Check our reclaim.ai and getclockwise.com for some newish SaaS companies looking to solve these problems through tooling in the intersection between deep work and shared work in our new remote world!
Hey John - you account a lot of time for context switching in your example. Do you really believe context switching is burning that much of our time? Also would you have in mind switching between products/projects (if applicable) or simply type of tasks people do? Would be great to get your thoughts on that. Regardless - thanks for the text!
Half a year later.. my personal experience is that it differs. For instance, due to varying times people show up in office, we have a daily standup at 1030, and normally go to lunch at 1130. That means that almost all days we have a period between that where nothing of real value is produced. Similarly we've minimised context switching by having more meetings on the same days, rather than few meetings everyday. It really helped all developers, because both before and right after meetings we just felt less productive. You are awaiting the meeting to start and won't start a new task. Or you have to decompress and remember why the unit tests failed.
"I’ve encountered 10x more over-workers than under-workers in tech. And most of the under-workers were geniuses (coincidence?)."
This is a great observation. Hardly a coincidence, rather one of those truths hiding in plain sight. Beyond the myth of busyness and total efficiency (that Tom DeMarco properly undressed in "Slack"), I love Cal Newport's perspective on this -- the "hyperactive hive mind" -- a sort of modern day tech tragedy of the commons.
Great post again, John. Thanks for putting it together.
Check our reclaim.ai and getclockwise.com for some newish SaaS companies looking to solve these problems through tooling in the intersection between deep work and shared work in our new remote world!
Hey John - you account a lot of time for context switching in your example. Do you really believe context switching is burning that much of our time? Also would you have in mind switching between products/projects (if applicable) or simply type of tasks people do? Would be great to get your thoughts on that. Regardless - thanks for the text!
Half a year later.. my personal experience is that it differs. For instance, due to varying times people show up in office, we have a daily standup at 1030, and normally go to lunch at 1130. That means that almost all days we have a period between that where nothing of real value is produced. Similarly we've minimised context switching by having more meetings on the same days, rather than few meetings everyday. It really helped all developers, because both before and right after meetings we just felt less productive. You are awaiting the meeting to start and won't start a new task. Or you have to decompress and remember why the unit tests failed.
"I’ve encountered 10x more over-workers than under-workers in tech. And most of the under-workers were geniuses (coincidence?)."
This is a great observation. Hardly a coincidence, rather one of those truths hiding in plain sight. Beyond the myth of busyness and total efficiency (that Tom DeMarco properly undressed in "Slack"), I love Cal Newport's perspective on this -- the "hyperactive hive mind" -- a sort of modern day tech tragedy of the commons.
Great post again, John. Thanks for putting it together.