There is no such thing as multitasking, so the average 1 min to read a mail is actually much more of a loss in terms of productivity, and more importantly comfort in doing what you do.
Hi, I fully agree there is no such thing as multi tasking.
My workflow is purely linear! I'm just saying that if, in general, you're not able to split big problems into smaller ones, which are manageable in 10 minutes spans, then you should probably rethink the problem again.
Interesting remarks. I am a developer. Probably a bad one from reading your comments. My point of view is that every problem, however complex it is, can be split into more simple problems which need no more than 10 minutes of attention at a time (when I say attention it's really 100% of your brain - no chatting, no twitter etc.).
I develop in rails with cucumber for use case designing. So for instance my workflow would be:
- write a cucumber test (if you spend more than 10 minutes on a single test, it's clearly too complicated or not granular enough)
- check emails (if any), answer (I'm amazed at someone here saying he needs 1h+ to answer a single email. Sure this can happen, but less than 1% of the time.)
- watch the cucumber test fail and write the corresponding feature (again if more than 10 minutes, then you clearly don't know how this works)
- check emails (if any), answer
- write ruby on rails code to make the test's step work
- rince & repeat
I have to add I'm not just a developer - I'm a startup founder. So I'm doing more than developing. And checking my emails only twice a day would mean I'd miss many opportunities...
"Probably a bad one from reading your comments." Well if it works for you, don't change. I will be the last one to call you a bad developer. But in my experience e-mails can be very distractive because people ask for a solution, not just a simple reply.
"checking my emails only twice a day would mean I'd miss many opportunities" I'm hearing this a lot, but it's it's a false assumption. Real opportunities can wait 4 hours (do you also check your e-mail when you sleep?). It's just that you think you will miss something.
"You can afford to spend 30 seconds every 10 minutes to deal with emails."
As others have mentioned, this would destroy programmer productivity and flow.
It seems the author is picturing a scenario where you can just read an email and fire off an answer. In my case, an email may require an hour of research or a day of work to answer. If I'm already working on something, just having the new task mentally on my stack is going to distract me from my current task and thus delay me getting to the new one. Or else I'll switch to the new one and completely lose my place in the current one.
Infrequent email checking is much better for my productivity.
>or you are in the process of doing something so important that it requires 100% of your attention (this never happens for more than 10 minutes),
Never worked at something, then realized that 3 hours had gone by? Never happens? Then you are bad at whatever it is you do.
Anyway if it is so important to get your answer within 10 minutes, you should have the cutesy to show up in person and discuss the matter. Email isn't meant to be instant.
Sending an email is a request for the recipients time and frankly you have no right to expect people to give you what it is you request just because you request it.
Exactly. If something isn't urgent, send an email. If it's somewhat time-sensitive, send an instant message. If it's super urgent, go talk in person. And please have the courtesy to know which is which.
Whenever you expect an immediate response, you're saying "this is more important that whatever you're doing." Saying that when it's not true shows that you don't respect that person's time.
You are right about email not being the correct medium for instant response, and the 10 minutes SLA I mention in the blog post is provocative. But as much as I respect other people's time, I've had enough of people pretending to be doing something so clever / urgent / important that they can't allocate a few minutes here and then to read their emails.
If you don't want to be accountable for answering correspondance you're being sent, then don't communicate your email address.
As Jeff Atwod stated here : http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/09/the-multi-tasking-m...
There is no such thing as multitasking, so the average 1 min to read a mail is actually much more of a loss in terms of productivity, and more importantly comfort in doing what you do.