Alright, let’s talk about this ‘gadomski’ thing I tried out a while back. Heard about it from some guy at a meetup, sounded kinda interesting, maybe a way to shake things up with how we were handling our daily workflow.
So, Monday morning, I decided, let’s give this gadomski approach a shot. The core idea, as I understood it, was pretty simple: focus block, quick sync, focus block, longer break, repeat. Less structured meetings, more focused work time. Seemed logical, right?
Getting Started
First thing I did was rearrange my calendar. Blocked out those ‘focus’ periods, marked down the short ‘sync’ spots. Told the small team I was working with, “Hey, we’re trying something new this week, the gadomski rhythm.” They kinda looked at me funny, but hey, they were game.
The first focus block actually felt pretty good. Put my phone on silent, shut down email notifications. Just coded. Felt productive. Then came the ‘quick sync’. Supposed to be like 5 minutes. Just quick updates, blockers. Day one, it stretched to 15 minutes. Okay, teething problems, I thought.
The Grind
By Wednesday, things were getting… messy. The ‘gadomski’ idea relies on everyone really sticking to those focus times. But you know how it is. Someone has an ‘urgent’ question. A client calls. The ‘quick syncs’ kept ballooning because people saved up all their non-urgent stuff for them, turning them into mini-meetings.
- The focus blocks got interrupted. A lot.
- The quick syncs weren’t quick.
- The longer breaks sometimes got skipped because we ran late on syncs.
I remember specifically trying to debug this one nasty issue. Deep in concentration, finally getting somewhere. Then, ping! Someone needed feedback right now on something that absolutely could have waited. Broke my flow completely. That happened way too often that week.
It felt like we were forcing a structure onto a workflow that just wasn’t built for it. Our tasks often needed more collaboration than the short syncs allowed, and the rigid focus blocks made spontaneous discussions feel disruptive, even when they were necessary.
So, What Happened?
By Friday, we were all kinda beat. We had a quick chat, and the consensus was pretty clear. The gadomski thing, at least how we tried to implement it, just didn’t fit our team’s style. It created more friction than it solved.
Did I fail? Maybe. Or maybe the technique just wasn’t the magic bullet I thought it might be. It’s like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. We went back to our old ways, maybe slightly more mindful of interruptions, but without the strict ‘gadomski’ labels.
It was an experiment. Some things you try work out, some don’t. This one didn’t, not for us anyway. Learned a bit about our own team dynamics though, so I guess it wasn’t a total waste of time. Just another thing tried, logged, and moved on from.
