Ask HN: How do you divide time between engaging with users and development?

Re:Ask HN: How do you divide time between engaging with user... by k3fernan on Thursday June 18, 2020 @10:42AM (#23563519)

My co-founder and I divide our days: before lunch, we take meetings, user interviews, feedback sessions, respond to emails, and tickets. Essentially shallow or synchronous work.

After lunch, we go heads down on coding, design, or writing work. Deep or async work.

This system allows us to always have daily feedback on our product but also uninterrupted time to change the product, every day.

You have to time-box the sync/shallow work, enough to get a good loop in but it's okay if certain things get pushed a day or so. You always have to make space for the deep work.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you divide time between engaging with user... by tschwimmer on Thursday June 18, 2020 @03:48PM (#23567093)

I think this is a good division but I'd switch the order. Deep work requires concentration that rapidly evaporates later in the day. This varies between people but I find I'm most successful when I put my most difficult and demanding work in the morning.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you divide time between engaging with user... by Folcon on Friday June 19, 2020 @08:12AM (#23573617)

I think this might be a morning person / evening person thing. I for example find it much easier to do deep work later in the day.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you divide time between engaging with user... by data_spy on Thursday June 18, 2020 @04:52PM (#23567883)

I would flip this. I'm personally fresher in the morning and would dedicate that time to coding as it needs more willpower.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you divide time between engaging with user... by jiux on Thursday June 18, 2020 @04:49PM (#23567849)

Interesting...what made you two decide to go heads down in the afternoon versus morning?

[ Parent | on HN ]