Day 49: I want to be more open

My normal routine when I sit down to work: Put in my earbuds, drown out my environment, and enter a flow state where I concentrate uninterrupted for many hours. It’s not unusual for me to do deep work for 10+ hours because it feels like playing a video game — every problem is a boss to be slayed, and I have no problem being immersed in that world as long as my biological needs let me.

This style of working usually feels incredibly productive and satisfying, but today, I saw how it has some serious drawbacks.

Picture me, sitting with my favorite setup, totally dialed in and focused on figuring out a strange bug with lots of moving parts.

Across from me is Sashko, who’s developing a way to scrape Gmail to be able to access and process emails programmatically.

While I sit there, trying to figure out what the heck is going on with my code, I notice something interesting: Sashko is constantly alternating between working and discussing what he’s working on with the people around him. One moment, he’s typing away on his computer; the next, he’s discussing how to differentiate 3-letter airport codes in emails from the literal text “CSS”; then he’s working again; a moment later, he’s sitting with some other folks tossing around ideas about how this kind of API could enable better filters for spam and other unwanted emails.

At a certain point, I’m less interested in figuring out my bug and more interested in watching what’s happening in front of me. By involving the people around him, Sashko is rapidly improving his ideas and getting people interested in what he’s building.

When I work, I typically tend to treat other people and social interactions as distractions from accomplishing the task at hand. And for certain types of work, this can be useful: If I know exactly what I need to do and it’s only a matter of executing, it is usually not helpful to chat with other people.

But what I’ve ended up doing is that I’ve taken the deep work approach and applied it to every single kind of work I do, regardless of whether it requires strong focus or not. As a result, I’ve been ignoring one of the most important resources available to me: other people.

I’m realizing that I haven’t been very good at involving others in my product development process. Sure, I’ve sent out surveys asking for feedback and have discussions with beta testers, but I often don’t discuss questions that I’m pondering about product, marketing, design, etc. with other people. Even the posts here in Road to Ramen are typically about my internal decision making process rather than a way to solicit outside opinions.

There are many parts about this that I’m still not sure about (When does it make sense to talk to other people and when does it not? Should I make a similar effort online by posting more on Twitter? Does it only apply for things like marketing whether it’s clearly helpful to have discussions or to coding as well?), but I do know that I want to take a much more collaborative approach to my work. I want to work in the open by both being open about my process and being open to others’ thoughts.

I generally tend to feel uncomfortable receiving help from others (I can hypothesize about how growing up without reliable parental figures might’ve caused this, but at this point, it’s irrelevant), and I’m guessing this is another manifestation of that. My hesitancy to involve others feels like it might stem from a desire for control as well as a fear of inconveniencing others. What a fun combo! Anyway, this is a major area of myself that I’d like to work on.

Many thanks to Sashko for reminding me that involving the people around me in the things I do is not only more fun, but also quite helpful!