Comment by Teridee
2 years ago
At my company, we have daily standups and they throw off my whole morning. I only really work effectively when I am left to it and so have outlook/slack/messages turned off during periods where I am trying to focus - has got me in trouble with management a few times but I am not sure what else i can do.
The piece was a good read but its so personal to me that it doesn't really help sadly.
This exact complaint is very common among juniors I’ve mentored: A single meeting can destroy their productivity for hours following the meeting.
The most successful advice I’ve found is to find a way to reset after meetings without using your computer. For whatever reason, they’re emotionally drained after meetings. They get back to their computer and reach for Reddit or Twitter or something for a low effort snack, which then spirals into an hour or more of doomscrolling or distractions. This then translates into self disappointment at their low productivity, which further drives them to seek more cheap online entertainment and the cycle repeats.
So try something else. After your standup, go for a walk. Don’t use your phone. Do some stretches if you WFH or have a quiet place. Whatever you do, don’t fall into the rut that destroys your productivity.
I've tried all these tips and more. I've gone as far as taking a run after meetings. Nothing really works. I've come to conclude that the problem is the meeting itself, not the way you recuperate from it.
This is an under-rated comment. I had a similar revelation that eventually led to the conclusion that the computer is a crucial part of the distraction, and that many activities are best performed at least partly without it. Examples include:
- taking breaks
- thinking through a problem
Taking a walk is a good way to combine the two.
1 reply →
I don't have ADHD but I also get destroyed by meetings. I'm not sure if it's the fact that I was in a deep flow just before the meeting and it was near impossible to fully disconnect and actually be present or that I felt the meeting itself was a waste of time and the realisation I just clocked in 1hr of unproductive work. Often it's a combination of both and it can be quite distressing mentally.
Regardless I would never allow myself to browse anything not work related when I'm actually working (i.e. twitter, reddit) even when I'm "destroyed". I think cutting the unproductive crap out completely when working and trying to find more healthy coping mechanisms is far better.
I suspect the juniors are taking the meetings too seriously, and getting stressed during the meeting to the point that it's difficult to transition away after.
I've had this problem too. But now that I have more meetings, it's become much easier to transition back to focused work. It's only the occasional more-stressful-than-usual meeting that eats up my attention for hours afterwards.
I don't know what the solution is for most people. I guess this is why some people who transition manager --> IC can be so effective.
Standups kind of destroy my flow as well. HOWEVER:
- Everything destroys my flow anyway. So $#&#$% fragile.
- Standups are 100x less destructive to my flow than random unscheduled synchronous communication.
- For management and collaboration purposes, I recognize the need for some kind of synchronous communication for most projects/jobs.
- When working remotely I've found video standups help keep me feeling connected to humanity.
- Most teams I've been on are quite understanding if you choose to miss standup and offer an update via Slack instead because you're "in the zone."
So.... they suck, but they have upsides for me, and I accept them as kind of a "least-bad compromise solution."
This is because your brain is like ChatGPT: it's in a loop generating the next symbol based on the prior context. You need to load the context up, then you're ready to generate symbols. If there's a BS meeting, all that context is paged out and now you need to re-load it. Plus there are motivational aspects that make "loading context some AH manager just blew out my brain" more difficult.
That's a bummer. My team does standup at 3 PM (we're also bi-costal), but I let the teams chose their time, and this is what one particular team chose. Maybe talk to some of your teammates, and maybe you all decide you want an afternoon standup, so you can hit the ground running in the morning for a few hours, before the interruptions start.
This is extra useful if your mornings are left for you to continue working on any problem where you had the chance to "sleep on it".
I found that standups help crystallize social consequences in my VM prefrontal cortex so they help keep me honest.
Haha yes
Depends on where you are, but you can often get by, ignoring directives from management, if you are an active communicator and you’re completing assigned tasks.
It’s still better to state your problem. I like to use the “non-violent communication” as a template. Something like, “When we have the standup, I have a hard time refocusing on work afterwards. I’m concerned about the impact this has on my productivity. Can I send status updates via Slack?”
I’m not gonna pretend that this is a solution to your problem; I just want to sympathize and have a conversation about some of the strategies that we can use to fix problems with management that interfere with technical work.
I'm the opposite. I have ADHD and I function much better with meetings, talking it out with other programmers, and the cacophony of noise from an open office. Everything distracts me anyway, so I'd rather it be work stuff than my own thoughts about some awkward moment I had in 1995.
It's probably because this is not an ADHD issue, but just a difference amongst individuals. I have ADHD and meetings do not really seem to impact my functions other than increasing urgency because I have Total Time - Meeting Time left to do whatever task..
> has got me in trouble with management a few times but I am not sure what else i can do
Don't worry about it. I think this is good advice for any software engineer. Eventually you'll be senior enough or on a different team and it won't be a problem.
Agreed, I'd add to give your manager your phone number for emergencies and tell them you've allow-listed their number to ring when others can't. Then get back to flow
That sounds like a terrible idea to me, I'd never want to do that. If they like the work I do, management should learn to respect the way I do it.
3 replies →
daily check-in throws off my morning too. i have an hour from when i start til check-in, which is not enough time to get into deep work. looking forward to moving to a new timezone where i can take advantage of that timing with two hours before check-in.
WFH encourages scheduled meetings. It's a nightmare. I'd much rather just get an interruption out of the blue than have someone schedule a meeting to talk to me, because in the run-up to the meeting I won't try to start anything (what's the point if I've got a pending interruption?) At least my standups are first thing in the morning.
I don't understand it. My company is fully remote but they are absolutely horrendous at async comms. I was trying to walk someone through adding a docker build process to their CI and.... he just couldn't communicate/understand it through slack and he wanted to schedule a meeting. Great, now instead of being able to respond while working on other things I have to cut out an entire hour of my day just for you.
Thanks.
Beyond that I refuse to do daily standups. I'll quit a company if they won't let me do async or communicate through slack. I'm not logging in and the start of my day being a meeting every single day. Absolutely not. I've been there before.
9 replies →
After 15+ years of exploring my own ADHD and learning about others' experiences, I'm still constantly wowed by how differently we all react to this stuff.
For me, out-of-the-blue interruptions are a worst case scenario for my ADHD. It's very hard for me to get into the "flow" if I know that I might be interrupted at any moment. I prefer scheduled meetings as a less-evil alternative.
But many many feel similarly to you.
2 replies →
we changed our standups to right after lunch and this has helped for everyone