Your level as an engineer should be based on how much deep work you can do without screwing the pooch. The best engineers can be left alone for months and be sure to return with something cogent. The most junior will be required to have daily design check ins and regular code reviews as they go from start to finish on a project whose problem space needs to be well understood and mapped out before any deep work begins.
It is very damaging to an organisation when someone who cannot create understandable solutions is given the deep work breathing space to go crazy. It is a difficult but important thing to find out about candidates / probationary employees sooner rather than later. It’s important to keep a stash of pre-baked project ideas on hand so that you can use them to assess newcomers to the team, especially if you only have three months to figure out if they are able to meet your expectations before being confirmed as a full time employee.
An engineer being left alone for months just sounds like a great way for a user to ask for one thing and get something completely different. I think most engineers would love to just be left alone for days or even hours at a time, and that sounds a lot more reasonable.
> The best engineers can be left alone for months and be sure to return with something cogent.
As a customer, this would be absurd. If I don't get what I imagined I wanted (rather than what I said), I'd rather find out in time to ask you to steer the solution towards what I want, instead of you bankrupting me for a wrong solution.
Frequent feedback is the essence of Agile. It makes sure the development process addresses the business needs with lowest latency and lowest gap in understanding.
I agree with the main point here, but one thing that has always puzzled me is how to think about what might be called deep collaborative work. Most meetings, especially the status-y kind, are manifestly not "deep" but some of the most intense work that I have ever done has been with one or a small handful of collaborators.
a common trap in "deep work only" teams is local optimisation. while interruptions should be minimized and batched, the overall flow of cards and a low average cycle time requires focused collaboration and regular slack time to resolve blockers. Otherwise, important issues spend more time waiting than getting completed. Individual deep work with low collaboration while more important work is piling up would be an antipattern.
I’ve experienced this first hand. When all your colleagues only deep work and you’re tasked with some necessary grunt work, your productivity will plummet when you’re trying to move fast.
>This approach is based on pushing information rather than pulling it
This is really what's at the heart of almost every discussion regarding communication. Many if not most places introduce polling rituals as a one-size-fits-all solution, whereas many people work best pushing information and having everyone else react to it. It is no different than event-driven structure vs polling.
Every time you create more 'polling' systems and push some claim (the infamous 'new employees won't speak up without standups' comes to mind), there is less pressure to teach them asynchronous ways of working. Every time some manual procedure is pushed as a fix, the alternative of an automatic procedure is pushed aside because 'costs too much money' and 'look, manual works, communication!'.
I really like this concise consolidation of these ideas. In my opinion, both Deep Work and Essentialism — like so many books in that genre — could've been pamphlets. It Doesn't Have to be Crazy at Work was pretty jam-packed with different ideas, though.
> Monastic and bimodal modes are rather reserved for professions that can manage work without intensive communication with people, like writers, scientists, researchers, etc.
Many or most scientists are academics. Communication time dominates the job of a professor. Teaching, and the invisible job of running a university takes between 1/3 and 2/3 of a 40 hour week. Both of these are based around strict schedules, so the actual schedule in a non-sabbatical, non-buyout semester ends up journalistic or approaching rhythmic at best.
Thus the deep work slots are very precious. I did most of mine after dinner, or after kids' bed time. A professor I respect, well known for his reliable productivity, did a couple of hours of email at 2am for >20 years to create time in the work day for the real work.
Professor is a wonderful job, but making time to be a productive scientist is a constant struggle. This is why graduate students feel the science is delegated to them.
The article is right: Deep work hates interruptions (including everything synchronous)
However, the kind of rigid scheduling it proposes goes against the freedom deep work loves. It is not the lazy/mindless kind of freedom I’m referring to, but the freedom from over-quantified environments : IMO it is counterproductive to aim at always rigidly controlling that "in the zone" experience.
For me it isn't about maintaining my own schedule it is about managing the expectations of others, be they managers or colleagues. I have "office hours" on my calendar where people can book in with me and then the last couple of hours of my day people know I'm interruptible. Outside of those hours I don't check email, don't have any chat open and my phone goes straight to voicemail with a message to call me again if it is an emergency, which will make it ring. I start work very early (05:30-06:00) and am most productive in the mornings, so my office hours and interruptible time is when I'm starting to wind down and my capacity for deep work is reducing.
Lot of people doing deep work do it on a schedule - and a very hard one at that. It’s based on the creation of habit, instead of relying on luck to be in the zone.
The most important thing after all is to show up!
What works for me is a rhythmic schedule but that concentrates all shallow things in the morning and deep work in the afternoon. I'm also more productive in the afternoon evening, so depending on your inclinations the opposite may work, deep work in the morning and shallow the rest of the day. The challenge is scheduling calls in the morning only.
I agree that scheduling regular time to focus is important. I try to start early and do most of my work in the morning when many people are not active. That helps avoid meetings and interruptions.
[+] [-] gorgoiler|3 years ago|reply
It is very damaging to an organisation when someone who cannot create understandable solutions is given the deep work breathing space to go crazy. It is a difficult but important thing to find out about candidates / probationary employees sooner rather than later. It’s important to keep a stash of pre-baked project ideas on hand so that you can use them to assess newcomers to the team, especially if you only have three months to figure out if they are able to meet your expectations before being confirmed as a full time employee.
[+] [-] mym1990|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ResearchCode|3 years ago|reply
If they're also should-you-be-fired-today interrogations, then it appears that the organizations real problem is toxicity.
[+] [-] danuker|3 years ago|reply
As a customer, this would be absurd. If I don't get what I imagined I wanted (rather than what I said), I'd rather find out in time to ask you to steer the solution towards what I want, instead of you bankrupting me for a wrong solution.
Frequent feedback is the essence of Agile. It makes sure the development process addresses the business needs with lowest latency and lowest gap in understanding.
https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
[+] [-] psteitz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorzel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wortelefant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cardinal7167|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlargMcLarg|3 years ago|reply
This is really what's at the heart of almost every discussion regarding communication. Many if not most places introduce polling rituals as a one-size-fits-all solution, whereas many people work best pushing information and having everyone else react to it. It is no different than event-driven structure vs polling.
Every time you create more 'polling' systems and push some claim (the infamous 'new employees won't speak up without standups' comes to mind), there is less pressure to teach them asynchronous ways of working. Every time some manual procedure is pushed as a fix, the alternative of an automatic procedure is pushed aside because 'costs too much money' and 'look, manual works, communication!'.
[+] [-] pm90|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lyngbakr|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robotresearcher|3 years ago|reply
Many or most scientists are academics. Communication time dominates the job of a professor. Teaching, and the invisible job of running a university takes between 1/3 and 2/3 of a 40 hour week. Both of these are based around strict schedules, so the actual schedule in a non-sabbatical, non-buyout semester ends up journalistic or approaching rhythmic at best.
Thus the deep work slots are very precious. I did most of mine after dinner, or after kids' bed time. A professor I respect, well known for his reliable productivity, did a couple of hours of email at 2am for >20 years to create time in the work day for the real work.
Professor is a wonderful job, but making time to be a productive scientist is a constant struggle. This is why graduate students feel the science is delegated to them.
[+] [-] auggierose|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] civopsec|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seydor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LunarAurora|3 years ago|reply
However, the kind of rigid scheduling it proposes goes against the freedom deep work loves. It is not the lazy/mindless kind of freedom I’m referring to, but the freedom from over-quantified environments : IMO it is counterproductive to aim at always rigidly controlling that "in the zone" experience.
[+] [-] r_hoods_ghost|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arcanum-XIII|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fedeb95|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcturus17|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrib|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fn1|3 years ago|reply
Because if you are able to concentrate and find a solution for a problem, you also need other people to concentrate and understand your solution.
[+] [-] lowbloodsugar|3 years ago|reply