Flow for Managers

There's no such a thing as a universal way to do your job and not let it kill you.

To achieve the best results some professions need to work in a flow, and some -- in a quick succession of tense-release phases. And, among other things, 'the result' is assessed by how much better your life has become (or maybe it took a turn for the worse).

It looks like Pomodoro-like techniques are best for managers who are forced to operate in a quickly changing environment, while flow is necessary for engineers and researchers.

I'm not saying that Pomodoro is better than the flow. It's more like managers cannot afford working in the flow, as they are constantly and unpredictably forced to leave the flow. And, probably, we should concentrate on how we can increase the time of being in a flow, if we are doing management-like job.

Why flow? In my experience flow can be self-healing. On one hand, you invest a lot into concentration. On the other hand, you certainly get more resource (the way psychology understands it) than you did before. And then you can invest this newly found resource to get even more resource. Basically, it works exactly like it does with the money.

To be realistic, we are not likely to change the situation for the managers completely. But we can reduce the number and quality of factors that make this profession what it is. For instance, we can reduce unpredictability by planning, and enforce it by sharing responsibilities. One way to achieve it is to give up client - service provider model of professional interaction. 

This kind of behavior comes naturally whenever our need to be loved kicks in. And we may need to change it in favor of stakeholders-oriented model (not necessarily horizontal, by the way). The model where each participant has his or her share of work, and also has enough power to get it done. If the condition is met, then such a stakeholder has enough means to do their job with much less risk of burning out.