Maybe there's a similar kind of task in your job that disrupts your normal 'flow'. Do you have a strategy for getting round that? What do you do to manage distractions and stay productive at work, while minimising stress and saving cognitive energy?

I'm a writer, which is surprisingly similar to being a software developer, work-wise.

There are structures I am writing within, floating around in my head (paragraph structure, story structure, sentence structure), variables (keywords) I need to monitor and consider and call out at the proper moments, and I need to consider what the inputs and outputs are going to be (who is going to read this), and then run it by them for testing (editing).

I have many windows open at a time. My main writing app. Other documents I have written that are similar in some way. Research or reference materials. A list of keywords I need to integrate. And email, Slack, etc, which is just a normal part of life.

So if you squint a bit, I think our workflows are pretty similar.

What I do is actually turn off the distractions. I make sure I don't ever log into FB with my work computer, for example. While I am at work, I limit myself to the FB app on my personal phone. The app sucks, so I don't use it much. (And, I don't like to be seen on my phone while at work, so the implied social pressure helps, too.)

I close my email from time to time. Log out of it for a couple of hours, and just work.

I set my desktop images to wide expanses and landscapes, to inspire broader thinking, and bring a little bit of nature in.

And when I really need to just crack down and power out a bunch of work, I have a specific playlist that I cue up. (Mine is primarily non-vocal hardcore prog rock. Really technical shit with lots of time signature changes, and other craziness. For some reason this is better than caffeine or anything else, and just turns on my productivity.)

And finally, I adhere to Stephen King's general guidelines he laid out in his book, "On Writing". He makes the case that creativity is a muscle that needs to be trained like any other. So he sits down at the exact same time every day, and writes. I think it is a 4-hour block, from 6:AM to 10:AM, IIRC. And then he stops. He gets up and doesn't think about his story again until the next day at 6:AM.

What this does over time is train your mind to be focused and creative during a specific part of the day. It becomes a tap you can turn on and off at will.

And it works REALLY well for a lot of people. Me included.

So I front-load my day. I get in early, before everyone else, and pound out a shitload of work before 11:AM, because I have trained my brain to be turned on and ready to go. After that period of ridiculous productivity, I go to lunch. Get some good calories in my body. And in the afternoon I do all my meetings, reading, organizing, planning, research, etc.

And when I get up from my desk, I leave everything there. I walk out of the building and do not think about work again until I am at my desk again the next day.

It takes discipline to do it, but it works amazingly well.

I recommend it.

I want to hear thenewgreen's thoughts on this.

My honest answer is: I don't care about work. I mean, I care enough to get the tasks done, but I sold my soul to this devil a LONG time ago. I am not what I do for a living. I am, first and foremost, a husband. Then a father. Those things require me to trade my time for money. I care about getting the job done well. But I am not what I do for a living. For some reason, that has helped me emotionally detach from my day to day "stressors". They "stress" me enough to get it done, and done well. And then I move on to the next task.

This is not to say I'm a zen master who is in complete control. I lose my shit on a regular basis... but remembering why I work at a job I don't like or find fulfilling helps me to recenter and move on.

I do real work at night when no one is around to pester me.

Devote chunks of time to discrete tasks.

I just filled out two prescriptions and sent them to the pharmacy, now I'm going to faff around for a bit before scheduling all of my appointments for the next few weeks.

But as far as 'disruptive tasks.' Well, getting back into a flow is something I've always found difficult.

That experiment looks interesting.

I quite enjoy the task of writing and testing code, but spending too long without a break can be tiring. In reality, I'm not working 100% all of the time, I'm flicking between windows (GitHub, Slack, social media, code, documentation).

Sounds like your brain tries to tell you, in a manner of subtlety that's so exemplar of it, to take breaks. Why else would you want to distract yourself from something you enjoy?

Whenever there's something I can't solve, be it a story turn or a piece of code I need to achieve the result, I get up and go to bed. I lie there, and the solution - or, at least, the next step - comes naturally. I think it's because my bed is a place of comfort, so yours might be different.

When I need to force myself through studying something I don't like, I use Pomodoro timers. I set one up and go through the material until the break comes. During the break, I think of nothing related to the material and only switch back when the work alarm rings. This forces me through the work in a surprisingly pleasant manner. This takes its mental toll, though, and I only use it for especially hard cases, but if I have to do something, that's my go-to method.

And when I feel stuck on something completely, I leave it for later and turn my attention to something not work-intense, like cooking, cleaning up or walking. Rest is as important as work.