Taken from: www.kevinwilliampang.com
Very few programmers can go from 0 to code at the drop of a hat. In general, we tend to be more akin to locomotives than ferraris; it may take us awhile to get started, but once we hit our stride we can get an impressive amount of work done. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to get into a programming zone when your train of thought is constantly being derailed by clients, managers, and fellow programmers.
There is simply too much information we need to keep in mind while we’re working on a task to be able to drop the task, handle another issue, then pick up the task without missing a beat. Interruptions kill our train of thought and getting it back is often a time-consuming, frustrating, and worst of all, error-prone process.
I agree 100%. I work primarily from home and if I hear a TV in the background it just ruins my train of thought. I recently got the iPhone Ambiance app, so now I just put my headphones on and listen to “Rain - Thunder”, because even most music distracts me.
Just stumbled across your blog; have you considered “concentration assistance” drugs?
I’m 20 years old, and I just (*JUST* = 2 months ago) got diagnosed with ADD. Now, whether or not I’ve always been ADD, and whether or not such a diagnosis makes any difference coming 2 years after graduating high school are both beside the point.
The point is that now, every 30 days, I get an orange pill bottle full of 60×30mg Adderall, and even *half* of one of these pills will throw me into an 8-hour, no-holds-barred coding frendzy. It’s like giving the locomotive a jump start.
If I could go through high school as a 4.0 student and get diagnosed in my working life for a drug I probably don’t really “need” [in a medical sense], but that helps me produce more work in an 8 hour day… maybe you can too :)
Of course, Adderall likely has long term consequences probably not limited to developing tolerance to it. ymmv, but I’d urge against it for recreational usage.
As to the OP, I think essentially all of us programming have to contend with that challenge.