←back to thread

The cost of interrupted work (2023)

(blog.oberien.de)
282 points _vaporwave_ | 1 comments | 23 Aug 25 21:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
Waterluvian ◴[23 Aug 25 23:25 UTC] No.44999915[source]▶
Some days an interruption will throw me off my train of thought, and I spend the remaining six hours collecting discarded bottles and railway ties for hopeful use somewhere, somehow, sometime.

Other days an interruption costs me pretty much nothing.

I’m still trying to figure out how to tell which of those days I’m going to have and whether to just not log into Slack for the day.

replies(14): >>44999940 #>>45000121 #>>45000236 #>>45000314 #>>45000493 #>>45001283 #>>45001447 #>>45001905 #>>45001941 #>>45002030 #>>45002057 #>>45003807 #>>45005151 #>>45005448 #
karmakaze ◴[24 Aug 25 01:26 UTC] No.45000493[source]▶
I've found one thing that minimizes interruption cost: pair programming. At one startup we pair programmed all day, every day. Resuming from an interruption was almost seamless. Can't explain it, only experienced it.
replies(8): >>45000671 #>>45000685 #>>45000970 #>>45001512 #>>45002084 #>>45002294 #>>45007473 #>>45007708 #
SoftTalker ◴[24 Aug 25 02:00 UTC] No.45000671[source]▶
If only I wouldn’t prefer stabbing myself in the leg with a rusty knife over pair programming.
replies(9): >>45000690 #>>45000909 #>>45000936 #>>45000950 #>>45001156 #>>45001994 #>>45002151 #>>45003045 #>>45004772 #
1. atoav ◴[24 Aug 25 06:59 UTC] No.45001994{3}[source]▶
I one had quite good experiences with it, but the roles were very clear: he was the domain expert who knew how things should be handled and I was the person knowing the code and the processes. This way I didn't have to come up with potentially wrong handling of edge cases and he didn't have to mash his head against code he doesn't understand.