My best remedy for this is to assertively establish and enforce temporal boundaries.
Track the time and say its "just for your own diligence".
An attitude of acknowledging there is always a clock running and you engage with how you allocate it has, in my experience cuts through this kind of poor teamwork quickly.
You never say they aren't important or you don't have time, you just make it explicit how much time and how often that liberty, which they are always free to take, is being invoked. In a way you value them more by committing your undivided attention.
This response is analogous to when people look at the health information on a snack and think " maybe i ought not eat the whole box in a sitting ". They are still free to do so, but the information makes the responsible and foolish choice more apparent.
At its core is teaching a new level of conscientious relationship with professional engagement. You're helping them grow as a human while maintaining dignity and encouraging a more intentionally sincere and personal relationship.
it is not clear to me the roles of "you" and "them" in your post, but if I pick "manager" and "worker" (or vice versa) I still don't really know what you are trying to say.
I think what you are saying is "tell the manager you are tracking their time". but not sure.
I think he means that employee is telling the manager that the employee is tracking his own time, thus, when the manager requests work to be done, the manager will take a resource-oriented approach to the employee's time and focus. It might make the manager more conscious about this often subtle detail (time is money) and they will likely feel more restricted when it comes to managing the employee, instead of being empowered. This is good for curbing micromanagement.
Yes. Although this article isn't about "micromanagement" in my mind. Micro-management, in software, effectively turns the programmer into a secretary taking dictation.
It's someone caring about the details of the results along with the details of the implementation, and the process, and every other factor but then hiring someone else to actually press the keys and move the mouse. It turns the task of programming from problem-solving to satisfying effectively onerous checklists of ceremonial acrobatics. There's other ways to solve that problem.
The original post is talking about debilitating flow and a structure (stemming from a culture and engagement) that is fundamentally destructive.
Track the time and say its "just for your own diligence".
An attitude of acknowledging there is always a clock running and you engage with how you allocate it has, in my experience cuts through this kind of poor teamwork quickly.
You never say they aren't important or you don't have time, you just make it explicit how much time and how often that liberty, which they are always free to take, is being invoked. In a way you value them more by committing your undivided attention.
This response is analogous to when people look at the health information on a snack and think " maybe i ought not eat the whole box in a sitting ". They are still free to do so, but the information makes the responsible and foolish choice more apparent.
At its core is teaching a new level of conscientious relationship with professional engagement. You're helping them grow as a human while maintaining dignity and encouraging a more intentionally sincere and personal relationship.