoughts because in moments when those kind of thoughts are present I stop everything and it gets full attention to get resolved. The situation then is it's not so much a logjam but the river itself has run dry. Gotta get that figured out asap because it not only affects present ability to work but future as well.
As primers, pomodoro helps(especially when you're 'too much' in the zone and you lose sense of time), and there are a lot other ways.I would also say WHM(Wim Hof Method) helps to relax you if you get anxious/nervous about being interrupted, but WHM helps in general so yea, you can do it when waking up/going to bed.Taking notes helps(especially if you never did it or don't have a habit).In general there's no universal solution, it's all about knowing yourself.
Usually the main problem about being interrupted is that you're not aiming very precisely towards your goal.Once you have that goal in your crosshair and you want it, everything becomes irrelevant.But most importantly realize that there's no growth without pain, and i'm not saying to should hurt yourself.I'm saying whenever there's hardship in whatever you do, the best way for growth is to conquer that pain and even use it as experience for updating your goal.As smaller advice, do the obvious:cut everything related to social media, or internet in general(unless it's a requirement).
For me, being able to handle interruptions and then refocus is something that can be strengthened with practice like many other skills. I used to be very much in the camp of trying to avoid distractions and interruptions, but over the years my strategy has changed. My pov now is that it will happen and it will happen at the most inconvenient time, so i try to keep my work in a state that it can retrace my steps easily and make it easier to "load my context" when I resume. Sometimes this is a unit test, a random comment or whatever notes i'm taking at the moment.
I'm really not a multi-tasker and i have horrible short-term memory, so I've pretty much always relied on leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for myself.
Also take advantage of being pulled away and coming back to a work in progress (finished or not). Sometimes, just a few minutes break and change your perspective slightly.
Talking specifically about code, TDD really helped me, seriously, the red-green loop makes me comfortable to stop any time the tests are green, then I commit, which means that I also have very small commits which also help me with the interruptions once I'm back.
To not miss what I was thinking ahead, I always to keep a todo list (I just use Notes) of everything that comes to mind that I still need to fix or code which I postponed from the current commit, so I don't loose track while at the same time it frees me to focus on a specific thing at a time.
Now sometimes this does not apply, sometimes you just need long, deep and uninterrupted focus, like thinking about the perfect abstraction for something, or those long debugging sessions I mentioned. For those, I try to be sure to block some time or I don't even start it on that day
Journaling helps you think. It makes you feel like someone is listening (I write those in a way that I am talking to someone, who is just there to listen, and not give feedback). I let everything out, it just feels better, and then I am able to focus more on the work. I am good at patterns, so I identify what makes me tick, what makes me focus, and then it's a matter of doing things which help you and avoid those which don't. Possibly a lot of iteration involved.
P.S. I have tried therapy, but the thing they tried to tell me was that everyone loves me, and people want me and value me in their life. My frustrations were never coming from that unresolved issue. I just felt helpless or nervous about lack of control over my activities, and journaling helped me get to that point, while therapy was useless.
When I focus on an objective, I ensure my phone cannot be found. I turn off slack and the like - and I generally make it impossible to distract myself. I fight myself as much as I can, to live in the moment.
As for my works: I have permanently disabled notifications on my desktop. I read e-mail during specific windows, and the same with slack and the like. In office, with people is more difficult. But I generally work on getting teams to agree to 'zone time', ensuring that it's not my idea, but our shared goal.
When I drive and listen to an audiobook, I sometimes have to stop, make a note, and only then I can keep driving. If I don't stop to make a note I am going to miss either the rest of the audiobook or the idea I just had.
Writing the idea down lets me safely "park it" for later and focus on the rest of the audiobook.
This only works when you can trust the idea comes back when you can do something about it.
I am using a compromise/modified GTD (Getting Things Done) system. I have a bunch of folders for my projects and each has special NOTES document where I write down anything pertaining to the project. So the next time I come back to think about that project the idea/task/whatever I just wrote will come back to me and I will be able to do something about it.
The principle is simple: instead of trying to tell yourself "I'm going to focus on X until it's done", instead say "I'm going to work on X for Y minutes". You can experiment with what Y works for you. 20-30 minutes is a reasonable starting point.
During that time, remove potential distractions. No notifications, phone on silent, no distracting websites open (eg HN, reddit, whatever), no Discord, etc. Use a timer if that helps. I'd actually get a physical timer as this seems to be more tangible and removes the temptation of getting distracted by your phone.
After that time, give yourself 5 minutes to do whatever. HN, reddit, email, Twitter, it doesn't matter.
There's really no point in self-flagellation when it comes to distraction. Just try and work with it.
I try to ensure there's as little relevant information as possible that's exclusively in my head.
This means I can recover from an interruption - "get back in flow" - much faster than if I kept everything in my head.
More importantly, it means I can have an order of magnitude more projects on the go at once. I sometimes return to an issue I first opened more than a year ago and can productively start working on it with just a few minutes of review of the previous comments.
He built a little literal interior counter with an LED display and button to increment that sat on his desk. He reset it to zero each day.
For every person who came up to ask a question he hit the button, then answered.
He used it as a metric for his manager, and as a gentle passive-aggressive way of pointing out you’re interrupting him. The button pushing had a flourish to it.
That said, he was always very gracious about answering questions.
One of the best infra engineers out there, I’d must-hire him again, interrupt counter and all.
Pretty quickly people learnt to stick to important questions, or chat during downtime, not focus time.
Coworker who sees me looking at something in a browser: "Glad you're not busy; I need you to do this, this, this..."
Coworker who sees me staring intently at a command prompt: Backs away, slowly...
[edit] Since a year I am in a position where I just have to assume I will be interrupted (not developer). So I just try to cope with it.
Also, what genezeta said about "interruption" vs. "distracted" is true. Interruptions come from others; distractions come from you.
iOS and macOS (and now Windows I think) have "focus mode" now, where you can silence notifications for some period of time, which I have found helpful.
I don't do this very often because I don't want to abuse it and I also want to be available for my co-workers. But at work, one need's balance and boundaries and it's OK to set them yourself.
I check slack when I feel like it and if there are messages, I answer them.
I feel very little stress compared to when I was in the office and people were talking, walking and laughing around me constantly. It was impossible to focus for 5 minutes.
I find it really annoying to be interrupted at work, and remote work has enabled me to regain my focus.
If I am really desperate to meet some deadline, I recruit a friend to work on it with me. That seems to help me focus.
I will sometimes, depending on the level of concentration, close all communication apps, phone on silent and lock doors.
for diffcult work with other people, that gets complex, I'll keep meetings to one or two attendees.
I also do a brain dump and write down in notepad, my problems and to do stuff, then prioritise the list
TLDR; I utilize TDD, the Pomodoro time technique, and I have crafted an internal story that I deal with distraction well.
I love my wife and want her to feel free to bug me anytime. I have set boundaries where something ideally should be a level more important to warrant an interruption, but I love her so she can interrupt whenever. I don’t want to be a curmudgeon about it, so I choose not to be.
I do let her know that when I am deep in thought, it takes me some dozens of seconds to come back to reality. She gives me some time and is patient enough to repeat what she said.
I use tests and notes as a way of exporting my deep thought into world artifacts. Developing testing as a skill is actually rather difficult as it brings to the surface software design, which I think many novice programmers miss. Once you have it, you can rerun your test/suite to reorient where you were once the distraction is complete.
Notes let me write down nagging or otherwise unrelated to task thoughts. We live in an age of distraction and we must adapt. I write down/tally when I have an impulse to distract myself to remind myself to stay on task.
Finally, I use the pomodoro time technique for time management. I usually do 30 minutes on, 10 minutes break. It is very freeing to know there will be time in the very near future to handle distractions and I personally find myself in focus mode faster using the technique.
And that’s what I’ve done to try and adapt. I used to be someone who told myself I don’t handle distractions well and therefore requires huge blocks of uninterrupted time, but it didn’t work out for me and how I want to be. YMMV.
Hope this helps OP!