I’m not in YC. I’ve been a happy user of RescueTime for almost ten years and they post interesting stats sometimes. It’s like how OKCupid articles get hundreds of upvotes, on a smaller scale.
It's less about the number of upvotes, but more about the rate. Not even product announcements from Apple/Google/Facebook et al. get tens of upvotes immediately after they are posted.
I honestly don’t know what’s normal. Back when I posted stuff that got upvotes, I’d expect to see 10 in the first hour on a successful submission. This was in 2011 so there may have more traffic now. Or it may have been brigades by fellow YC. Is that a normal pattern for workaday YC blogs? Some statistics would be helpful if anyone tracks vote rates by domain.
We looked at the votes and they seem legit, even though they're statistically unlikely. But we'd appreciate it if you emailed instead of posting in the thread.
I disagree. To me email and IM are in he category of "time wasters". Well thought out emails are good. But short one-liners without much thought are more likely to be time wasters. And then the volume of corporate emails not tied directly to work are also time wasters. The time we waste to get a clean inbox should be counted.
I mean, both do have their uses. IM can be great for live debugging. But most IM's do not fall into that category.
One of my previous managers was a stickler for prompt email responses (read in real-time). It was irksome. I’m very happy to see others recognizing the detriment of the passive aggressive behavior in the guise of productivity is in practice a way for poor managers to “excersise their will” on their reports. And ironically it leads to loss of productivity.
This jives with my experience. At least in large enterprises, they'd rather interrupt you constantly to gauge productivity than leave someone alone to work, even if the latter plan has better results. Consistent (even bad) output is better than inconsistent output, even if your average productivity is much higher.
RescueTime user here, so most likely my usage is part of this sample. It’s absolutely shocking to me how much time I spend on Slack and email. On a day I felt productive, it’s usually between 2h and 3h of software development, and about 2h of slack.
If you would ask me, I would have said 15-30 minutes. But it’s expected nowadays to be constantly available to answer questions.
Other than conditioning people that you’re not responding quickly, I don’t have a good solution for this. Especially when the alternative is that you’re being called all the time, which is even more distracting.
Culture is formed by repeated individual choices from above and below. Many people pushing back on unreasonable expectations is how expectations can be kept reasonable.
Always go newest to oldest, lest you find that the older ones that you're spending time on are no longer relevant and your time has been further wasted.
It's pretty much entirely a matter of cultural expectation. At one job I'd get criticized for being "unavailable" because I took more than an hour to answer emails. Another job polled everyone (in tech) to find out when we did and didn't want meetings, and ended up with no meeting mornings (because people preferred multiple mornings to a few full days.) Guess where I got more work done?
I cultivate the idea that you've got a 50/50 chance of successfully reaching me via email. There's 3 people whose emails go into a special folder I monitor regularly. Everyone else goes into the regular folders that gets skimmed once or twice a week. About once a day someone pings me on im to ask me to actually read an email they sent and then I do. It saves a ton of time.
I’ve always treated email more like a news feed than a to-do list. To me, stressing out over unread emails is like stressing out over “unread forum posts” or “unread news stories”. Does every email really deserve my attention?
I think we also have to be willing to push back. Answering emails provides a nice dopamine hit (check something off + people-pleasing), so it's both cultural and internal.
One of the ways I've been most successful blocking out time for focused work is booking accountability appointments on Focusmate (https://www.focusmate.com).
That reduces the amount of space in my schedule for distractions and emails to absorb.
Funny: When I forced people to call me by not being on IM, I got far fewer calls than I did IM's. And I doubt people were getting 5-20 letters per day every day.
The lower the barrier to communication, the more the communication. Phone presents a higher barrier.
>If you disrupt your flow to answer emails and that is not mandated by your manager, that is your fault. If you disrupt your flow to answer emails because your manager insists, then that is your managers fault.
I have worked, and know many who have, under managers who will keep flip flopping between the two as it suits them. They will berate you for wasting time on emails, but then they'll penalize you during reviews because customers/peers send in feedback that you are unavailable.
I try not to leave it unambiguous. I make sure I ask during interviews: If I check emails 3 times a day and am by default not on IM, is that a problem? I don't mind in-person or phone interruptions, because they are always far fewer. To give you an idea, I have a coworker who sits a few cubicles away from me, and to him it's a pain to drop by my cube when he has questions. Gives you an idea how low the barrier is to using IM whenever something pops in your head.
Someone pointed this out to me and now I can’t unsee it.
In places where they interrupt you constantly there is often a pattern of announcing insufficient snacks or food to feed the whole company are in the break room.
This conditions people to check their email immediately every time a new message arrives so they don’t miss out.
E-mail becomes a lot more manageable if you create a filter for every kind of automated message/mass-mailing you get. At least if you're not in a position where everyone and their mother needs something from you.
No b .. if 9 out of 10 people around me answers their email in 5 mins then there is a certain expectation. When you grow up and have a family to feed you will understand.
Inbox zero is not at all about answering every email in your inbox, it’s just about reading and deciding if you need to do something with the email. If yes, then you move it to another folder. If no, then archive or delete. It’s very helpful for productivity, so exactly the opposite of your point. You can choose to ignore the actionable ones, or only process your inbox at certain tones, etc...
I should've put "answering emails or inbox zero." Nobody answers all their emails, right? Well, maybe some people do...
If I don't do anything with an email, I just leave it in my inbox. Currently, I have over 17,000 emails in my personal, and over 8000 in my business inbox.
I blame the unspoken expectations that come with email. Email is, in my experience, a political problem rather than a productivity bug.
Requests for support on active bugs comes through email. Your manager will request features, or ask questions about your code and status, through email. Coworkers on different teams collaborate through email.
To not answer these emails immediately probably would not lead to readily apparent punishment, nor would my manager say “he insisted” I respond that quickly, but other coworkers who prioritize these active issues, are ultimately more visible, promote faster, and get bigger bonuses.
By choosing not to play the email game, in many cases, you won’t be punished, but you won’t be rewarded either.
You should be rewarded since your productivity on assigned tasks will theoretically be significantly higher than your coworkers who are prioritizing e-mail and being constantly interrupted.
If those coworkers are able to achieve the same level of productivity while also prioritizing and addressing active issues, then they are arguably more valuable and don't they deserve the larger bonus?
> You should be rewarded since your productivity on assigned tasks will theoretically be significantly higher than your coworkers who are prioritizing e-mail and being constantly interrupted.
Sure, but lots of things _should_ be that are not. The reality is that the appearance of productivity (for example, habitually timely replies to emails) will impact your promotion/compensation more than your actual worth in many, many organizations.
Nah, it's that your definition of productivity differs from your organization's. This frequently happens with a lot of other concepts too, like "quality", "maintainability" and "security."
Part of being employed is simply compromising with the organization on these things.
> Part of being employed is simply compromising with the organization on these things.
Since my definition is different from my employers, you say I should adopt their definition, and call this "compromise"? That's an interesting way to use that word.
> but other coworkers who prioritize these active issues, are ultimately more visible, promote faster, and get bigger bonuses.
That's an opportunity. Your company doesn't have a structured process for determining bonus sizes, but apparently hand them out half-blind on vague notions of visibility. This is a very "hackable" situation.
Since you're significantly more productive than your colleagues, you have some "wins" of an entirely different kind of substance than them, all you need to do is to figure out how to make your work and the business outcomes it enables a little more visible.
> Requests for support on active bugs comes through email. Your manager will request features, or ask questions about your code and status, through email. Coworkers on different teams collaborate through email.
I'd love if that was always the case. As it is, I see more and more people send those kinds of requests through Slack or other IMs. E-mail at least is searchable, storable forever and easy to forward around. Slack, not very much.
Yes, I've been bitten by it this week, which lead to me triggering a team-wide discussion that we no longer have any clue what's the actual work to be done on a particular feature, as all the updates of the requirements were made partially on the issue tracker, partially on videocalls, and partially on the IM between management and individual developers. Similarly, back when I was more involved in running a local Hackerspace, I very strongly pushed for the rule that nothing said on IRC is official, and the only binding decisions are those made on our mailing group.
I’m doing the same thing with Slack, too. I recently turned off slack notifications it’s great. Eventually I’ll notice the icon on my slack or email tab has a notification when I’m not actively doing something, and then I can respond.
>1) Before email I had more letters and phone calls
Way less than the number of work emails people get -- and mostly addressed to specific departments and roles. A mainframe developer in 1970 would not get 30 letters and phone calls per day.
>2) If you disrupt your flow to answer emails and that is not mandated by your manager, that is your fault.
You'd be surprised.
>3) If you disrupt your flow to answer emails because your manager insists, then that is your managers fault.
And it's funny the only issue talked here is emails.
I'm surrounded by people replying to their Slack/Whatsapp/Messenger/Instagram/Telegram messages all day, basically interrupting anything anytime they receive a notification on their phone.
The duration of uninterrupted productive time is probably more like 10 min than 1h 12 min for a lot of people.
What I will often do is batch email. Works. Until whatever it is reaches some critical point. Often nothing does.
SMS, or a call works then.
If those happen too much, I trigger a what is worth what discussion. Perhaps my point of focus needs to wait. And it can. No worries, but for the expectations associated with it will need to be managed along with that wait.
There is a cost to everything. Communicating that cost helps with this stuff. Can help very considerably.
More accurately: the manager isn't, strictly speaking, being "distracted" - the meetings and other such "interruptions" are a core part of their job.
This was something I never properly appreciated before becoming a consultant. As you become more and more responsible for managerial tasks - direction, product / technical vision, coordination, scheduling / estimates, recruiting / hiring / onboarding, "selling" the product internally / externally, developing robust processes around common tasks, etc. - you need to appreciate that communication is, properly wielded, an incredible time-saver.
Some of my most productive days have been ones where I didn't touch a line of code; instead, I helped clearly define the problem at hand, or helped onboard a fantastic new hire. These are the sorts of days that save you somewhere between weeks and years of time, depending on the importance of the problems / decisions involved.
Conversely, I find many engineers are limited in their careers by a blind focus on "productivity" - forgetting that it's often not about superhuman individual effort, but rather about sustained, intelligent, and proactive team effort. (Not to mention that "seat time", "working hours", etc. slowly become proxy metrics for "productivity", thus ensuring burnout, mistakes, and wasted effort.)
> Some of my most productive days have been ones where I didn't touch a line of code;
My most productive days ever were the ones where I drove over to another site to find out the problems they were having and then designed my tech around it. They weren't used to being consulted and helped. Their manager is now a big advocate for my changes, now I have a bigger budget and more staff. All from taking time out.
If nobody is forcing you to answer emails in real time, then this is completely your fault. Personally, I just check the email at the morning before I start working and 1 hour before I end my day. Works like a charm.
I check email when I arrive in the morning, before and after launch, and before leaving the workplace. Those are the moments I am "off the zone" anyway. It's a good balance for me and I never miss anything important.
Indeed. I will add to that, when I do allocate email time I answer carefully, don't fob people off and make sure everyone does get an answer. That is better customer service than a person who gives snap replies just to be fast
That just doesn't realistically work for most professions that rely on email. Your email just sounds like something personal that doesn't require any reasonable attention.
I recommend trying Google Inbox if you haven’t yet. It doesn’t interfere with Gmail, you can use them both. The batch archiving and pinning features are the big ones for me, but others like snoozing.
I check my email once or twice a day, and try to keep slack completely shut down for the majority of the middle of my day (I kinda treat it like a more engaged or rapid-response email). I’ve found success keeping certain chunks of time marked as busy on a shared calendar. I try to shift conversation away from email and slack into calls when it looks like a problem needs to be solved, and then go back to email to archive the findings. I commit to a 24 hour max turnaround on all communications outside of weekends and vacation. People have my phone number and so far it has not been abused to get around my expectations; there would be an immediate rebuke if that were to happen.
I can’t help but think that if people advocated more for what they need, and politely, respectfully, but firmly set out expectations for how they work, a lot of managers would get on board. As in, “this is the way it is, let’s find a way to make it work.” Those that do not should be quit as soon as possible; they’re less interested in managing, moreso in man-handling, and I just don’t have the time or energy to care about those politics.
This is probably why I work independently, granted I don’t work in HA environments. I also think this partially explains ageism: in general it’s just easier to control young new grads who have no comparative experience, especially when you throw huge salaries at them and make them believe they owe you everything for it.
Apparently I had some things to get off my chest :)
My personal policy is NO email on the phone and no Slack/group-chat alerts on the phone either. Anyone who matters has my number and can call or text me at any time. That puts the interrupt driven work of filtering out the 99% of non-emergency information on them, where it should be. The only exception to this is if I'm explicitly on call for something specific, but I try to minimize that time.
For email I always filter ALL automatically generated emails (JIRA updates, etc.) to a folder which I generally ignore. Then when I get to the computer to deal with mail I go through everything (from real people) at once a few times during the day. I leave nothing unread or unresponded to, even if it's letting them know it will be dealt with tomorrow.
Seems to keep everybody happy and productive, most importantly myself.
This was never true in any of the jobs I worked. You can mostly modify your email programs to be unannoying about notifications and if you really focus on a task you simply don't see the emails for 2-4 hours. I have also never received an email that required immediate reaction. So...
Mail servers should be required to queue emails for 12h before distributing them. Mail is not IM. Maybe I should write an RFC... Or use mixmaster as my SMTP server
An RFC would be interesting, but I am not sure it would be adopted. You might start with a gist on github with the configuration settings required to do this in postfix, qmail, sendmail, powermta, etc. It might help to give the page a shiny logo and a trendy name. If there is enough interest, perhaps even register a domain with a catchy name. What would be a good name for it?
If it's not my phone beeping, new slack notifications, it's outlook popping up with meeting reminders, it's the application focus being ripped away from me by something else, it's time to update some random software on my computer, phone is ringing, someone is at my desk, and LinkedIn letting me know someone I haven't talked to in 15 years got a new job. Also, email.
There are simple solutions for all of these things.
1) keep work email and personal email segregated by only using your work email for work related services. Also, don't prioritize personal email over doing actual work.
2) turn on do not disturb if you're heads down if you can't bring yourself to ignore notifications
3) let coworkers know when you're heads down so they don't call or stop by your desk so that they know why you aren't answering.
4) if possible, try to push back on meeting times that conflict with focus times
5) turn on automatic software updates or defer them
Many people here mention the culture as important factor, and suggest using other higher barrier communication means. Funny thing is that as a manager I am trying to push for emails instead of drop by’s in person, as emails at least give me the freedom to choose when to process them in batches (and leave a trace in my memory). And it seems that in my culture (Russia) personal drop by’s have the least barrier, immediately followed by the IMs, while Email has the highest barrier.
My method is to turn off my mail clients 'auto pull'/notification functionality and manually pull my mail.
I also don't use email on my phone.
Basically the idea is I'm reserving a chunk of time (I usually do first thing in the morning and at the end of the work day) to read and respond thoughtfully.
The biggest thing really is just turning off those notifications that by design are to distract you.
This won't work for everyone - specifically operations people, or folks who work in a environment where people use email effectively as chat or it's expected you reply quickly. Intelligent use of filters (only notify when the boss mails you) might be a solution.
I read this same story come up with chat constantly. Adapt/modify your tools to make them work for you.
Email doesn't actively break flow. It's up to you to respond to it or even to check it in the first place.
I find that I can switch between work and text communication very well. But any type of verbal communication will certainly break my flow. So I'm glad we have email and IRC instead of phone calls.
What exactly does the 1h 12min number represent? Is it the average longest uninterrupted period a worker has? The sum of multiple periods that meet some threshold? The phrasing sounds like the latter, but if so, what is the threshold for productive time that is uninterrupted?
103 comments
[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] threadSo there's still value in crappy submissions...
I mean, both do have their uses. IM can be great for live debugging. But most IM's do not fall into that category.
If I am heads down working on a problem I might look at email when I get in at 8:45 but not look at again until after lunch.
If you would ask me, I would have said 15-30 minutes. But it’s expected nowadays to be constantly available to answer questions.
Other than conditioning people that you’re not responding quickly, I don’t have a good solution for this. Especially when the alternative is that you’re being called all the time, which is even more distracting.
1) Before email I had more letters and phone calls
2) If you disrupt your flow to answer emails and that is not mandated by your manager, that is your fault.
3) If you disrupt your flow to answer emails because your manager insists, then that is your managers fault.
I personally don't even notice emails arrive while I am in the zone. I answer them in batches once free.
One of the ways I've been most successful blocking out time for focused work is booking accountability appointments on Focusmate (https://www.focusmate.com).
That reduces the amount of space in my schedule for distractions and emails to absorb.
Funny: When I forced people to call me by not being on IM, I got far fewer calls than I did IM's. And I doubt people were getting 5-20 letters per day every day.
The lower the barrier to communication, the more the communication. Phone presents a higher barrier.
>If you disrupt your flow to answer emails and that is not mandated by your manager, that is your fault. If you disrupt your flow to answer emails because your manager insists, then that is your managers fault.
I have worked, and know many who have, under managers who will keep flip flopping between the two as it suits them. They will berate you for wasting time on emails, but then they'll penalize you during reviews because customers/peers send in feedback that you are unavailable.
I try not to leave it unambiguous. I make sure I ask during interviews: If I check emails 3 times a day and am by default not on IM, is that a problem? I don't mind in-person or phone interruptions, because they are always far fewer. To give you an idea, I have a coworker who sits a few cubicles away from me, and to him it's a pain to drop by my cube when he has questions. Gives you an idea how low the barrier is to using IM whenever something pops in your head.
In places where they interrupt you constantly there is often a pattern of announcing insufficient snacks or food to feed the whole company are in the break room.
This conditions people to check their email immediately every time a new message arrives so they don’t miss out.
If you have OCD about answering your email, inbox zero, etc, it's your own fault.
If I don't do anything with an email, I just leave it in my inbox. Currently, I have over 17,000 emails in my personal, and over 8000 in my business inbox.
I blame the unspoken expectations that come with email. Email is, in my experience, a political problem rather than a productivity bug.
Requests for support on active bugs comes through email. Your manager will request features, or ask questions about your code and status, through email. Coworkers on different teams collaborate through email.
To not answer these emails immediately probably would not lead to readily apparent punishment, nor would my manager say “he insisted” I respond that quickly, but other coworkers who prioritize these active issues, are ultimately more visible, promote faster, and get bigger bonuses.
By choosing not to play the email game, in many cases, you won’t be punished, but you won’t be rewarded either.
If those coworkers are able to achieve the same level of productivity while also prioritizing and addressing active issues, then they are arguably more valuable and don't they deserve the larger bonus?
Sure, but lots of things _should_ be that are not. The reality is that the appearance of productivity (for example, habitually timely replies to emails) will impact your promotion/compensation more than your actual worth in many, many organizations.
Part of being employed is simply compromising with the organization on these things.
Since my definition is different from my employers, you say I should adopt their definition, and call this "compromise"? That's an interesting way to use that word.
That's an opportunity. Your company doesn't have a structured process for determining bonus sizes, but apparently hand them out half-blind on vague notions of visibility. This is a very "hackable" situation.
Since you're significantly more productive than your colleagues, you have some "wins" of an entirely different kind of substance than them, all you need to do is to figure out how to make your work and the business outcomes it enables a little more visible.
I'd love if that was always the case. As it is, I see more and more people send those kinds of requests through Slack or other IMs. E-mail at least is searchable, storable forever and easy to forward around. Slack, not very much.
Yes, I've been bitten by it this week, which lead to me triggering a team-wide discussion that we no longer have any clue what's the actual work to be done on a particular feature, as all the updates of the requirements were made partially on the issue tracker, partially on videocalls, and partially on the IM between management and individual developers. Similarly, back when I was more involved in running a local Hackerspace, I very strongly pushed for the rule that nothing said on IRC is official, and the only binding decisions are those made on our mailing group.
Way less than the number of work emails people get -- and mostly addressed to specific departments and roles. A mainframe developer in 1970 would not get 30 letters and phone calls per day.
>2) If you disrupt your flow to answer emails and that is not mandated by your manager, that is your fault.
You'd be surprised.
>3) If you disrupt your flow to answer emails because your manager insists, then that is your managers fault.
Which, even though a fact, is no relief.
And it's funny the only issue talked here is emails.
I'm surrounded by people replying to their Slack/Whatsapp/Messenger/Instagram/Telegram messages all day, basically interrupting anything anytime they receive a notification on their phone.
The duration of uninterrupted productive time is probably more like 10 min than 1h 12 min for a lot of people.
What I will often do is batch email. Works. Until whatever it is reaches some critical point. Often nothing does.
SMS, or a call works then.
If those happen too much, I trigger a what is worth what discussion. Perhaps my point of focus needs to wait. And it can. No worries, but for the expectations associated with it will need to be managed along with that wait.
There is a cost to everything. Communicating that cost helps with this stuff. Can help very considerably.
http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html
...to be more instructive as it identifies a critical division between two types of "knowledge workers" that the above article overlooks.
A "maker" by the very definition needs to be productive all day :)
A "manager" can be productive even while distracted, and perhaps that's a natural state to be for managers.
This was something I never properly appreciated before becoming a consultant. As you become more and more responsible for managerial tasks - direction, product / technical vision, coordination, scheduling / estimates, recruiting / hiring / onboarding, "selling" the product internally / externally, developing robust processes around common tasks, etc. - you need to appreciate that communication is, properly wielded, an incredible time-saver.
Some of my most productive days have been ones where I didn't touch a line of code; instead, I helped clearly define the problem at hand, or helped onboard a fantastic new hire. These are the sorts of days that save you somewhere between weeks and years of time, depending on the importance of the problems / decisions involved.
Conversely, I find many engineers are limited in their careers by a blind focus on "productivity" - forgetting that it's often not about superhuman individual effort, but rather about sustained, intelligent, and proactive team effort. (Not to mention that "seat time", "working hours", etc. slowly become proxy metrics for "productivity", thus ensuring burnout, mistakes, and wasted effort.)
My most productive days ever were the ones where I drove over to another site to find out the problems they were having and then designed my tech around it. They weren't used to being consulted and helped. Their manager is now a big advocate for my changes, now I have a bigger budget and more staff. All from taking time out.
I can’t help but think that if people advocated more for what they need, and politely, respectfully, but firmly set out expectations for how they work, a lot of managers would get on board. As in, “this is the way it is, let’s find a way to make it work.” Those that do not should be quit as soon as possible; they’re less interested in managing, moreso in man-handling, and I just don’t have the time or energy to care about those politics.
This is probably why I work independently, granted I don’t work in HA environments. I also think this partially explains ageism: in general it’s just easier to control young new grads who have no comparative experience, especially when you throw huge salaries at them and make them believe they owe you everything for it.
Apparently I had some things to get off my chest :)
For email I always filter ALL automatically generated emails (JIRA updates, etc.) to a folder which I generally ignore. Then when I get to the computer to deal with mail I go through everything (from real people) at once a few times during the day. I leave nothing unread or unresponded to, even if it's letting them know it will be dealt with tomorrow.
Seems to keep everybody happy and productive, most importantly myself.
1) keep work email and personal email segregated by only using your work email for work related services. Also, don't prioritize personal email over doing actual work.
2) turn on do not disturb if you're heads down if you can't bring yourself to ignore notifications
3) let coworkers know when you're heads down so they don't call or stop by your desk so that they know why you aren't answering.
4) if possible, try to push back on meeting times that conflict with focus times
5) turn on automatic software updates or defer them
http://calnewport.com/blog/2016/03/22/the-case-against-email...
I also don't use email on my phone.
Basically the idea is I'm reserving a chunk of time (I usually do first thing in the morning and at the end of the work day) to read and respond thoughtfully.
The biggest thing really is just turning off those notifications that by design are to distract you.
This won't work for everyone - specifically operations people, or folks who work in a environment where people use email effectively as chat or it's expected you reply quickly. Intelligent use of filters (only notify when the boss mails you) might be a solution.
I read this same story come up with chat constantly. Adapt/modify your tools to make them work for you.
I find that I can switch between work and text communication very well. But any type of verbal communication will certainly break my flow. So I'm glad we have email and IRC instead of phone calls.