How do you stayed focused on a task when the task involves some type of waiting?

For example, I have a really hard time staying focused at work. The problem for me is, our software can be really really really slow. While I’m waiting for Outlook to load an email, or our internal tooling to populate data, I find my mind is wandering. Often, I’ll start on another task or pick up my phone and just completely forget about the first thing I started.

At the end of the day, I have to figure out why I have 8 half written emails open in the background of my PC.

How do you stay on track when your tasks require patience?

  • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    21·
    8 months ago

    1. As a software developer I’ve worked to optimize our tooling to minimize this kind of waiting.

    2. Be transparent about having ADHD and just task switch, keep a rotation of active projects and if one gets blocked just go to the next one.

    • xmunk@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      61·
      8 months ago

      Oh, I wanted to add that my company recently switched from Gmail to Outlook. Outlook is fucking miserable in terms of responsiveness and accessibility so, unless you can use a custom front end, I’d just try and steer as much discussion as possible away from email so that you ideally only need to check it once a day.

    • SubArcticTundraEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      Yeah, I think of my workflow as working on a painting: it’s not one coherent process, I just keep making progress on whichever bit happens to catch my attention (which keeps changing) until the whole thing is done.