Most of you know that I’m a software developer and that I love my job. Many people think that it’s uninteresting, boring, prone to cause personality disorders, with no need for creativity or social relations. They are wrong. My job is extremely interesting, it requires intelligence and creativity, passion, and the ability to relate with others (with both colleagues and customers).

Though I work with the utmost passion, I often have trouble maintaining concentration. In my case there are three main sources of distraction.

  1. The first is the chorus of notifications. All the world seems to try to make you lose the concentration. Emails, rss feeds, social networks, instant messaging clients. Fortunately this kind of distractions can be avoided easily, after a little training. Initially this application (Think!) has helped me, but now I’m able to ignore most of what is not important for what I’m working on without any external help.
  2. “The new board is arrived, I’ve to configure the bootloader to take the rootfs from NFS, I’ve to configure the board’s network interfaces, I’ve to setup the NFS exports…“, “The mail server doesn’t work… I’m waiting for an important work mail…“, “Uh? Why can’t I reach Internet?“, “I’ve to move my desk, and to rearrange the wiring“, “The phone automatically answers that we were kidnapped by monkeys…”
    How many times will happen in your working life, to scream phrases like these? Often these tasks are tedious, complex and require much attention, attention that a programmer probably cannot detract from the project he’s working on. But God has been sighted, and, after having created the earth, animals, plants, man and woman, created the sysadmin. It is a mystical creature, able to solve in a reasonable time all these issues allowing you to return to work quickly and with good humor. It’s nice to have an entity like that.

    A male sysadmin working on a Windows machine

  3. The last, but not least source of distraction is the one due to the tiredness. This is felt mostly when working on more complex problems. I experienced that a neat desk helps a lot. I tried to hide as possible wiring and I seem to be more calm and concentrated. Especially since I stopped tripping on the wires just slightly moving the feet. Another thing that helped me was to find a roommate that tolerate the my ideal temperature. The last thing in this sense that I have managed to do was adjust the height of the chair and of the monitor to keep an optimum posture. Remember this equation: “Less Pain == More Concentration“.

        

    Me trying to make my office room a better place (with poor results :D )

  4. But the most important think that I’ve learned in these years of work, is that when the brain says “STOP!” it’s the time to stop… Try to continue working, ignoring fatigue is counterproductive. When the brain says “STOP!” it’s really better to listen to it.
    • The first way to make your brain more collaborative, is to close all, stand up and relax, maybe doing a nice walk, better yet, if possible, outside (a cigarette could sometimes help to relax the nerves and to back to work calmly).

       

      Me watching a relaxing landscape...

    • If this was not enough you could relax with a little music, you can delight the palate with tasty and healthy snacks and coffe or let off steam by playing a good game of table soccer.

         

      The instruments to disturb the colleagues who are trying to work.

    • If even a break like this helps you to relax and return to work more productively, then no matter. At least you enjoyed it.