Single Core Brain

Do you often wonder why most of your good ideas come to you on the pot? Or in the shower? Or in some other quiet place when you can think about just one thing?

Your mind can only handle a certain number of things at once. It is like a single-core CPU. When you have too much on your mind, you cannot work well. Try to eliminate unnecessary distractions, and only work on one task at a time.

We sometimes believe, especially in a computer world so rapidly evolving in a parallel direction, that we are just like the machines. “Of course I can run five remote sessions at one time! Of course I can focus on the deliciousness of my lunch and read this book on server administration at the same time! Can’t everybody? It’s just clicking this button and then waiting five minutes. I’ll just sneak in something else while I’m waiting.”

It may give you an adrenaline rush to have all this information thrown at your brain, but it is extremely stressful and more ineffective than you would like to think. Those who can handle it wonder why they are so fatigued - and those who can’t have long since become so unbalanced that they have been culled from the workforce.

People matter. You need to do the best job you can for them, but also for your own conscience. This means one thing at a time.

Unnecessary Communication

One of the first things to eliminate should be frivolous and constant communication.

Let me ask you if this sounds familiar:

You arrive in the morning to the office, refreshed and feeling great. You check your email, and there are five new tickets added today and several emails of various priorities.

Several are issues labeled URGENT, either with a priority flag of some kind or by actually saying URGENT in the title. One of these is actually urgent, but it takes you ten minutes to sort through them. You go to fix the URGENT issue.

While you are on the way there, another URGENT issue pops up on your phone email - you read it, and you are so distracted by it that you cannot fix the issue you were on your way to fix in any way except for a quick, 5-minute duct tape one. You go off to fix the second issue, more tickets and emails come in, and every time you must stop what you are doing and respond.

At the end of the day you are tired, cranky, and overcaffeinated to keep yourself going. Finally, one of your 5-minute fixes blows up in your face, and you briefly wonder why you have stayed in this job that you hate for so long.

There are several problems in this story - abuse of URGENT by your coworkers, quick fixes - but the one I’d like to focus on here is the importance of that ball and chain, your email, in ensuring you will have a crappy day. Every time that you wanted to do a good job, or had the right energy and intention, you were distracted by what seemed to be the next burning issue. This way of work will leave you a broken, unsatisfied person.

I have been there, and here are my recommendations:

Do not keep your email open at all times. Do not put your work email on your phone.

If you are a one man-shop, this is easier said than done. One way I have found for lone wolves is to schedule work in 30 minute or hour-long increments, in-between which you read incoming email and sort it by priority, allowing only the most urgent matters to interrupt your plan for the day’s work.

If you have a team, or at least a pair, split responsibilities so that one of you can deal with communication, while the other maintains focus. You may find that stopping these frequent and jarring interruptions eliminates the need for the interruptions altogether!

Establish a list of people who are allowed to interrupt you at any time. I suggest your spouse and children, and one or two superiors. Be clear with your superiors that they call only when everything else must be dropped. It takes courage, but you must be firm with them if they start calling about non-important issues.

You may say that this sounds extreme. One should focus on being as responsive to users, superiors, and clients in general as possible.

But keep in mind that it’s your own happiness you’re draining if you take that principle to an extreme. If you think can do good work with your phone blinging in your pocket every five minutes, or your email client flashing constantly in the background, then you are either decieving yourself, or you could do even better work without that distraction.

Furthermore, you are being paid to focus on your client’s work, not to write back to your buddies about poker night on Tuesday. Sure, everybody might be doing it, and I am guilty of it myself, but ultimately what it says is that you do not care. Do not blame others when they stop caring too. They are only following your example.

A solution I have worked out with my employer is that I am allowed to go downstairs once during the day and take and make personal calls on this break. I do not bill for this time. The rest of the day my phone is on silent. Do not be afraid to ask for this. IT people are important enough that you will generally get this time. Your employer will appreciate your honesty, and you can go back to work with a clearer mind once you have returned calls.

Baggage

On top of our desire to flood our brains with information, we do not enter the workplace with clear minds, most of the time. We each bring our own baggage with us, and it is a heavy weight. Like most of what distracts us, at the core it is so much emotional garbage that we have been fed by people we trust or want to like us.

You must discard it, if you are to work well.

I do this by spending some quiet time, with just myself, before I go into work. Sometimes this is at home before the day has begun, and sometimes this is just before leaving the car at the parking garage.

I meditate - which is a word that evokes incense and humming, but in my view it requires nothing more than a quiet, private place, and a few minutes. I am a beginner, so I focus just on taking deep breaths, and the feeling of my body as it fills with life-giving air. My mind of course wanders, but eventually I corral it for a few moments. And in those few moments, a weight is lifted.

You will need to find what kind of meditation or other quiet time works for you. Playing or listening to calming music is another good option. Stretches work for some.

Know that it won’t always work. But I have not yet found that it didn’t help, at least a little.