Do you use the Pomodoro Technique? Many tech folks migrate towards that to help enhance their productivity. I know you do and follow builds, both locally and in a build server somewhere. How do you make these things work together? If your builds take any amount of time, more than 10 seconds or so, that will basically kill you pomodoro.
Overlearning
Your first option available to you for retaining your pomodoro may be to use the time that the build is running for that “overlearning” thing that you typically do when you finish whatever the designated task for that pomodoro, and you still have time left. Instead of distracting yourself away from your task, you can stay closer on track, and do more research and investigation while the build is running. Perhaps there’s another code path that you wanted to investigate more, but haven’t yet. Maybe there was this git command that you saw and wanted to dig more into. Noticed one of your packages was out of date and you need to research if there are any breaking changes in the new version? Right after you kick off a new build may be the best time to dig into some of these things.
Kill The Pomodoro
Another option is to just go ahead and mark the pomodoro down as killed, the same way as if a colleague had dropped by and interrupted you. It is a similar issue; you are just sitting there waiting for some feedback in order to proceed. There may not be anything more that you can do here that will be productive, so just continue on to browsing your Twitter feed.
Build Reduction
Another option is a specialized kind of overlearning, where you investigate if there is a way to decrease the time your build is taking. Maybe there is a more narrowed task you can run. Perhaps there is a better caching mechanism that can be put in place for build artifacts. Maybe for task branches Jenkins doesn’t need to start from a clean workspace every time.
And Others
There are obviously many other options available to you. You can try to hold off doing the build until you’re leaving for lunch, or the end of the day. The downside with that type of approach is that you are pushing off valuable feedback. You can simply time your pomodoros around your builds, so you can stay focused on what you really need to stay focused on, and not try to run builds within your pomodoros. None of these are really bad options, they are just options that you will need to choose from.