{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "canonicalUrl": "https://rednafi.com/zephyr/finding-flow-amid-chaos/",
  "description": "Strategies for achieving deep work and focus time as an engineer drowning in meetings, Slack messages, and corporate interruptions.",
  "path": "/zephyr/finding-flow-amid-chaos/",
  "publishedAt": "2023-11-25T00:00:00.000Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:fgtm2c26vfcj74rfmeggbyqj/site.standard.publication/3mnl6f7ob462z",
  "tags": [
    "Essay"
  ],
  "textContent": "Despite being an IC for the bulk of my career, finding my groove amidst the daily torrent of\nmeetings from the early hours has always felt like balancing on a seesaw during a\nnever-ending earthquake. Now, pair that with the onslaught of Slack inquiries and the\nincessant chiming of email notifications, and you have a front-row ticket to the anxiety\ncircus. There are days when carving out a single hour of focus time is a wild goose chase,\npushing me to work after hours to get stuff done, followed by a guilt trip about\nscreen-gazing my life away.\n\nMeetings in the corporate software world come in two flavors: one where you're charting the\nwork terrain or dissecting issues, and the other is a procession of process meetings. Daily\nstandups, one-on-ones with the manager, monthly all hands, and a confetti of other mandatory\nrendezvous that often makes you question your career choice at the tail of a chaotic but\nunproductive day. Although the meeting marathon for an IC isn't as grueling as what a\nproduct manager or team lead endures, it's still a hefty list that often sidelines the real\ndeal - doing the actual work you were hired for.\n\nNow, railing against the corporate sky is useless. I'm well aware that far more astute minds\nhave written about this many times before. Also, some of these meetings are paramount in a\nlarger organization for coordinating work among many different teams and keeping the\nstakeholders in the loop. But that doesn't mean things couldn't improve. One thing that I've\nexperienced is that I work better when all the meetings are clustered together in the\nmorning, so there's room for a couple of hours of deep work after 1-2 PM every day. That\nway, I can do all the meetings, write all the emails and Slack messages, do all the busy\nwork before lunch, and then tune into focused work until the end of the day.\n\nOf course, achieving this nirvana is easier said than done, especially if your manager or\ncoworkers don't work in the same cadence. Neither should a team adopt an immutable work\nstyle that isn't flexible enough to cater to changes. Plus, chaos induced by the messages\nand meetings between different teams is often beyond your control. The best you can probably\ndo is talk to your manager, propose a potential workflow, and see whether it works for them\nand your coworkers.\n\nI'm yet to discover the unicorn's horn that'll allow me to deftly toggle between meetings\nand in-zone work without having to dodge a few anxiety attacks during work hours. Whether\nyou're a manager or an IC, if you have a story of how your current or previous team tackled\nthis issue or have a better idea, I'd love to hear about it!",
  "title": "Finding flow amid chaos"
}