Distraction: the one big obstacle

When hypnotizing people we reach the same state of mind.

It takes 10-20 minutes to reach this condition. After this, we can start to work on the code. We are so absorbed by our work that we forget everything else. We even loose a feeling for the duration this takes.

The reason we have to work this way has to do with a limitation of our mind. To be exact, it is a limit set by our short-term-memory. Lets see what that is, exactly.
 

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The short-term memory lasts about 20 minutes and is localized in a special form of RNA (called "messenger RNA" - we know this, because there are drugs that can suppress this form of RNA so that we loose our short-term memory). Under shock (an accident, for example), we can loose the contents of this memory, and we loose the last twenty minutes of our live.

If we want to keep information for a longer period, this information has to be propagated to our long-term memory, which is physically based on specific proteins (RNA is a forerunner of DNA, and DNA is - like RNA - a blueprint for proteins). Once something is in our long-term memory it is kept forever. If we can't remember an information from our long-term memory it is because of desorganisation, that is, we don't find the key to this information, though it is still present. All memory works by association (linking) one information with another, and we remember things because we can walk this chain of information through these links until we reach the desired goal or fail remembering because a link is missing or too weak.
 

Unfortunateley, the human mind is different. If we are interrupted, some of the information can be saved to the short-term memory, but this information is not active, so it can't be (all) propagated to our long-term memory. Worse, we loose the focus that we have built, and we have to handle the interrupt. Lets say for example that this real-world interrupt is a phone call that lasts only two minutes.

After this time, some of the information we have built ist lost and has to be retrieved again. But that special state of our mind, our focus, has been lost, too, and rebuilding this focus needs again 10-20 minutes. Say it needs an average of about 15 minutes. Now lets calculate an example:
 

A few more interrupts, and we can waste a few hours of work. This can be very frustrating. Now you do know why software developers hate the telephone...

A friend of mine wrote a dissertation (submitted for a diploma) about the differences between "ordinary" people and computer freaks. To his (and mine) amazement he found only ONE significant way to distinguish between these two groups: computer freaks hate telephones!

This is the reason why Tom DeMarco wrote in his book Why Does Software Cost So Much? a chapter about distraction and that this is the one essential problem that has to be solved to make software developers more productive. This is the one major obstacle that has to be removed.

People working on projects involving creative work (esp. advertising agencies) had known this for a long time. Perhaps we can learn a lot from them?
 

Distraction is one of the major sources of frustration for software developers. Come to think of it: maybe one of the reasons that free (or open source) software is superior to commercial software has to do with the fact that those developers have more control over their working environment and therefore less distraction!