4pm and on. Windows closed. In many ways most likely. The afternoon's all sun and no wind and a bit of tension and way too much coffee again. Still trying to figure out the right moment for now to lay down todays tools and tasks and accept there'll of course be leftovers for Monday. Multitasking, microtasking and the peculiar aspects both has, on productivity and on ones own mental state.
Heading for 9am. Day's filling up quickly, first calls, first head-scratching moments, first counting of breath to slow down a bit. (Wrestling, again, that unsettling feeling of handling too many fragments to really solve the puzzle, or any puzzle at all.)
Been in my playlist this morning, and, though obvious in some ways, still added some points and leaves me pondering that particular issue more than usual:
At the outset, including for the IBM System three sixty, the computer with a single CPU was not actually multitasking. It was doing the same thing that our brains do. It was jumping back and forth between tasks really fast to make sure it was doing them both adequately. So when we kind of figured out that there was a problem with processing, that there were limits to it. We established very quickly something called a processing bottleneck. That, yeah, there is. It's documented humans do not multitask to begin with, and when we try to multitask, the results are terrible.
Circling 9am. Throwing out messages one day, harvesting responses the other. Sometimes it's a few, sometimes it's a load, and sometimes it adds to the multitasking already at hand. Everything else is caffeine and tension.
3pm and on. Moving in test cycles, head spinning. Waiting for long-running jobs is a good way to disappear in multitasking once more. But some things just take the time they need. And at some point one's running out of ephemeral tasks that don't need much attention or dedication. (Rewinding. Taking notes. Forgetting again. And still, outcomes are pending.)
10am and on. Monday constantly playing with different shapes. Across the street, seems people more than usual resorted to working from home today. Still no clouds in a soft blue sky, some sun trying to push light into the narrow streets. (Also, jumping from call to call, hanging up just to hear the sound of a virtual bell ringing again. Considering yet another coffee even though this late morning should have better plans.)
11am and on. Context switching to a point where project silhouettes fade and boundaries dissolve. Copying code, breaking test, scratching beard, wondering. More coffee to the rescue, and a short meditation in the emptiness between seconds to refocus.
10am and on. Each piece of software reaches the point to weed out many minor issues from a vast load of unspecified inconsistent behaviour in upstream systems. That's where things get funny, that's where time is lost by days not hours. (Also: That feeling of relief seeing a meeting that didn't really suit the daily schedule well anymore postponed by someone else. Filling the sudden temporary void with coffee and euphoria to focus on other pressing things.)