Ask HN: How do you deal with fragmented attention?

[yokuze]

Since coding agents have become more capable, I often have them working on 2-5 disparate tasks simultaneously during my work day. The tasks are often in separate or even unrelated repos. Or worse, sometimes the tasks are similar enough that they are easily mixed-up.

Much of my attention goes to switching: Checking on results, restarting stopped tasks, fixing errors or providing hints, etc.

The context-switching takes a toll in the form of distraction and inefficiency.

What do you do that helps with this?

[jahala]

I highly recommend "shamata" meditation for improving attention - https://www.amazon.com/Attention-Revolution-Unlocking-Power-...

[ueezed]

I believe, at least now, there is no foolproof solution. It is ultimately a trade-off between speed and quality. I would suggest you chose wisely where you can afford to be less present and where you need to spend your time. Is this for personal/pet projects or work "work"? In the latter case I might suggest that if you are forced to do this, then there is a workload problem to be solved. In general, context switching is a plague (meetings, colleagues) which predates ai agents. I do believe though that people will become more and more accustomed to it.