“My train of thought derailed. There were no survivors.” (Unknown) In a world full of distractions it is easy to become derailed. But if you develop the habit of keeping notes while working, you may not run completely off track.
Focus and Interruptions
I work as a programmer during the day. Programming is highly concentrated work, for the most part. I spend my days either taking apart other people’s code to understand it (and change it), or I’m creating code based on specifications. Either way it requires a lot of concentration.
Needless I don’t (can’t) keep up this level of concentration all day. My focus sessions are interspersed with mundane low-focus tasks and meetings.
But when I am in that focus zone, interruptions are perilous. A single interruption can either leave me blinking at the person without comprehension, or derail my train of thought. Dozens of times I have watched my train of thought fade away into the distance as someone demands my attention.
A single word, and the ideas of a morning’s worth of thinking are gone.
It’s frustrating, to say the least. Both to be interrupted, and to be so deep into a task that interruptions have this much of an impact.
Writing Notes
I have found I can mostly mitigate this by writing notes while working. They are completely cryptic and gibberish to anyone but myself, but have allowed me to slip back into the train of thought just with a re-reading.
I’ve had to train myself to do this. It’s not something that comes naturally.
My notes for my last working session read:
Dims –> XLS –> dim; dim_archive (source ISM2M) released flag; add to pull – Chk EXIST!
Two days later I can look at this and tell you exactly what I was thinking.
Building the Habit
I’ve had to rely on everything I have learned about productivity to make this happen. I use timers and alarms to build up the habit of writing things down. I use background sounds to help keep me from being distracted. I have my scratch pad to deal with internal interruptions.
Keeping things in my head is dangerous. Getting them out, and down on paper, gives me the chance to make the task more concrete than if just stored in gray matter.
