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A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I beca

A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. Seriously though, long periods of solitude is not what we need. I'd not be productive if I became a hermit, but I'd be a lot more productive if I had periods of quiet time, punctuated by moments of discussion. This is how thinkers and artists (and hackers) worked for a long time, before we wrongly convinced ourselves that being interruptible improves productivity.

paul 13y ago
It's not about solitude so much as the ability to control the contents and direction of our thoughts. Being responsive on email often requires giving up that control, fragmenting our attention and preventing the formation of larger thoughts. It provides short term gains, but we don't see what we're losing.
- lifeisstillgood 13y ago
  perfectly put
wrongc0ntinent 13y ago
I don't think it's about "quiet" - if you meant it literally - the right kind of distraction can be a sort of mental noise cancellation mechanism. Though this tends to work better in solitude, for obvious control reasons.
rtpg 13y ago
>A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me. Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.
- naiyt 13y ago
  My problem is then I'll get too many phone calls. And for me, a phone call is more disruptive to my workflow then an email. Then again, that's probably just because I dislike talking on the phone in general.
  - laichzeit0 13y ago
    I solved this problem too. People know that I hardly ever answer my phone either, unless you arranged to call me. If it's important, leave a voicemail with a reason why you called not just some "call me back" contextless shit. By "arranged to call me" I mean sending me an email and asking if you can call and at what time. I check mail about 3 times a day. We really new to get over this instant communication fad. It's counterproductive.
    - rtpg 13y ago
      Talking to people is "instant communication" and we've been doing that for a while. There are things that can get resolved literally 100 times faster by talking than by e-mail or text or whatever. Not everything requires that urgency, but back-and-forth in e-mail can end up being a huge time sink for both parties.
Someone 13y ago
Knuth agrees with that. That's why he doesn't guarantee rapid replies to almost anything (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html) And, relevant to the topic: he is quite productive, but I don't think he would make it in academia at his current output rate. It does help that he splits his work into separate papers, though, and that he publishes 'dull' papers about his tooling, too (IIRC, the original plan was to have two volumes of TAOCP. Now, we have 4 plus fascicles plus some books about the software he wrote to lay out his books and create the fonts therein)

paul 13y ago

It's not about solitude so much as the ability to control the contents and direction of our thoughts. Being responsive on email often requires giving up that control, fragmenting our attention and preventing the formation of larger thoughts. It provides short term gains, but we don't see what we're losing.

lifeisstillgood 13y ago
perfectly put

wrongc0ntinent 13y ago

I don't think it's about "quiet" - if you meant it literally - the right kind of distraction can be a sort of mental noise cancellation mechanism. Though this tends to work better in solitude, for obvious control reasons.

rtpg 13y ago

>A few days? People get upset if you haven't replied in an hour. I've solved this problem by always taking forever to answer e-mails. If it's important, people just call me. Whether this is good or not is questionable, however.

naiyt 13y ago
My problem is then I'll get too many phone calls. And for me, a phone call is more disruptive to my workflow then an email. Then again, that's probably just because I dislike talking on the phone in general.
- laichzeit0 13y ago
  I solved this problem too. People know that I hardly ever answer my phone either, unless you arranged to call me. If it's important, leave a voicemail with a reason why you called not just some "call me back" contextless shit. By "arranged to call me" I mean sending me an email and asking if you can call and at what time. I check mail about 3 times a day. We really new to get over this instant communication fad. It's counterproductive.
  - rtpg 13y ago
    Talking to people is "instant communication" and we've been doing that for a while. There are things that can get resolved literally 100 times faster by talking than by e-mail or text or whatever. Not everything requires that urgency, but back-and-forth in e-mail can end up being a huge time sink for both parties.

Someone 13y ago

Knuth agrees with that. That's why he doesn't guarantee rapid replies to almost anything (http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/email.html) And, relevant to the topic: he is quite productive, but I don't think he would make it in academia at his current output rate. It does help that he splits his work into separate papers, though, and that he publishes 'dull' papers about his tooling, too (IIRC, the original plan was to have two volumes of TAOCP. Now, we have 4 plus fascicles plus some books about the software he wrote to lay out his books and create the fonts therein)