Usually, the holidays are some of my most productive days developing. There's no overhead. So many fewer people around means fewer meetings, fewer obstacles, fewer interruptions.

Now admittedly part of this is because I can usually pick what I want to do over the holidays, and I'll pick things that don't require a lot of feedback or things that take a really heavy mental lift to complete. That is, I pick things to do over the holidays that require a holiday environment to do well. Win-win.

And this week or two of mostly heads-down time is usually incredibly enjoyable. I take a few days off, sure, but going to work when everyone else is away is a vacation -- of a sort -- in itself. This is not [simply] the anti-social position: Long swathes of time uninterrupted is where development gets done.

But this year is starting to make clear for me that there's a holiday anti-pattern here with remote work: When the family is home, they don't give a rat's behind about minimizing interruptions. 

Now, holidays are the worst time to get things done. I'm holed up in the home office, no chance to walk around and clear my head thinking seriously about an issue I need to consider. Folks tromp near or even through the office without any regard for work going on. Dishwashers, loud pipes, clothes washers, winter cleaning, food prep -- everything's much louder than you'd have at an in-person office even during non-holidays times. 

It's not surprising, and it's essentially ontological, but there's simply no professionalism at home when everyone but you is on break. It makes you appreciate office design a heck of a lot more -- bathrooms away from desks, kitchen areas behind reasonably thick walls...

Ugh. Sad first-world problem rant over. I leave you with this (printable):

Labels: development, devLife, productivity