For the last two days I’ve been taking time “off” by which I mean I’ve been working on things I normally don’t make time for. My day has so much interrupt work, mostly in the form of replying to emails or help desk tickets, but also in thigs like keeping with Discord, Slack, texts, and Whatsapp. Not sure how I’d stay above water if I was still on socials. I can literally lose 8 or 10 hours and barely be aware of what I’ve done. it’s just wone meeting, or email, or server update, or email, or error message, or event to schedule, or email, or website update, or contract to prepare, or email, or order to place, or email, or email, or email…..
And that’s, fiiiiiiine, but it also makes it really hard to make time to do the dedicated project work I’m actually exited about. This week EHP is in a flux state. We just wrapped up the Deep Cuts crowdfunding campaign and half of the staff (3 of 6 for any will notions that EHP is a big company) are either moving or in vacation. So I proposed that for those of us still at work, we kick ass on Monday and then take the rest of the week slow. Not off (because someone has to hold onto the rudder) but not racing either. I’ve also got my day job to manage, so it’s not like a vacation…but in some ways it was a vacation for my mind [insert appropriate mind blowing memes here].
For the last two weeks my office has been covered in a fine sheen of particle board, mud sanding, and other detritus that has made it unusable (not to mention the work being done in there) so I’ve been working in the dining room on my laptop. It’s sub-optimal for normal work and really not great for staying focused on project work. So I decided to spend the last two days at Peet’s (there’s a great mezzanine in the Peet’s on Redwood Ave that is often quiet, has comfy chairs and tables, and power outlets) and dedicate myself to project work.
Here’s the template: Work for 25 minutes on project, take 10 minutes to check email, messaging apps, tickets, and if there’s any time left do some reading, then 25 minutes on a new project. Rinse and repeat till the day is over. The trick here is that I’ve got four projects I’m doing deep design work on right now: Project Perseus (reviewing the final draft and leaving comments), Tian Deng (developing the gig rewards and campaign ending rules), Dagger Isles (summarizing the post-post playtest work still needed, sounds simple but the summary was seven pages long), Umdaar (apply system development proofing notes to the text, which often involved thinking a lot about Fate mechanics, as well as just plain clarity and readability).
In between that, I was also trying to sneak doing QC (quality control) reviews of Monster of the Week Roll20 modules (for Hunter’s Journal and Slayer’s Survival Kit), creating a new Ticking Timebomb to propose to Tim for Blades ’68 (a tie in between Deep Cuts and ’68), rolling the Trouble Engine for our Blades ’68 game (playing tomorrow night so I wanted to have those ready in advance), and doing some Shadowdark designs (camping, random encounters mods, death’s second chances, and a second page to the character sheet). These latter tasks didn’t merit 25 minute windows, but they did often eat up full 10 minute breaks and/or cause me to extend those breaks a bit to fit them in. The rest of the break time was doing all my normal interrupt work and reading The Dispossessed, which was written in 1974 but feels like it’s needed today.
What I got
After two days, I accomplished the following (not counting interrupt work, I did plenty of emailing too):
- Finished the Tian Deng design work. Woot. On Friday we’ll review it all and then we’ll move to a full compressive review of the text with all the changes applied. Nice!
- Prepared the summary of work on Dagger Isles for Pam to review. Again, it was a lot of different bits, so while a summary doesn’t sound like much, it took two full intervals to finish.
- Made it through 15% of the Project Perseus final doc to leave extensive notes (also collaborating with the authors to get their thoughts on more complex bits).
- Made it through 8% of the Umdaar doc applying edits and doing my own review (also collaborating with the editing team and the author).
- Prepared and recorded the June State of the Hat for EHP
- Quality Control on Monster of the Week Hunter Stories: Gumshoe through Snoop
- Ran the Trouble Engine and prepped for my Blades ’68 campaign.
- Read through my copy of Shadowdark (just got the physical book and it’s great to hold in your hand)
- Read two chapters of The Dispossessed.
I think that awesome. Several of these are things I wouldn’t have made any progress on if I didn’t dedicate the time to doing them. I don’t think this sprint method is necessarily sustainable, but in short intervals I’m happy how well it worked.
There were three huge advantages of splitting up the work:
- Avoiding burn out. Between any particular project I had at least an hour of doing other work before I got back to it.
- Time for correspondence. If I posted something in Discord or sent an email during my first work window on a project, there was often a response by the time I got back to it.
- Forcing me to do the work I might have deprioritized otherwise. Some of this work is just easier or simpler or more fun to do that other bits. By rotating through, I kept more projects alive than I think I would have otherwise.
What could improve
Using the same 10 minute break to handle interrupt work and minor project work and do personal stuff was pretty messy. The time often ran over because things like doing QC took longer than 10 min and I just wanted to get it done. I don’t want to overcomplicate things, but I think having separate times for interrupt work (email, tickets, Discord, Slack, texts) and actual break time would be good. Maybe 25/10/10?
25 min of dedicated work usually felt like it was barely enough and I was nearly always spending a few minute extra to finish up the last thing I was working on. I think that’s a good thing. I’m sure if I gave myself 30 I’d feel the same way, so a soft 25 that can roll over to 30 might be better than hard 30 that leaves me with things stopped midway. Feels like this could still use some tinerking.
Avoiding interruptions during project phases is hard. The phone buzzes, the notification appears, the reflexive instinct to switch to my Gmail tab kicks in. Maybe the worst culprit was when I’d be mid project work and realize I needed to email someone or DM them on Discord, which was still part of the work (usually to get confirmation on something) but then while I was there I’d get distracted by other emails or messages. Challenges of my own making. Not sure there’s a great fix for that. It’s rare that I can fully unplug, so I think I just need to keep developing the discipline to not click open the next email unless I really have to. Subject Line: Pants on Fire!
Credit
Note, this isn’t my work structure at all. I think it’s called the Pomodoro Technique but I’ve picked it up through workplace osmosis, just a concept I’ve head bandied about enough that I’ve tried it from time to time. Not sure why I didn’t stick with it in the past. Maybe if I burn out on it I’ll make another post saying why!
