Ask HN: How do you cope with being interupted?

[thobiasse]

Part of my bad mood often comes from the fact that I have something in my head which prevents me from focusing on the present.

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?

[genezeta]

I think you got two different things mixed there.

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.

[scruple]

> 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.

This is what I do, as well.

Interruptions used to frustrate me to no end. I found it very rude to be interrupted, especially when I was so obviously busy with my very important things.

Now I have 3 children under 3 years of age. Interruptions are the name of this game. And I've come to realize that the work or whatever really isn't that damned important, either.

So, as long as there isn't an emergency, I acknowledge the person/people doing the interrupting and then take notes in a pocket notebook.

[thobiasse]

Thank you! The problem is more being interrupted than distracted.

I like the the 5-10 seconds unload time. Like some others said, it will help me write down where I was!

[adontz]

Therapy. For real. In some cultures it's not welcome, but it affects personal development enormously. It's the best investment in your life. Not that you'll solve all your problems, however you'll learn to analyze your problems and learn to find root causes to fight with, instead of symptoms. Being here and now is not easy. You may be anxious, tired, may have some mild disorders, obsessions you don't even know about.

[kerneloftruth]

It's fine _if_ you can find a good therapist... but keep in mind you're putting yourself in somebody else's hands. You might find a good one, or you might find a charlatan who could really confuse, sidetrack, or mess you up. Be very careful when choosing. Don't agree to a lengthy commitment to one, but rather try them out on a session by session basis.

Good luck!

[diegoperini]

I upvoted and have nothing else to add but this is so true I want this advice to stay on top :)

[andi999]

What type of therapy are you suggesting? Any type?

[artemonster]

Therapy is not a silver bullet. While it can be helpful, I found it incredibly awful and frustrating when therapist tries to describe and justify things that are happening to you by trying to tie something from your past. You can always do that with any person and any circumstance. Client: „I am annoyed by the interuruptions“ Therapist: „Maybe you dont like loosing control because your mother havent given you a titty when you were little and cried for couple of hours“ Something like that…

[dave_sullivan]

I organize my life around not being interrupted. Work from home, respond to messages when I get to it.

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.

[thobiasse]

Thanks! I'll keep in mind to write down more.

Also you are right about the fact that for some tasks/projects "finished" is not a real state.

[tomcam]

I'm sincerely sorry if this answer doesn't help and it's not meant to be arch or sarcastic. But I have found that the more I like the work I am doing, the less interruptions bother me. I am fortunate to work from home, but it means many more such incidents than an office job.

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.

[thobiasse]

No offense taken! Thanks for your input. My question was not related solely to my work, in fact I enjoy my work quite a lot.

It is more that in my life (and I assume almost everybody's) I have to multitask. Chores, Family, Friends, Work, Personal projects... I don't like to let stuff in an unfinished state because it tends to pile up afterwards AND it stays in my mind as long as I'm not happy with it

[rightbyte]

Maybe you enjoy work that does not require long interruption free thinking and concentration?

[z3t4]

I used to think of tasks/todos as burning buildings and I had to prioritize which family to save. Now I instead think of tasks as balls, where most balls are made of rubber, so i can just drop them as needed, it no longer feels like someone is dying just because i dropped something, then several weeks later when i go through the todo list i relentlessly remove tasks that are not a must have, all nice to have are removed, and i often find that the tasks i dropped was not really important and many are no longer needed

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.

[thobiasse]

Very nice analogies, thanks!

=> Write down stuff in todos and delete them if they stay for too long without any progress

[daniel-thompson]

This has become a huge part of my life since having kids. They're wonderful, and they need a lot of attention, which I'm usually happy to give them. But they do often interrupt me, and that makes it hard to get into anything deep or technical while they're around. I cope by waking up very early each morning (5 AM) so I can pursue my own interests for a few hours without the threat of interruption.

[stef25]

Same. Those hours between 4:30 - 8:00AM are magic. The rest of the day is lost, even without kids. Errands, messages, meetings ...

[thobiasse]

Your totally right, kids are often a great source of distraction event though they are wonderful!

"Sadly" waking up at 5AM every morning will take time (even when sleeping) away from my spouse which won't work in the long run.

However I should try to wake up once or twice a week early and see how it goes. Thanks!

[smoe]

Couple of suggestions that have worked for me ymmv:

- 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.

[thobiasse]

> 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.

Very sound advice thank you so much

[alexpetralia]

Reminds me of some sage advice my dad had given me years ago: "you must learn to tolerate inefficiency."

[orzig]

It's very situation-dependent, so here are a few things I've done:

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

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> minimally-interrupting notifications (email>slack>IRL).

I am not a fan of IM communication, if it’s required that I respond immediately, all the time. Most IM methods, these days, have a “go away and leave me alone” feature, but it has been my experience that many folks resent it, if you actually have the nerve to use them.

I use Slack in “bursts,” for technical communication. I’ll ignore it for hours, or even days (if I’m in The Zone on a tough issue), then have a half hour or so of intense communication.

I mostly prefer email.

[Fiahil]

> I'm 99.9% sure this will not get you fired

Of course, as the opposite situation would be absolutely completely insane...

[thobiasse]

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

> Getting it off your chest is priority #1

seems right to me.

[e3bc54b2]

I just keep the 'busy' hours for other people. Thankfully WFH has made it easy. Basically 11AM-7PM are for other people to interrupt me, and for calls. I stay only half-engaged with chats and emails so it doesn't cost in me my cognitive budget and I get a lot of stuff done within the household. Either 7AM-11AM or 7PM-11PM, depending on circumstances, I do work. You know, the 15 minutes of real actual work mentioned in Office space. This is when other people are away and I get to focus. Thankfully my company culture is good and nature of my job allows me to only sit and mash keyboard couple hours a week or so, rest is thinking, or light research.

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.

[rjh29]

If nobody has noticed yet, chances are nobody will. Just be careful that your self-esteem isn't destroyed by the lack of engaging work.

[dijit]

This is basically what I do too. It works fairly well, if I have an open day.

Setting aside “helping” time and “focus” time is extremely useful if you can avoid meetings during your focus times; although it is also difficult for me to focus when I have something happening soon (meetings at end of focus time, etc)

[petecooper]

I don't cope well with interruptions, especially since I work from home and the person I live with is very ADHD.

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_.

[thobiasse]

Thanks a lot for the explanations and also for the technical details! Implementing visual cues with people who interrupt you often seems very effective.

[throwawaythrow1]

There is no quick and easy solution to this. You just have to remember that the interruption is not aware of your state of mind, and also that a bad response (from you) will probably cause a greater degree of interruption.

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.

[MattGaiser]

I work remotely, so I just live my life and hang around online during business hours (and sometimes nap) and then use the late evening hours to churn out work. I do not like the split between work and life at all. Better to weave it all together as I see fit. 3 days of work can easily be 3 hours if I get those 3 hours uninterrupted rather than every hour punctuated by meetings or some other dev or even just needing to check that ping.

Either that or just ignore the interruptions. Slack can be silenced, as can phones. No need to always tolerate them.

[St_Alfonzo]

Sounds familiar. I often do the 'real work' in the late evening hours, when the world is quiet. So, you allow work to happen in your free time - are there limitations what types of personal activities you allow yourself in your normal work time (the time where you have to be reachable). I'm just curious because erasing the split between work and life is often in favor of work.

[tomcooks]

Outbursts of anger, smashing keyboards, hitting furniture, shouting, smashing smartphones. Helps create a company culture based on respect of other people's time, out of sheer terror.

[thobiasse]

I'll suggest the creation of a rage room tomorrow in my company!

[jv_dh]

One thing that helps me to focus on the task at hand is using Promodoro timers: 25 minutes focussed work, then 5 minutes break.

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.

[beermonster]

Seconded. I have found the Pomodoro method is a great way to stay focussed. I even use the pomodoro mode in Spacemacs and there are simple apps available for iOS/Android.

For being interrupted by apps I generally invert control E.g. - Disable notifications and decide to check a few times a day instead

- Close apps when I’m focussing.

For being interrupted by humans - Make good use of a calendar and let people know my availability

- Use calendar to block of focussing time for tasks requiring periods of longer concentration

- Not be afraid to say I’m in the middle of something I’ll come find you in a bit unless it’s urgent when prodded physically.

- Changing my status message on instant messaging apps/web meeting apps to let people know I’m not always monitoring them (e.g. “I check for DM’s multiple times a day”) to set a level of expectation.

[wombatmobile]

Good question.

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.

[wruza]

It seems like an anxiety, especially this part: “events coming up that make me nervous”. I successfully let go of huge parts of it with CBT. And additionally…

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.

[jwr]

I don't cope with being interrupted. In fact, it affects me so much that even if there is a possibility of being interrupted (home, kids, family, etc), I can't focus, because I fear the moment when that house of cards will inevitably fall down in my head.

Also interested in advice from others.

[rightbyte]

Oh so much this. I need to look my home office to not have the lingering 'fear' of some kid or wife opening the door. It is fine yelling through the door, but not opening it ...

[mkl95]

When the pandemic restrictions were lifted in my country, I took an on site gig as a consultant for a large corporation.

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.

[mooreds]

When I am interrupted, I almost always ask "Hey, can I talk to you in 5 min?" Unless it is an emergency, the answer is "yes".

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.

[barefeg]

I would write the things that are in my mind which are blocking me from doing something else (like sleeping). When working on personal projects I try to plan all the steps I need to make and split them into very small tasks. Then if I’m interrupted during one task I can quickly come back by reading the description.

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

[JensRantil]

I do this, too, but I tend to write a comment in the code where I'm at with what the next step is. Works great.