I’ve allowed myself to get distracted lately by too much interruptive information. When you’re coding it can take a while to load the code into your brain and get into the zone where you’re making real progress with it (Paul Graham describes it here [1]). Every time you get interrupted it can be like starting over. It’s easy to get distracted by various communication mediums popping up on your desktop. And a day with with regular interruptions is a day where not a lot of work gets done.

So lately I’ve taken some steps to get control of my work time again.

• No twitterific. I check twitter a couple of times a day from the web interface. I also installed a firefox plugin to monitor how long I spend each day on various web sites.
• No Adium. IM messages are generally not important. If it’s not important enough to warrant an email then it’s not important enough to warrant disturbing me.
• No Skype. If I need make or receive a call I’ll switch it on. Otherwise, the same goes as for Adium.
• Feedreader set to update twice a day. I’ll only check feeds at the beginning and the end of the day.
• Email client set to check for new mail every 2 hours. Some emails are important. I may increase this to twice a day depending on how it goes.
• IRC: This is a tricky one as IRC is a great place to get answers quickly. So I’ll still be on IRC a bit but it will depend on what I’m working on.
• Anybody who really needs to reach me has my mobile number. So if it’s important enough to interrupt me then they can text me.

The above applies when I’m doing work that requires concentration. On other days when I’m doing stuff that doesn’t require much focus then the above can be ignored.

It’s easy to get addicted to your info feed and want continuous access to it asap. But the truth is most of it in not urgent and it doesn’t lose value if you batch-process it rather than deal with it in real-time.

In fact batch processing is much more efficient for this information as you are more likely to skim or skip the unimportant stuff.