Do not disturb a software developer in "flow"
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“The trouble is, getting into “the zone” is not easy. When you try to measure it, it looks like it takes an average of 15 minutes to start working at maximum productivity.”
The world is full of distraction, particularly in this point in time. Facebook keeps enticing us with yet another friend’s trip to the tropical paradise we always wanted to go, Twitter pings us about Mr. Trump’s newest normal and that infernal device in our pocket keeps buzzing and beeping. Yet as software developers we are most in need of concentration, we need to think, juggle hundreds of ideas and pointers in our head and let our brain do its magic. A single distraction during this process is like a shrill cry in the middle of the silence in a temple.
I saw an amazing cartoon sometime back that explains this in very funny terms, I’ve copied it over here and keep it as the entire right column for today’s little rant about why coders should not be disturbed yet they are at every possible moment during their typical work day.
Here are some of the things we remind ourselves every day to stop disturbing ourselves and our colleagues at work.
Don’t ask a random question
The random passing question to a code deep in work is the number 1 culprit for distraction and loss of flow. It’s tempting to ask how the party went last night for example but asking it while someone has just managed to understand a weird for loop written years ago is a major sin. Please don’t ask randomly without checking if that person is free or not.
Keep developer rooms silent
Noise and particularly the someone speaking on the phone is horrible for anyone trying to concentrate. Developer rooms should follow the silence rule that libraries have. Discussions, debates, phone calls should all be taken out of the dev rooms into the verandas or the meeting rooms.
Open offices are bad
Large open offices where many different teams are working at the same time (and the worst of all developers working with sales teams sitting close by) are bad for concentration. We feel strongly about having semi private offices where only a single small team sits together with their lead in a separate space or room in that area. We’ve written many times about workspace layouts that are good for software companies. Here’s a recent article: To cubicle, or not, that is the question.
Optimize meeting start times
Work meetings in the middle of workdays are a major source of distraction. It prevents developers from concentrating and working on a large piece of software in the fear that they will get distracted in the middle. And most meetings lead to a long time settle back to full concentration. Meetings should be timed at points when the developer has not yet started to pick up tasks (say beginning of the day) or has had a natural break in work (say right after lunch).
Self discipline goes a long way
Last but not least: funnily enough studies show that we ourselves are a major source of distraction. With all the social media and youtube just a click away this isn’t too hard to understand. This is where the self discipline comes in, prioritizing our work and keeping set timeline for launching FB or even checking our emails has a huge impact on our productivity.
