You’re reading Signal vs. Noise, a publication about the web by 37signals since 1999.

I hear that. My motivation goes right out the window after being interrupted just a couple of times in the morning.

Speaking from personal experience (unfortunately), I agree 100%.

This goes deeper than a single day. You start to avoid getting into things too deeply because you’ve become conditioned into assuming you WILL get interrupted.

He made a good point about not procrastinating on things that would be mentioned in your obituary. I hope students don’t read this, because I’ve never heard about anyones GPA on their tombstone.

My favorite point was about approaching big problems obliquely. Great advice to entrepreneurs that want to change the world with their business.

Daunting problems deter people from ever attempting to tackle them. So as Graham says,

"you have to be facing the big problem directly enough that you catch some of the excitement radiating from it, but not so much that it paralyzes you." Beautiful

Quotes like this always make me wonder what people like PG, JF and others think about pair programming…

Jack: Pair Programming allows to be more focused to work on hard problems, and review tests/code in real-time. If you’re distracted by your observer, you’re doing it wrong.

Also, my experience is that you’re less likely to be interrupted by someone else in a Pair Programming session than when you’re coding alone.

Pair programming means neither of the pair feel full ownership. Think of a great idea at 3am and feel enthused to jump out of bed and see if it works? Tough luck! You have to check with your partner!

Crap, this post interrupted me. Kidding.

I’m working very hard on forcing myself to focus on any given task until it is complete without being easily distracted. So far my efforts are proving to be very much worth it. Great quote.

Here is an interesting quote from te Hammond essay PG linked to:

“I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don’t know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, “The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.” I don’t know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing – not much, but enough that they miss fame.”

Jason, your thoughts?

The reason they put doors on hinges is so they can be open them when you want to be connected with the rest of the team, and closed when you go deep. I have little sympathy for people who always work with an open door but complain when they are interrupted, or for those who always work with a closed door but wind up isolated from the rest of the company.

Use the hinges.

My recently retired boss – a legend and an inspiration in our line – when I asked her to write an article distilling some of her 40 years of experience, said, ”I haven’t been in the field for a year. I don’t know what matters.”