Minimal

stressed for motivation and achievement

2005-01-19

Lunch breaks my flow

At work recently, we’ve adopted a system in which developers are kept free from extra-department interruptions from 10am till 4pm. The reasoning is that development ~~is more importa~~requires extended periods of concentration more than most disciplines and that breaking its flow is costly. Fair enough. Despite the potential for political problems, most people seem to be accepting this.

Thing is, doesn’t lunch also break your flow? It certainly takes me a few minutes to get back into the swings of things after my soup. How is this any different to interruptions from colleagues? To me, it’s not, so I think I’m going to adopt a policy of not having lunch till 4pm. That way, I’ll get a full 6 hours of being in the zone. I just hope my rumbling stomach doesn’t distract me. ;)

posted by Mal # Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Comments:

You can't run on empty. The idea of minimising interruptions is to make your working time more predictable and less interrupted. If you schedule a pause, that's fine. In fact, if you don't there will be some sort of diminishing return on what you can do. If you're pairing, then the getting back up to speed time should be reduced because you bring your collective memories of where you work back to the table.

All work and no play...

# posted by

Ashley Frieze : 2:05 pm

Easy, tigers! I'm only semi-serious. FWIW, I honestly do find that lunch slows me down much more than 5-minute tea breaks. And I've worked through lunch plenty of times before without problems. And... and... stop sounding like my mum. ;)

# posted by

Mal : 5:19 pm

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