No, really!

Follow my logic here.

You know when you’re at your desk and you’re deep in the middle of hacking on something and someone comes up behind you and wants your attention? And you break off, turn around, and say “what?” And then they take half a step back and cringe a little bit, apologising profusely.

And so they should. A state of flow is essential to programming, and hard to regain once you’ve been interrupted. And when you come crashing out of one, it’s almost impossible not to be a bit abrupt.

Worse yet, if you can never get into the flow, you’ll never get any work done, you’ll start to go nuts, and you’ll probably start biting limbs off anyone who taps you on the shoulder.

Last week my big boss mentioned to me that that’s why she works from home two days a week. She knows that on Tuesdays and Thursdays she can manage and filter her interruptions and get shit done. That means that on the other days, when people keep coming up to her with interruptions, she can face them with at least some degree of equanimity and politeness.

I’ve always thought of telecommuting as a better way to concentrate, but I hadn’t thought of it as a politeness-enhancer before. Since I’ve just had my performance review (”Kirrily, you tend to get a bit grumpy at times and you don’t really hide it well.”) I’m wondering whether it could help me that way, too.