Everything everywhere all at once; managing interruptions and surprises By Helen Scott

We get interrupted both from within, when our unconscious is vying for our attention, and from outside, when our work or life throws us a curveball. Mid-task, our brains come up with any number of apparently urgent tasks that we must do immediately, such as ordering that book, replying to an email, or messaging a friend. These thoughts disrupt our flow and impact our productivity, and if we let them, they can completely derail us. The work itself can be just as good at surprising us, but are those surprises just tempting us away from what we really need to do, or are they true impediments to our direction and timescales? Is it just some pretty scenery that we would like to see, or has the bridge we were about to take collapsed? In this talk, Helen explores how distractions work and how they impact us. She disputes that we need to hack our minds and suggests we must hack our environment, tools, and work instead. Helen will argue that not all surprises can be planned for, but there are techniques that we can use to surface and respond to them sooner. Helen’s talk will involve dragons, ignorance and…ooh, look, a squirrel! HELEN SCOTT Helen Scott is a Developer Advocate at JetBrains. She has worked at numerous software companies in the last 20 years and has experienced the development cycle at all stages in various roles throughout that time. Helen loves to learn new tools and technologies, create content about that journey and share it with the community.