Managing interruptions

Posted on July 17th, 2008 by Sacha Chua

W- asked me if I could recommend any self-help books or tips on how to manage interruptions and get back on task. I thought it was funny because I’m usually the one who has problems staying on task. (Dishwasher partially full, laundry sitting in the washing machine, un-sipped tea, things like that…) =) Then again, I think I get fewer computer-based interruptions than he does.

I told him that David Allen’s book on Getting Things Done is popular among geeks who deal with frequent interruptions. The key ideas that help are to write down all the tasks in a trusted system, and not to switch tasks unless it’s really urgent and important.

He’s also checking out LeechBlock, a Firefox extension that makes it just a bit easier to focus on your real work instead of going to your favorite time-wasting sites. =)

More posts about: productivity // Add Comment »

Short URL: http://sachachua.com/blog/p/4952

On This Day...

2012: Experience report: Editing, formatting, and publishing an e-book — Writing is a great way to share what I’m learning with lots of people, and I’d like to make that [...]
2011: An elephant love story: Real stories of Manila Zoo — I retell this story for my dad, whose stories about Maali and the zoo are mostly on Facebook and harder [...]
2010: Garden riches — One of the first things J- did when she woke up this morning was to pick fresh vegetables from the [...]
2008: One sentence – microfiction, microlife — Microblogging done beautifully: onesentence.org. Someday I hope to be able to write like that. =)
2008: Notes from GBS Learning Week — I just got back from the GBS Learning Week conference held at White Oaks (Niagara-on-the-Lake), and I wanted to write [...]
2006: Ten years hence — Didith Rodrigo handled some of the classes of the Introduction to Ateneo Culture and Tradition – a frosh orientation thing [...]
2006: Hot chocolate day — It took me two hours to commute to work this morning. I needed to be there because my planner only had [...]
2006: Did my dishes, went to the circus festival — Kathy would’ve loved the Toronto International Circus Festival. =D Poisters, diabolists, jugglers, unicyclists, etc. Cool stuff! Also, I managed to get all [...]
2005: Interesting clubs — Won’t join all of them, but these look interesting Research The U of T Human Factors Interest Group Knowledge Media Design Society (eventually) Business U [...]
2003: 2.6 kernel coming up! — List of features: http://kernelnewbies.org/status/latest.html Narrative description: http://www.kniggit.net/wwol26.html
2003: Downside of syntax coloring? — http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=slrnbh0p28.uj.wettering@keck.vandewettering.net

sacha chua living an awesome life