Comments on WriteBetterBits.com - Jim Fiorato's Blog: Flow - Building Lean Teams

As you point out, "Jim doesn't want to be 50% prod...

2008-11-30T18:32:05.537-08:00

As you point out, "Jim doesn't want to be 50% productive." Along those lines, if you read some of the literature about flow, like Finding Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, people report feeling happier after engaging in flow activities. So, if you want your developers to be happy, let them have their flow time.

The flow literature also points out that you increase flow when you have relatively short feedback cycles in your activity, so TDD can help with flow, too.

For things like IM, RSS, Twitter and news, I think...

2008-11-28T12:14:03.499-08:00

For things like IM, RSS, Twitter and news, I think that's all about discipline. For me, it's a matter of keeping track on my own of productive hours and making sure that it's acceptable, and I feel good and accomplished at the end of the day.

The _only_ way to control those things is having the discipline to turn them off. Every person has their own levels of discipline. Some can leave those on all day, and be just fine. You need to determine the best way for you to be disciplined about it.

As a leader of a team, you need to trust that the great developers that you hired have the discipline to control these distractions, and be prepared to follow up with them if they're doing a poor job of it. But keep in mind, that RSS, Twitter and News can be really productive things to do, so you need to be sensitive to when they are distractions to higher priority work.

As far as tasks go, or your back log of to-do's; Those fall in a different bucket in my opinion. That's a prioritization thing. Thanks to a recommendation from a great friend (wink, wink), I've found that David Allen's Getting Things Done to be a great way to prioritize, and become immersed in each of those todo's as you are completing them. Allen's approach to making sure that your to-do's aren't a distraction work very well for me. If you haven't read that, you should.

All these things are distractions and have huge potential for interrupting the flow. But I feel like these have less to do with the work environment you as a leader creates, and more to do with the individual's work habits. However, a good leader should be privy to when individuals are having trouble managing these distractions, and be be prepared to provide tips on how to be better at it.

Very true. I would love to hear more of your thou...

2008-11-28T08:11:47.560-08:00

Very true. I would love to hear more of your thoughts on how to protect your flow from other disruptions, like twitter, news on your igoogle homepage, email, im, rss feeds, those post-it notes of late "to-dos" on your desk, etc. Do you really turn these off during the day? Do you not find them that distracting? Is this less interupting to your flow? I know I struggle with it.