Published February 14th, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Productive?
Jeremy discusses productivity in terms of his input to output ratio. I’ve been meaning to write something about this lately. I find I have periods of “flow” where I get a decent run on a project and can stay reasonably well in the groove. At other times I seem to get stuck in a “disconnect” where I’ve got a project I need to do (and usually the dealine has long since passed), but there seem to be a continuous stream of interruptions.
This morning was a classic disconnect period. I’m about a month late on some internal server work that needs to be done, but I spent all day manually removing viruses/rootkits from two different customer NT boxes, because a) we don’t have any support people in the office today and b) the customers in question didn’t bother to keep his Antivirus software up to date.
Its impossible (in my experioence) to go from a period of flow on one project, straight onto the next. Theres always a period of disconnect between projects as we try to polish off “a few little problems”.
Disconnect can be either a series of interruptions, or just a total lack of motivation. I’ve had both recently. A disconnect period can last anywhere from day to a month or more sometimes. Flow is usually very fragile and can turn into total disconnect after a single interruption.