[ianbicking]

Hard work is hard, but I wonder if it truly requires an anti-social approach.

The nice thing if you are working in isolation is that everyone involved in your work environment is probably aligned towards a goal. Or at least we hope you yourself are aligned – and yet even that is hard to manage, as we all know from our own ability to distract ourselves.

An open office, messaging, all those distractions aren't just distractions, they are external influences that aren't designed to help you get YOUR work done. Someone else has a question to help them get THEIR work done. Someone else is monitoring your productivity to help them alleviate their own anxiousness.

I'm not a big fan of pair programming, but I do like how it can lead to better focus. It's like you are focus accountability partners. I also like ad hoc meetings setup for a specific purpose, if the purpose really is important for the participants I think it's productive. And if the problem is really important, I like a meeting where we talk things through and then get quiet for a long time. We don't give up. We don't defer the problem, leave and go our separate ways. Part of doing hard work, in my experience, is loading up the tensions, piling up everything that makes it hard, and then finding the way out. It's not always easiest to do that alone.