[HN Gopher] Focus Time Saved Me from Burnout
___________________________________________________________________
Focus Time Saved Me from Burnout
Author : frankgrecojr
Score : 110 points
Date : 2022-08-12 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (frankgrecojr.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (frankgrecojr.medium.com)
| cristianpascu wrote:
| I quit my job instead. If the schedule is randomly or
| unpredictably fragmented by meetings, being expected to also
| write high quality code is quite simply inhumane. It's not you
| that should find tricks to save you from a burnout. It very much
| looks and sounds and it surely is a mess of a management.
| cryptozeus wrote:
| The one thing - great book
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| Yes! I love that book! It's done wonders to my productivity.
| reidjs wrote:
| I understand and agree that it's best to focus on the highest
| priority thing first. But how do you identify what the "one
| thing" is at any given time?
| Androider wrote:
| Usually it's pretty clear, e.g. you can say to yourself in
| the morning "If I complete X today, it will have been a
| good day". Yet somehow at the end of the day you will have
| spent all your time doing everything but X.
| vira28 wrote:
| How's it different from deepwork?
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| They could share similar ideas! I put it on my reading list
| :)
| madrox wrote:
| Everyone at my new job uses Clockwise, which will rearrange
| calendars across the org to maximize focus time for everyone
| (also address double-booking). This is my first time in 10 years
| since becoming an EM where I don't have to spend time managing my
| calendar every day to get focus time. The jump to my productivity
| is huge. Can't recommend focus time (and Clockwise!) enough. If I
| could buy stock in them, I would.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| Clockwise is amazing! The issue i've had is getting everyone on
| my team to use it.
| CSDude wrote:
| I hate it rearranges a meeting that I know it'd happen in a few
| hours, I plan my day accordingly, boom it's changed. That's
| frustrating. I worked at a big corp and people loved fully
| packed calendars with meetings. Wondered when they'd get any
| actual work done alone, without a meeting. My calendar was
| mostly empty except meetings that were crucial. Even though I
| was in a Principal role, new grads had more packed calendars
| than me. As a result, Clockwise moved most of my meetings.
| anyfoo wrote:
| This "when do you get actual work done" bugs me sometimes.
| It's true to some extent, but sometimes a bunch of engineers
| in a room together get a _lot_ of work done. Sometimes even a
| lot more than if they each did their own thing, come
| together, and discover that it doesn 't fit together.
|
| Not all meetings are like that, yeah, and there's a limit,
| but meetings not being "actual work" is not generally true.
|
| Also, since pandemic times, I've had it a few times that
| people were circling via chat or email on a topic forever,
| and a quick 15 minute online meeting (independently of
| whether the camera was on) resolved it immediately.
| CSDude wrote:
| I'm not saying you cannot do any work in meetings. But if
| the only empty space in your calendar is lunch time and 2
| or 4 hours for a whole week, as a Software Engineer, there
| won't be much time to do get, I repeat, actual work, which
| is mostly programming & debugging done, at least for most
| junior level positions. When an enterprise gets large
| enough, even just regularly checking in with projects,
| program managers, executives, designers, product managers
| was %50 of my busy time for a week. And it was exhausting.
| Not everywhere would be like that, but that caused a
| serious burnout with me and I've quit.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Ok I understand what you mean now. If there are _so_ many
| meetings, then all the "meaningful" meetings become
| meaningless, if there's no time to actually execute what
| was discussed.
| laserlight wrote:
| > Wondered when they'd get any actual work done alone,
| without a meeting.
|
| Some people are not able to get work done alone and therefore
| drag others into meetings for the minutiae. Even worse, some
| people are not able to tolerate being alone, so they take
| every opportunity to organize meetings.
| joegahona wrote:
| > For those who use Google calendar as I do, a recently
| introduced feature allows you to set up focus blocks with the
| option to decline conflicting events.
|
| I'd recommend against announcing that the meeting is being
| declined because of a focus block. Someone will read that as
| "free time" and demand you meet anyway. Put 3-4 fake "meetings"
| on your calendar during the time you need, so it just looks like
| you're booked. If your company requires you keep your calendar
| public, call the meetings something gross like "vendor review" or
| "Finance and Engineering Integration: Overlapping Initiatives"
| and nobody will question it.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Where I work only the availability is public, the actual
| meetings aren't. It's pretty common to block out time for
| "Focus" and similar (I saw it a lot when folks have their
| calendar open, in the old office days or when sharing the
| screen) and, as far as I can tell, very well accepted.
|
| Possible that people would schedule meetings over "Focus" time,
| but since they can't see calendar details, they don't. If they
| did, I'd push back. (It's easy to see: "This thing is due on
| Monday, and that's the time I have to work on it. If you don't
| like that, take it up to my manager." But I don't remember it
| being an issue.)
|
| I'm not sure if my boss can see my meetings, I never really
| wondered too much, but if he can he seems to be respecting
| intervals I block out with a "Focus" meeting very well, so no
| issue.
|
| Your thing seems like lying to me...
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| In my experience, it's very common for people to not have any
| regard for existing meetings and schedule right over them.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I edited just before you replied, here's the relevant
| paragraph again:
|
| > Possible that people would schedule meetings over "Focus"
| time, but since they can't see calendar details, they
| don't. If they did, I'd push back. (It's easy to see: "This
| thing is due on Monday, and that's the time I have to work
| on it. If you don't like that, take it up to my manager."
| but more diplomatically. But I don't remember it being an
| issue.)
|
| However, you're saying people straight scheduling over
| other people's meetings _generally_? The only times where
| that happens to me are either:
|
| 1) I'm really non-essential, and more invited as a courtesy
| in case I want to join, or
|
| 2) this is really, _really_ important, and we will work
| together to sort the scheduling out, including manager if
| necessary.
|
| Otherwise, what else can they expect than me saying "sorry,
| have another meeting already"?
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| 3) People add so many people to the meetings that it's
| never ever possible to find the same free block and so a
| certain percentage of people get scheduled over.
| joegahona wrote:
| If others can't see calendar details, then I would use the
| "Focus Time" feature.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| That definitely is an alternative and is something I used to
| do. The reason I like the focus time feature (if implemented
| the way I suggest) is that the goal is to instill this culture
| across the team so that it's more of a team/company culture and
| less of something that just you do.
|
| I'd love to hear people's experience trying this out!
| ffreire wrote:
| I do this regularly, and to the extent that I'm able I put
| the task in the description so that my team knows more or
| less what I'm prioritizing. You can also create recurring OOO
| and Focus Time events now, so I have lunch blocked off and
| 30min at the end of each day to prepare for the next. It's a
| secret super power to staying on top of things and creating
| rituals that help me sign off at a reasonable hour instead of
| sliding into unproductively and less time with family.
|
| Really, my only gripe with Google Calendar at this point is
| that you can't define custom colors nor label those colors. I
| use that feature heavily now to give me an at a glance view
| of which projects or activities my time is going to on a
| weekly basis. The colors don't have consistency across months
| though because I have to re-use colors for different
| purposes.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| The ability to create a recurring Focus Time event has been
| game changing!
| rvdmei wrote:
| I can highly recommended not adding a reason at all for
| rejecting a meeting request. If I feel I do not need to attend
| at all I will let the organizer know. If the time conflicts
| with my schedule / plans I will simply ask for a reschedule.
| (And no, I'm not the CEO).
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| Agreed. If you're an actual stakeholder whose input is
| required, the organizer will reschedule to ensure you're able
| to make it.
| kenjackson wrote:
| I also don't accept many meetings. I leave them as tentative,
| with the belief that my meeting time is based on priority,
| not first-come-first-served. This gives me flexibility to
| attend the meetings that I really do view as most important.
| guntars wrote:
| Yeah, I don't see why we need to play games - just say no.
| It's a normal human instinct to want to please others and say
| yes, but it can be short sighted as you will need to tell
| them that, no, you didn't finish that strategic project
| because you went to a lot of meetings..
| ppppwwwww wrote:
| This is an oddly weird thing to be dishonest about. If anyone
| has an issue with me blocking some focus time to get things
| done, I'm happy for them to take it up with my boss, challenge
| my priorities and see what happens then.
| myownpetard wrote:
| I think giving fake reasons, which is just systematizing and
| publishing dishonesty in the form of your calendar, is a bad
| strategy long term and could potentially have a serious impact
| on your reputation.
|
| A generic, nondescript "Do Not Book" should be sufficient. If
| you feel the need to make up fake meeting titles then there is
| some broader issue that should be addressed.
| joegahona wrote:
| I'm being hyperbolic and trying to add levity. My broader
| point is that I've experienced -- first-hand -- that some
| people don't respect "Focus Time" as a legit reason to miss
| _their_ meeting and inconvenience them to find a different
| time. They might not schedule over it, but they'll slack and
| ask you if you can join anyway, creating more speed bumps and
| awkward conversations. People generally don't slack you to
| ask "Can you miss your Vendor Review to come to our Marketing
| Brainstorm?" You don't have to go full-on deceptive and make
| up fake meeting names -- that was a bit of humor -- someone
| else on this thread suggested "Unavailable," which is
| probably equally effective.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| I agree. However, if you're going to do Do Not Book, I'd say
| auto-decline in better. As I say in the blog, I usually see
| the decline and reach out to book a better time.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Yeah, if I want to join it's easy to say "sorry can't make
| it there, but I'd like to join, can we reschedule?"
|
| Sure that's annoying to the organizer, but everyone
| understands that finding a time where everyone is available
| is annoying and hard. If it's really hard to reschedule,
| you'll find _some_ solution. "Sorry I can't, how about xyz
| attends and you get together after?"
|
| It's really not that hard.
| garrickvanburen wrote:
| "Unavailable" has been sufficient for me.
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| Use this one a lot. Really helps with having a disability. No
| one needs to know why I'm out.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't the fact that nobody else is scheduled to attend those
| meetings an obvious signal of fake meeting?
| joegahona wrote:
| In Outlook you can "invite" a bunch of people but save the
| meeting as a draft. It will block out the time on your
| calendar but not send the meeting invite out. For meeting
| location, just put "TBD."
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| Collaborate with like-minded coworkers.
| anyfoo wrote:
| Reading these threads, I'm either blessed working at a non-
| dysfunctional place, or people are exaggerating, or people
| are reading things into meeting invitations that aren't
| there? (For example, being invited to a meeting that you
| don't have to be there, but as a courtesy if you want to be
| there, so it did not take your scheduling into account.)
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| I've worked in places like this. You have to be careful
| what you push back on and how you do it. It requires a
| certain amount of political awareness and social skills.
|
| Now that I have over ten years of experience and forced
| myself to learn how to handle conflict instead of
| avoiding it, this isn't difficult for me.
|
| Younger me didn't know what to do.
| Forge36 wrote:
| I've yet to encounter this. I do get "Is it ok if I schedule
| over your focus time?" on occasion.
|
| Being honest about it and up front with people creates an
| understanding. Some even ask how it's setup because they also
| want focus time.
|
| Correcting misunderstandings isn't a huge burden, and if
| someone is DEMANDING you meet: There's a good chance it's
| actually important. Declining because "this can wait a day"
| helps set expectations that "I need to focus on my assigned
| work first".
|
| Even better: let your manager know you're doing this, if they
| have your back. They can respond to
| complaints/inappropriateness of people complaining about you
| doing the work they want you to work on.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| I like your last point. It makes me think of the book,
| Radical Candor!
| bachmeier wrote:
| > If your company requires you keep your calendar public
|
| Find a different company. I have no idea how anyone could work
| in such circumstances. You're held responsible for getting your
| work done but others can schedule your time.
| jobu wrote:
| The senior architects and principle engineers at my company have
| started scheduling focus hours as well as office hours for people
| to drop in and ask questions.
|
| They were getting stretched pretty thin by being invited to
| design meetings for multiple different teams, and the office
| hours have been a great way to combat that burden. People drop
| in, ask some design questions and leave. Since there are usually
| multiple people waiting to ask questions it keeps the discussion
| short and focused instead of filling up a 30-60 minute meeting
| just because that's what was scheduled. It also lets the
| architect decide to schedule a focused design session if it's
| needed instead of letting others fill their calendars.
| sharadov wrote:
| Agree, office times were a lifesaver in my last job.
| aeruder wrote:
| Sad, but I would occasionally use my "unlimited" PTO to take a
| week off and just get work done. Most of the pain started when we
| transitioned to a sprints from a lack of process. In theory, this
| was to make things faster (which actually most of the reasons we
| were so slow was unrelated to process). My week suddenly went
| from getting things done to:
|
| - 60 minute meetings fighting over whether tickets were 3 or 5
| story points
|
| - turning our entire process into some kind of perverse waterfall
| method where stories involved days of prep work defining every
| step so that we could accurately estimate story points (I thought
| this was the opposite of agile?)
|
| - offers to "help" from project managers and managers when things
| took longer than expected - this help took the form of additional
| meetings.
|
| - absolute inflexibility over my noon standup. I could be in the
| deepest of zones and people would literally slack repeatedly
| until you showed up for that thing
|
| Cue the "oh you were doing <X> wrong!!" people. Modern software
| practice sucks. Its fine for small bugs and very well defined
| tasks. Outside of that it is just interruptions, interruptions,
| interruptions.
|
| I also ended up just quitting. New place is better, but still in
| many ways the same. At least here I don't have comparisons made
| to my old days of the pre-software-process productivity.
| markandrewj wrote:
| I am not saying you are doing <X> wrong, but I am always amazed
| how many mangers want to do Agile, and at the same time don't
| understand that means not doing waterfall. They are completely
| different methodologies.
|
| https://www.atlassian.com/agile/project-management/project-m...
|
| Also your scrum master should be sheltering you from some of
| the distractions you are describing.
| humanwhosits wrote:
| I've never worked anywhere with story-points, but reading about
| it now sounds like a metric that will be abused the moment
| there's any meaning or consequence behind it
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| From my experience, it only works if the entire company is
| completely bought in to the entire system. Even going so far
| as the SAFe framework. Companies think they can pick/choose
| which pieces they implement and this is a recipe for failure.
| closeparen wrote:
| Don't think I've ever disagreed more passionately with an
| HN comment. Being "bought in" to agile development means
| individuals over processes, teams pick and choose what
| works for them. Insisting that everyone everywhere goes all
| the way on the same predefined process is as far away as it
| gets.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| > teams pick and choose what works for them.
|
| Is this practical though. An engineering team has a
| product team, a sales team that needs a feature. If those
| 3 teams don't align on the fact that the dev team is
| practicing "agile" and can expect potential drastic
| changes to customer promises, then they'll be issues.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| Also, I think if we normalized what we both mean by "is
| completely bought in" we'd be closer to agreeing ;)
| Perhaps what I meant by this is an understanding that
| team x is following methodology y and can expect i, j, k
| because of it.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I've worked at several companies that use points.
|
| My take away is this: For the most part - treat them like a
| game of "whose line is it anyways":
| https://youtu.be/9KAGwNtI26w?t=17
|
| But you roughly need to understand what the company is trying
| to do - namely: Someone has a job to pick features that we
| know customers want, and they've been tasked to provide the
| most value as quickly as possible.
|
| This means someone _has_ to try to guess roughly how long it
| will take for a feature to materialize, and weigh that
| against the value it will provide to customers (and then the
| company - since we 're paid by customers).
|
| It's a shit job, but as long as it's clear that teams _will_
| screw it up, and that point velocity DOES NOT continually
| increase over time (unless devs are lying), and everyone
| understands why they 're getting asked - it can be a
| reasonably productive way to lay out timelines.
| icedchai wrote:
| Were you playing planning poker? The 3 or 5 story points is
| something I've definitely experienced.
|
| Standups are okay, but they have to _really_ be focused. Too
| often I see people dragging the standup into a side discussion
| instead of handling it off line. I also don 't think they need
| to be daily. Twice a week is enough.
|
| The real problem is micro management. Breaking everything down
| into bite sized ("2 or 3 point" chunks) is incredibly tedious.
| In the old days, estimates were less granular. "Joe, we need
| you to build X. Can you do that in 3 weeks? It also needs to
| handle blah."
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| I can personally relate to:
|
| - 60 minute meetings fighting over whether tickets were 3 or 5
| story points
|
| - absolute inflexibility over my noon standup. I could be in
| the deepest of zones and people would literally slack
| repeatedly until you showed up for that thing
| TillE wrote:
| Despite many well-intentioned attempts, it feels like the whole
| process of software development, from people management to
| software architecture, has barely improved in the past 20 years
| or so.
|
| It sounds like this guy should probably have a pure management
| role, where they're reviewing code but not expected to write very
| much themselves. Having a role with both responsibilities seems
| bound to lead to frustration.
| dan-g wrote:
| "Deep Work" by Cal Newport (and the related "Time Block Planner"
| he published as well) goes into depth about why deep work focus
| time is so important for knowledge workers, and has some
| additional tips for how to make the most of your workday. Would
| highly recommend both books!
|
| https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| Thanks! This book has been brought up a few times in this
| thread and i'm very motivated to read it now!
| PsySecGroup wrote:
| This is an example of an exploitable psychosecurity feature
| within human terrain.
| dangus wrote:
| The only reason we can't book 4 hours of time a day is because
| our employers run "lean" and completely neglect to scale out
| personnel along with projects.
|
| I know people who would absolutely be replaced by 3 people if
| they quit.
|
| My advice? Advocate for yourself, because your boss and their
| boss doesn't actually have any clue how much work it is in the
| trenches.
|
| Management is almost never aware of all that much about what
| you're doing, and a lot of capacity issues like this eventually
| bubble up and catch them by complete surprise simply because
| individual contributors have just been silently dealing with the
| frog-boiling.
|
| This all means you should:
|
| 1. Come up with specific and measurable justification in terms of
| hours/dollars for why you need more employees as the company and
| therefore your workload grows
|
| 2. "Offer" to push back excess work and give your management
| choices while doing so: "Project A will take us X hours over
| capacity for next quarter, should I prioritize Project A or
| Project B? We can only deliver # projects in the next quarter at
| our current staffing level."
|
| Blocking off time on your calendar doesn't really solve the
| problem because it's something that a lot of people, especially
| customer-facing ones, simply _can 't_ do without doing everything
| I described above.
| Silverback_VII wrote:
| Some people constantly want more meetings because it's de facto
| money with zero effort. As someone who wants to do stuff one can
| feel a clear lack of meaning in all of it. It's like you are
| stuck in a web of trivialities.
|
| it's not overwork but work (and even just presence) without a
| sense of purpose and some progress toward a goal which leads to
| depression.
| __underscores wrote:
| This is very common and sometimes deeply ingrained in the
| company culture. At my previous company, we had a situation
| where no one wanted to be promoted to a team lead role due to
| the expectation that the person was completely moved off of any
| meaningful work to exclusively to participate in meetings (also
| the reason why the previous lead left).
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| This is something I have struggled with throughout my career
| as well. To be honest, i've only seen a few ICs successfully
| manage a balance.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| If you're a builder - someone who lives to work, not just works
| to live - then you should start a company or work for yourself.
| Otherwise you're wasting your potential by transferring it to
| someone else.
|
| Find your people or you will go insane. That's my unsolicited
| advice for you.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| That's an interesting take! I think I agree with it. Of
| course every builder might not have the risk appetite for
| that but they could join an early stage startup as an
| alternative.
| closeparen wrote:
| Don't think that's true. Building and running a startup or
| even a freelance business is 99% things that aren't
| developing software: marketing, talking to customers, paying
| your taxes, hiring, getting financing, etc.
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| Yes agreed. I like to gain sticky consensus on work and then
| apply deliberate focus for me and my team so that we can ride a
| wave of motivation. By doing this, people are surprised with
| how fast things can get done.
| badrabbit wrote:
| Perhaps a "no meetings before lunch" policy would help many types
| of teams. Is this doable at your team?
| jmcgough wrote:
| I used to work somewhere with three standups every day. I'd lose
| and hour and a half every morning for updates that often didn't
| involve me or could have been async.
| icedchai wrote:
| I used to work at a place that had so many meetings. They
| reserved a couple afternoons a week for "focus time."
| Unfortunately, that didn't work. People just started scheduling
| meeting during those times. Eventually, I got so disgusted with
| the constant interruptions that I found another job.
| Hadriel wrote:
| This is google workplace only btw
| frankgrecojr wrote:
| ~Can you expand on that thought?~ Oh do you mean the Focus Time
| feature?
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(page generated 2022-08-12 23:01 UTC)