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To me the key line in the whole essay was:

It’s difficult to get into a good flow while coding if you know you have a meeting coming up in an hour or two

One meeting in the day is enough to ruin a whole day for coding. All you can do for the rest of that day is putter. Projects do need a certain amount of puttering, but when they need it is not the day of the meeting.



I'm sorry, but if one meeting ruins the productivity of your entire day, I think something is very wrong. If you truly find that you can't be productive given a 3 hour window, you might need to reevaluate your approach to work and come up with a better system.


My solution is a job with no meetings. You should try it.


I find that putting the daily standup right after or before lunch, pretty easily fixes this problem (assuming the team eats lunch together) - there's no extra time wasted, as you would have been interrupted anyways.


I find that removing the daily standup altogether fixes the problem even more effectively.


It's not just the time interruption though, it's the mental interruption of thinking about other parts of the project, business, etc, etc, that a stand up creates.

If I'm in the zone and go to lunch, I'll keep churning on the problem in my head, and might even have a solution when I'm back at keyboard.

If I have a meeting before or after lunch, that context is gone


Exactly: sometimes, when it gets particularly intense, I go take a nap (which I can) and come back with new clarity and a better approach.




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