Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Watch Your Productivity Tank

So it's been almost two weeks since moving to the new digs and the first week, understandably, was getting used to the place. So some dip in productivity was expected. This week has been almost worse. I can't seem to get more than 2 contiguous hours at my computer to do anything. And that's not enough time to get into any sort of coding groove. Basically my entire morning is wasted with bullshit. Let's analyze the typical day:

Arrive around 8:30, put my crap away, dock my laptop (taking that home every night is a bitch, let me tell you), get some water and check some email.

9:00 am morning standup. I'll confess that most times I don't go any more. Instead I fire up Eclipse and delude myself into thinking I'll actually write a line of code yet people arriving at staggered times means there's an hour of "good mornings" and catching up on what people did last night. I'm sure they'd really like to know that I spent a half hour in the mirror plucking my eyebrows.

10:00 am project standup. I'd point to this one as the biggest bust except that it butts right up against another time block...

10:30 am personal time. This is getting annoying but since it piggy-backs on the boring 10 am standup-where-everyone-sits-down it's tolerable.

11:00 am - finally an opportunity to work. BUT WAIT! Lunch time is just around the corner. Don't bother getting engaged in productive work, catch up on emails that have come in since leaving my desk.

Lunchtime - anywhere from a half hour in the lunch room to an hour and a half out somewhere.

12:30ish pm - wow, a chance to actually work. I give it a go...

2:30 pm personal time again. This is the really really annoying one that sometimes doesn't happen until 3:00 because I don't want to break my flow. I'm doing the right thing for my daughter, so I keep at it.

3:00 pm finally time to work. Flow was lost, so I catch up on emails until I feel the desire to be productive seep back into me.

4:30/5:00 pm time to think about going home. Dad's home with the kids alone and freaks out if I'm too late. Daughter's hungry, you know.

So to summarize... two chances to get into a productive programming flow that last at most 2 hours each. And that's if I don't have any other scheduled meetings, usually around 11 or 2 or 3, just right to interrupt any chance of being at all productive.

I need to figure this one out.

2 comments:

sadboy001 said...

I'm running into the same issue. When the the large and small conferences rooms are finished, I plan to hide.

It takes you half an hour to pluck your eyebrows?

Anonymous said...

Please don't ever talk about 'personal time' and 'flow' at the same time.