
import { Meta } from "components/Meta";
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<Meta
  title="Reducing distractions"
  description="An article on various strategies to reduce distractions as a software engineer"
/>

# Reducing distractions

<PublishDate datestring="2022-11-15" />

What is the difference between good and great? A recent episode of the Modern Wisdom podcast posited that in studying human capabilities, the most interesting questions are not asking "what is the difference between bad and good?", but instead asking "what is the difference between good and great?". I'm increasingly convinced that a major component of the answer to this question when it comes to software engineering, and really any knowledge work, is the ability to reduce distractions and work with more focus, more intention, and less distraction. I'm inspired by authors and academics like [Cal Newport](https://www.calnewport.com/about/) who simultaneously manages to be a prolific academic, author, blogger, and podcaster, all while working a typical 40 hour week and making time for his family and outside interests.

How can we, as software engineers, use our time more effectively, becoming more productive? How can we increase our rate of learning and our output without working 80 hours a week?

## Deep Work

One of the best ways to find time to focus on hard problems is to create scheduled, intentional Deep Work sessions. Deep Work is a term coined by Cal Newport, the author of a book of the same name. Deep Work can be defined as the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. These activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration push your cognitive capabilities to their limit - allowing you to improve your skills and create immense value.

Simply put, Deep Work means working with intentional focus on one thing at a time, cutting out all other distractions to allow for deeper, uninterrupted, and more productive work. It means specifying periods in which you will not check Slack, open your email, absent mindedly check your WhatsApp messages, watch YouTube videos through one eye, or have a quick scroll through Reddit when you get bored. Deep Work, at a time when there have never been more distactions pulling us away from pushing at the boundaries of our abilities, can truly unlock vast potential for us when applied consistently and intentionally.

One objection I hear to this is that software engineering is a team activity and being responsive to colleagues is a crucial part of the job. While this is absolutely true, it is only a half truth. The full truth is that being a productive software engineer is finding a balance between your own individual contributions and coordination at the team level so that everyone at the individual and team level can contribute effectively towards the project. We often have no problem finding time for team level coordination — does anyone complain about having too few meetings? — but we do have a problem finding time for our own individual deep focus time. The solution to this is to find a balance, communicated to others, which allows us to split our time between individual focus time, and periods of more responsiveness to others.

Practically, this means setting periods of focus time in a public calendar where it is clear that you are engaged in focused work and will not be responsive to emails or Slack. In this way colleagues know that you will be unresponsive in this period, but still get an indication of when you will be free outside of these blocks. I tend to block solid 2-3 hour periods daily in my calendar, usually in the afternoon. This means that I will be able to perform collaborative work with colleagues in the morning, and then again before clocking off for the day, but in the middle I will have a solid chunk of uninterrupted time to commit to Deep Work.

Some simple tips for successful Deep Work sessions:

- Schedule in your calendar - plan your days and schedule it in advance, communicating to those you work closely with.
- Respect it. If it's in your calendar, don't move it without a good reason, and don't find easy excuses to avoid your focus time sessions.
- Take breaks! Use the Pomodoro technique to allow your mind to reset over longer periods. 25 minutes focus and 5 minute rest is a good start, but I've found it pretty easy to work up to 55 minutes focus, and 5 minutes rest.
- Set yourself tasks for your focus time. Don't enter focus time periods blindly, but set yourself goals to achieve over the course of your focus periods.

## Close Slack, Email and other distractions during your focus blocks

Slack and email can be an enormous source of distraction if you allow them to be. Every context switch to check your email, response to a Slack message, quick check of your notifications causes you to lose focus on the primary object of your focus, and be forced to spend significant time regaining your focus. The solution to this is to simply turn off these sources of distraction entirely during periods of deep focus and not check them at all. When I say turn off Slack, I don't mean minimise it and leave notifications on. I don't mean turn notifications on, but leave it open in your Dock. I mean quit it entirely and don't have it open at all. Notifications are self-evidently distracting, and even having the application visibly open in your Dock can cause conscious or subconscious distraction.

## Turn your phone off and keep it out of sight

Similarly to quitting Slack and email, I recommend putting your phone away during the working day. Having your phone near is a constant source of at least subconscious distraction. Turning your phone off and putting it away (in another room ideally) is a great way to remove it as even a potential source of distraction.

One caveat here - I do not have any likely obligations like children or other family obligations which might require me to always be responsive to my phone in the case of an emergency. In those cases, there are many options for minimising your phone as a source of distraction while remaining responsive to your obligations - for example using Freedom (see below) to allow only for very specific uses of your phone during certain periods.

## Engineer your digital environment for focus

Much of a phone's UI is designed to keep you active and engaged with it. Notifications jump out at us pinging, buzzing, and flashing at us constantly. I'm amazed to still see so many people leave notifications on their phone or smart watch completely unfiltered, allowing anyone and any app developer to grab attention from their life at any point in time. The way to combat this is to engineer your digital environment and take back control of your attention by not allowing app developers to engineer it for you. There are a number of ways to achieve this:

- Turn off all notifications. Yes, all of them.
- Put your phone on silent or vibrate.
- Turn off notification numbers on your apps. These little red numbers next to your apps are purely there to try to get you to open the app rather than serve you as a useful feature.
- Use something like the[ Minimalist Phone app](https://www.minimalistphone.com/) which hijacks your home screen and turns it into a minimalist launcher to help you use your phone in a more mindful way. Out: flashy app icons, notifications jumping out at you from everywhere, and a homescreen designed for distraction. In: a simple, functional, and even boring interface designed for you to engage with it far more intentionally.

## Freedom app

Freedom is an app which allows you to schedule periods in which selected apps and websites are completely blocked from your chosen devices. iOS / Android etc having jumped on the 'time well spent' movement have implemented tools like this native to the OS, but they are so easy to bypass as to make them almost completely worthless. Freedom is very difficult if not impossible to circumvent to escape a session, making it really effective as a focus tool. I use it to block social media apps, YouTube, Reddit, news sites and more almost the entire day, leaving myself a small, timeboxed window in which to check in on these sites. It's remarkably effective in not letting you escape down some of the more addictive online rabbit holes during the day.

## Use a device lock box

A slightly more extreme method of removing your phone as a source of distraction is using a device like the [KSafe](https://intl.thekitchensafe.com/). These boxes allow you to lock away your device for a specified period of time, not allowing you to access it without breaking the (fairly expensive) lid. These devices are a great way to pre commit to specifically timed periods of focus. It's proven to be really useful for me to be able to lock my phone away and set a timer for a couple of hours, with the express intention of focusing on a technical design or some particular feature requiring deep focus, and pre commit to this work without the potential of my phone distracting me over the scheduled time.

## Music

Music can be a really good way to get into a flow state and focus without distraction for an extended period of time. In terms of what kind of music is useful for focus, much will be personal preference, but I have found that any music with lyrics and any music I am too familiar with will prove to be more distracting than useful as a focus aid. For this reason, I really like various Lo-Fi and other instrumental playlists and artists. Here are a few of my favourites:

- [Japanese LoFi](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QjgJ20xSbkyfDY2iPERtz?si=59b2375fbcd34a7e)
- [Purrple Cat](https://open.spotify.com/artist/73aKnLT4O8G2pBEfdlQzrE?si=L3jdwkbxTd6e9FPLHJ6jKA)
- [M|O|O|N](https://open.spotify.com/artist/0M2HHtY3OOQzIZxrHkbJLT?si=RAZoc55iTHmyD8pVswBZqg)
- [Lo-Fi Focus Beats](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2mzqVIlD5L68EGpqPrEKL1?si=b0afc3ae6f8e4e09)

## Resources

- [Deep Work by Cal Newport](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Work-Focused-Success-Distracted-ebook/dp/B013UWFM52/ref=sr_1_1?crid=6X395XXFZVK9&keywords=deep+work&qid=1668502285&sprefix=deep+w%2Caps%2C222&sr=8-1)
- [Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Minimalism-Living-Better-Technology-ebook/dp/B07D1G6DTF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EEYKVMINJEXC&keywords=digital+minimalism&qid=1668502396&sprefix=digital+minimalis%2Caps%2C244&sr=8-1)
- [Cal Newport's blog - Study Hacks](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/)
- [Stolen Focus by Johann Hari](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stolen-Focus-Why-Cant-Attention-ebook/dp/B096LZDY32/ref=sr_1_1?crid=GX3SQ23F910F&keywords=stolen+focus&qid=1668502273&sprefix=stolen+foc%2Caps%2C183&sr=8-1)
- [Freedom](https://freedom.to/)
- [KSafe](https://www.thekitchensafe.com/)
- [Humane Tech](https://www.humanetech.com/)
- [Minimalist Phone](https://www.minimalistphone.com/)


Reducing distractions


import { Meta } from "components/Meta";
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<Meta
  title="Newsletters for Software Engineers"
  description="A collection of recommended newsletters for software engineers and engineering leaders"
/>

# A collection of recommended newletters for software engineers and engineering leaders

<PublishDate datestring="2022-11-12" />

After deleting Twitter some time ago, I found that there was something of a hole in my media consumption and a lack of a centralised place to keep up with software engineering trends, news, advice, and have informative articles recommended to me regularly. Twitter can obviously be great for this if used intentionally, but I found that the inevitable downsides of using a platform like Twitter — with a business model based on engagement, time on platform, and hot takes — led me to lose far more in wasted time than I was actually gaining from using it. Email newsletters, and in particular, Substack have been an incredible replacement for much (though not all) of the software engineering content I was previously discovering via Twitter.

I read a mix of different content creators on Substack and elsewhere — some slightly more hot take immediate news-type content than others, but mostly these newsletters are full of high quality, well written, well researched, long form content of the kind that will actually grow your knowledge and your career along many different dimensions.

In no particular order, these are the newsletters I am currently subscribed to and gain a lot of value from.

#### The Pragmatic Engineer

If I could only pick one newsletter to subscribe to it would be The Pragmatic Engineer. Written by Gergely Orosz who was an engineering manager and senior engineer at Uber, Skype, and Skyscanner, it's the best place to go to for deep dives and in-depth news on the industry for engineering managers and senior engineers.

[https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/](https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/)

#### Quastor

A great read for growing as a software engineer. Quastor curates the best of technical blogs, has extremely informative deep dives on software engineering and architecture topics, and keeps your problem solving skills sharp with regular interview type questions on algorithms and data structures.

[https://www.quastor.org/](https://www.quastor.org/)

#### Big Technology

Original, independent journalism focused on Big Tech companies - Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft (sorry Netflix, the FAANG acronym makes little sense in 2022).

[https://bigtechnology.substack.com/](https://bigtechnology.substack.com/)

#### Kent C Dodds

Kent is an amazing educator on frontend technologies, with a specialization in React. His articles are always high quality, well-written, and mostly offer very actionable advice for the kinds of codebases most developers are working in.
[https://kentcdodds.com/](https://kentcdodds.com/)

#### Software Lead Weekly

A curated newsletter of the best content from around the web, focusing on people, culture and leadership in tech.
[https://softwareleadweekly.com/](https://softwareleadweekly.com/)

#### Pointer

Pointer self-describes as "...a reading club for developers. It's a window into what current and future CTOs are reading and thinking about. Super high quality engineering-related content, not just trendy topics or link bait." Overall it consistently meets this goal with especially good content on engineering leadership.

[https://www.pointer.io/](https://www.pointer.io/)

#### The M&Ms

A newsletter for engineering leaders, written by Louie Bacaj. His short course [Timeless Advice for Software Engineers](https://lbacaj.gumroad.com/l/career-advice-for-engineers) is worth checking out - he imparts a lot of wisdom on how to manage a career in engineering long-term.

[https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/](https://newsletter.memesmotivations.com/)

#### Bytes

An excellent and entertaining newsletter to keep up on the ever-changing JavaScript eco-system.

[https://bytes.dev/](https://bytes.dev/)

#### ByteByteGo

A weekly drip feeding of refreshers and updates on topics and trends in large-scale system design from the authors of the [System Design Interview](https://www.amazon.co.uk/System-Design-Interview-insiders-Second/dp/B08CMF2CQF/ref=sr_1_2_sspa) books.

[https://blog.bytebytego.com/](https://blog.bytebytego.com/)

#### Lethian

Excellent articles written by Will Larson - the author of two amazing books for engineering leaders - [Staff Engineer](https://lethain.com/staff-engineer/) and [An Elegant Puzzle](https://lethain.com/elegant-puzzle/)

[https://lethain.com/](https://lethain.com/)

#### Morning Brew

A non-engineering recommendation, Morning Brew is a great way to get a curated and informative take on the days news, with a focus on business, investment, politics, and tech.

[https://www.morningbrew.com/daily](https://www.morningbrew.com/daily)

#### Emerging Tech Brew

See above, but with a focus on emerging technologies like automation, AI, and green energy.

[https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/](https://www.emergingtechbrew.com/)

#### Study Hacks

I'm a huge fan of Cal Newport's work, recommending his book Deep Work to just about everyone I meet, and his newsletter has many great tidbits on the subject of deep work and living a deep, focused, and more rewarding life.

[https://www.calnewport.com/blog/](https://www.calnewport.com/blog/)


Newsletters for Software Engineers


import { Meta } from "components/Meta";
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<Meta
  title="Why write?"
  description="What is the value in writing for a software engineer?"
/>

# Why write?

<PublishDate datestring="2022-11-15" />

One question I wanted to think through properly and formulate an answer to when starting to write on this website was why bother? Why spend the time writing at all? Surely my time could be better spent elsewhere than spending hours writing posts that will be read by close to zero people? This is my attempt to articulate what I think the value is.

### Written communication is a key part of being an engineer, especially as you get more senior

In the first few years of being a software engineer, your written output is judged primarily, if not almost exclusively, on your ability to write code. As you grow as an engineer your ability to communicate in written form becomes more and more important, especially as you move into more senior roles. In fact, I'd say, there is close to a zero chance that a software engineer will make it to the senior level if they are not able to write effectively. This requirement for written communication manifests itself in a number of ways:

- Writing Technical Design Documents / RFCs - writing high quality technical designs which detail the problem space, considerations, trade offs, solutions, alternative solutions and so on.
- Technical discussion - being able to articulate yourself and engage in robust discussion and debate with other engineers across various mediums (TDDs/RFCs, Slack threads, etc)
- Code reviews - providing high quality, easy to follow, and easy to action feedback on other engineers' code.
- Documentation - being able to write with clarity and precision for engineers and other users of your services (not all of whom may be engineers!).
- Presentations - here I'm considering the writing of presentations as a subset of writing as a category. Like it or not, as you move into Senior, Staff+, and management positions, you're going to be presenting a lot more than you are as a mid-level software engineer, so it's an important skill to practise and improve at as you develop in your career.

There is a good reason that written communication becomes an ever increasing part of the job. As you start on the software engineering ladder, you start by focusing on individual tasks (usually involving coding) which relate to your team. The focus is narrow and there is a low level of ambiguity. As you progress into Senior, Staff+ or engineering roles, you will be thrown tasks which operate at the team or inter-team level, are highly ambiguous with many potential solutions, often do not involve coding directly, and whose impact and importance are not immediately apparent. The role of writing in this context is to document and solve more complex and ambiguous problems across a larger set of people, creating alignment and a space in which ideas can be robustly discussed and stress-tested.

In short, your ability to process beyond being a competent mid-level software engineer will depend in no small part on your ability to write plain English as much as it will depend on your ability to write in the programming languages of your company.

### Writing improves your ability to think and reason

Writing is an incredible process for forcing you to structure, examine, and demonstrate your thoughts. When thinking through a system design for example, it is very easy to think through the happy paths, and think things through in a somewhat haphazard way which allows us to avoid its more difficult aspects. Writing allows us to structure our arguments in a more rigid way, sketching out our thoughts into themes, sections, and order them in such a way as to produce a much more robust and complete argument. Elements of the argument which were easy to gloss over in thought become impossible to escape when having to put into words. We can hide from our hand-waving and assumptions in thought. It is _much_ harder to do this when writing. In return, as well as producing the final document as an output, the process of writing is going to help us think through our argument more completely. In essence, writing can be seen in some ways as enforcing best practices upon our thought, providing a structure for our reasoning, and improving our ability to _think_.

### Writing helps you learn

Writing helps enormously with retention. I used to struggle a lot with knowledge retention from what I'd read. I read a reasonable amount, but often felt that I wouldn't be able to recall much or any of a book just weeks or months after reading it. This has improved massively since I started writing more while reading. Writing helps us in a number of ways when learning, compared to simple passive knowledge transfer. Writing helps us learn by forcing us to think through the points being made and summarise them when producing written notes. Writing as an active activity is far more stimulating to the brain and likely to force enduring neural pathways than passive consumption. Writing also has the added benefit of producing an enduring artefact at the end of it. The notes you take on books, articles, talks etc will endure and serve as a fantastic reference to future you. Our ability as software engineers is not determined by knowing how to do everything, it is in our ability to know how to learn and apply previously acquired knowledge quickly. Learning, taking notes, and having a bank of personalised, distilled notes to hand for a multitude of topics is an incredibly valuable asset.

For example, I recently learned more about [CAP theorem](https://mwhittaker.github.io/blog/an_illustrated_proof_of_the_cap_theorem/) from a system design course I am studying. While in a few months time I am sure that I will not be able to spontaneously recall all the main intricacies of CAP theorem, having a bank of notes on the key points, personalised to me, and instantly discoverable, will allow me to bring myself back up to speed with the details extremely quickly and be able to utilise the knowledge effectively, far more quickly than without any kind of notes. If you want to go really deep into this aspect of the value of writing, check out Tiago Forte's book [Building a Second Brain](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Building-Second-Brain-Organise-Potential/dp/1800812213) which goes deep into how to organise your digital life and utilise it for creative ends.

### Because I'm not very good at it!

Finally, I want to write more because I'm not very good at it. Part of this will be a tendency towards self-criticism, but much of it is true. There are many areas I'd love to improve in my writing. I find it uncomfortable to write, over-analysing my writing and being self-conscious about sharing it with others. I tend to write in long sentences which are difficult to reason about. I often use overly complex words and sentence structures when simpler devices would suit better. I'm slow to write and frequently hit writer's block (which magically disappears when I have a deadline in front of me — funny that!). I often don't know the meaning of brevity. I dislike editing and find knowing what to take out hard. I find it too easy to dive into the weeds of technical complexity instead of outlining the salient points.

So given all of the previously outlined values of writing, and given I'm not very good at it, what better way to get better than to just dive in and do it? Having and developing a growth mindset requires constantly positioning yourself up against the boundaries of your abilities, putting aside your discomfort, lack of ability, and doubt, and just doing.

So that's why I'm writing.


Posts

Reducing distractions

Newsletters for Software Engineers

Why write?