Slashdot Mirror
Driven to Distraction by Technology
Ant writes "CNET News.com says 'The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for the brains to get into a really creative state. The result, says Carl Honore, journalist and author of "In Praise of Slowness," is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.'"
That sounds about right where I wor...
Hold on, I just got an IM.
Where I work, it's not the e-mail or instant message interrupting me so much as it's the person stopping by your cubicle *in person* to ask a question.
Quit being so quick to find evil in technology.
If I ignore (for the moment) an interruption, then it has less of an impact on my productivity. And some of us multi-task fairly well, which would also reduce the impact.
I do believe that there are many distractions that may take our minds of our work. The phone ringing, the pager going off, the bright blue sky outside with flocks of geese slowly migrating back to their Canadian homes. All these things are distractions that may harm productivity.
But I don't think that productivity is being harmed to such an extent that a fuss must be raised over it. Projects are still being finished, people are still getting paid, and products are still being sold. It's not that there are so many more distractions than before, it's simply that we can quantify (and villify) one particular set of distractions.
Maybe it's just me, but sometimes taking a time out to stare out the window at the horizon helps me feel a lot better about sitting in front of the computer.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
... hones the creative brain to a razor's edge.
Or at least, it's distorting the facts. :)
Work keepy interrupting my IMing, not the other way around
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
That's why I just ignore all of it and sit in my office playing Nethack and reading slashdot. Occasionally somebody will pop their head in, but I just tell them I'm busy and I'll come find them in a few minutes. They usually just go bother someone else.
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
This is exactly what my boss doesn't seem to get, however often I try to explain it to him. I do software development for a living in an open office without even cubicles. I have very hard time to concentrate on my tasks when other people - my boss included - come around every half a minute to ask me when I will have time to do something or just keep having meetings one meter (a little over three feet for those of you who are not familiar with the metric system) behind my back.
Especially this is difficult when I cannot give an instant answer and have to think about it for a minute. I first need to change my way of thinking into the model of the interrupting project and then back to the original project that I'm supposed to be working on. Afterwards I probably have to figure out some things for the second time because they were lost in the process.
E-mails or IM's aren't so bad, they just pop up a little square in the lower left corner of the screen and I can deal with them later. Other people or phonecalls are harder to ignore.
Set your IM to busy.
Set your mail client to check for new email once an hour.
Switch your phone to voicemail.
If your boss won't let you, then it's an organisation problem, because your boss absolutely needs to understand that this is how to get you to work most efficiently.
...is the average time between each time I read /.
Just run a silent system. No bells or chimes to signal when new email comes in. Have your phone light up, not ring. I never IM, as it annoys the hell out of me in general, so my distractions rarely, if ever, register enough to take me away from my work.
Also, the same studies that say you need eight minutes to charge up say that your brain is only good for about twenty minutes at a clip, and then processing effectivness takes a big dive. Therefore, you can surface every half hour or so to check up on what you've missed.
But the people stopping by... There's now way to fix that, except maybe not showing or begin collecting rare cheeses.
Describes my whole life -- in recent years, anyway -- quite well.
I'm a clinical engineer in a very large US hospital, in the operating room. In addition to the distractions above, we also have the old fashioned overhead pager to deal with. I used to have a pretty long attention span, but I think I have acquired ADD. I can't work on anything longer than a minute at a time and usually try to be doing two things at once so I'm not waiting. Ever. It gets better at the end of the day, but when cases are getting started, there are usually 3 things I have to do at any one time.
My strategy is to ignore eamil and my personal phone line and just worry about the emergencies for the first 5 hours of my day, then try to do the actual engineering work with whatever time is left. Works ok, but it would be nice to have more free time. Unfortunately, I just can turn off my pager.
>:]
And that is why I simply don't answer the phone 80% of the time unless it is a call from somebody that I know would be needing help with a priority project/subproject/whatever. Ditto with emails - however I appreciate that email makes it easier to screen incoming information and quickly decide whether it is worth reading right away.
If I'm deep in thought, off goes the email, and the phone certainly gets ignored.
Work on the stuff you know is important, or at the very least work on the stuff your boss tells you is important. Don't just switch tasks every time somebody adds something to your to-do list. The guy calling on the phone will get taken care of in time. Time management gurus call this taking care of the important rather than just the "urgent." This is the only way things get fixed in the long-term - often the guy screaming for help on the phone is looking for a short term solution.
In fact, I normally prefer email to phone calls. It is less interrupting, and it forces the person who is contacting you to organize their thoughts rather than just randomly spilling them out. Phone is GREAT for conversations, but TERRIBLE for just making requests. Unless you know that the call is going to be very high priority for both parties, I think you're better off just sending an email to schedule a time to make the call, or better still a visit.
But that is just my two cents...
Works for me.
The owls are not what they seem
We had this problem in our office, where telephone calls were routed to groups of people. Everybody got distracted and decided upon looking at the caller ID wether to pick up the phone.
Favourite office sport became being the last one to pick up, before the answering machine answered.We descarded the old system and routed all calls directly, forwarding the call quickly (after two rings) to one other phone, if it wasn't picked up. If that one also wasn't picked up within two rings, the call got forwarded to the boss.
We blocked IM at the same time. The changes are appreciated by the employees, who say it's way less stressful.
by technology focusing news-site would be more accurate
\u262D = \u5350
Gotta check out responses to my /. posting.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Every Mac user I've ever met spends about 60% of his/her time doing useless work because "its so pretty!"
Get rid of the icons and stupid gurggling noises, f11 view everything key and low and behold users might do more work.
The original is here.
It's been documented that if someone knows he's got an email/voicemail, he'll go crazy if he can't at least see who sent it, or knowing that, what it is about.
This is quite terrible, given that most stuff can be ignored, yet we get emails and voice mails all the time.
I think this is one reason why people totally despise spam.
I remember in '91 there was a guy who would go on "vacation" (with the vacation program) even when in the office. You'd mail him and get a note that he was realy busy, and would respond later. If you went and interrupted him, it needed to be really, really urgent, or he'd have a fit.
I thought it was odd then, but now it makes perfect sense.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Don't you have something better to do mr. President?
Where's the problem? Just disable interrupts while you're managing one, and re-enable when ended. People will keep calling until they don't get some CPU share. Else, the overhead for context switching is known to be terrible. Just be sure to schedule calls from your boss in real time priority, if you don't want to get fired.
42.
Isn't the solution to simply turn that stuff off when you are required to be creative?
Adventure City Tours
Probably flaimbait, but I think it needs to be said...
At what point do people take responsibility for their work? Most of us have actual tasks that we need to accomplish. If we can't get our work done because we're being distracted, can't we just remove the distraction?
-Disable IM when you're really busy
-Check email less frequently
-Let calls go to voicemail occasionally
-Administer the fist of death to those people who constantly interrupt
Sure I'm oversimplifying. You get the point though. I hope...
Cause everyone wants a free Xbox360
Tech causes problem because we haven't yet learned to handle it. Sure, we use it all the time, but that doesn't mean that we're using sound strategies to handle all the information and requests from colleagues.
Just read the article: more and more companies are realizing that they cannot continue with all of the information management like they have used to. At first, these little tricks will seem pretty odd, but once we filter out those that work for everyone involved, they will be strategies commonly used across entire industries.
YMMV, but I find that if I, for any longer period of time, turn off notifications for e-mail etc (or if I am forced to use my webmail instead of a fat IMAP client or so) I will spend a lot more time polling my webmail than I would have lost due to "push" interruptions. The same goes for slashdot and the like.
I suppose there are parameters that I could vary (get a more interesting job, for one;).
Go for a dip in Circular Pool (in the bottom of the comma shape to the right of the falls) when the pressure of having 4-5 visitors a day (on a busy day) gets to be too much.
BYO power and connectivity (a well-concealed hydro system would be an option, but solar works really, really well up here).
Nuffsaid
________
Don't know about his cat, but Schroedinger is definitely dead.
"The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for the brains to get into a really creative state."
Hey, I won't disagree that it is very difficult to work with constant distraction. As a Programmer, a SysAdmin, sometimes you have to sit and _think_ about the big picture.
You must pause and consider.
However, the above quote shows quite aptly one of the major flaws with Western Medicine. It seems to think that all human beings are identical.
8 minutes? Clearly this is some sort of average, and an average likely deduced by dubious means. It could be 1 minute for some, 16 minutes for others.. and the type of creativity could make as much of a difference as the person involved!
Of course, let's just boil it all down into a neat figure, instead...
It was the constant interruptions by the technologically impared that drove me to the brink of madness. I soon wrangled the approval to telecommute from the dolts upstairs. Now I answer voice mail /email twice a day and spend the increase in productivity building and selling components online and meditating. I feel much more useful now.
The folks at the office view me as a dinosaur because I refuse to install an IM client. Usually I prefer email, because I can read them when I am at a good breaking point. Then again, if I am really busy for weeks or months at a time, it can be weeks or months before I reach a good breaking point, at which point the email queries are effectively lost, so in these cases email is effectively ignored.
There was a point a few years back where there were so many interruptions that I felt that there was no point in starting a new project.
I myself will simply ignore the email and focus on what I must accomplish. Then when I'm at a breaking point, I'll look at the email.
Simple old-fashioned prioritization.
All thing fall under:
- Urgent or Not Urgent
- Important or not Important
That forms a 2x2 matrix, and all problems should be ranked accordingly. Then, it becomes clear what the most efficient way to deal with the issues are.Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I once had an urgent high priority matter and got sick of interruptions. I normally wear high quality headphones (office music is well...), but...
Next day did not show up at the office and logged on from home through VPN and shut off my phones. Worked my 8 hours and got back to work next day. They had a problem with it, but I said it was billable time and I had to allocate the entire day to one client that was basically a convoluted research project.
The reason why I was surprised at the reaction? I live 3 miles from my office. Any urgent ticket, for which I have real-time notification, would have same speed of response if not quicker than calling me in the office.
Some people just don't get it, but it's a good option if you can make it work. I much prefer working in my home office with a high end sound system rather than the open-doored office in subzero temperatures.
I've been successful another 2 times so far to work remotely and converted most customers for remote access.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
I had an employee a few years ago who didn't seem to understand the idea of uninterrupted work. I regularly close my door and get work done - research, coding, whatever - and the rule around the lab is, if the door is closed, you leave the person alone. This one guy didn't seem to understand this - I mean, he didn't WANT to have this apply to him...
He would come up with really annoying ways to interrupt, like hammering on my door really hard, or standing in front of the door talking loudly. The final straw, that resulted in his near-decapitation, was one incident where he emailed me, emailed me five minutes later to complain I hadn't responded, then borrowed a security key to let himself in to my office to ask why I wasn't answering email.
Sigh.
There are some simple things you can do to help:
1) Only open your e-mail program when the network is down
2) Unplug your phone unless you are wearing the headphones
3) Lock your door and accept no callers unless you are not in the office
When the task at hand is of particular importance and I fear having my state of deep concentration disrupted by people talking to or around me, I use ear plugs. This I heartily recommend. Ear phones playing your music of choice may also work.
The plugs I use are very discrete and very effective, so coworkers who are not aware of this practice are at times annoyed by my apparent autism. This is however (most of the time) by far outweighed by my increased productivity.
If they really really need to talk to me, they're free to poke me with a stick.
But I interupt myself way too ofter
This is a link to an old Slashdot story from maybe three years ago, that very eloquently talks about how the instantaneous nature of email, IM, and business in general these days is affecting people.
After reading it, I have turned off all notifications on my computer, and haven't looked back since. It's nice to be master of your own domain, even if it is a tiny one.
"Diplomacy is something you do until you find a rock." --Richard Pound
for a while, i used the Ion3 window manager and GNU screen. having a set of full screen windows aided concentration.
I get it, you're working on something and you're trying to concentrate, come up with the next block of code for an intricate function, and some popup email notification for shonky viagra salesman comes up and throws your concentration a little, annoying.
I don't however think that the best solution is to "unplug" so to speak, because I've had the reverse to, deeply entranced in something complex for hours on end, only to find out that it was useless work because I was emailed twenty minutes into the task and notified we'd be taking a different task, that is similiarily annoying.
It'd be ideal if you could set the computer to know what you're working on, say a project tag for incoming communication attempts, and anything related to what you were working on got through instantly with the potential for interruption otherwise it was stowed away without notification until later. I achieve this now just by making assumptions about who will be contacting me with regards to what, but it's a kludge, and the people you expect to not bug you with something unless it's important aren't always worthy of such faith.
A way to let people know that need to know what you're working on without interrupting you, and giving them the potential to interrupt you if they really ought to anyway, that'd be nice. Unplugging is just taking a step back, and there was a good reason we got to where we are to begin with.
I thought the statement about "eight uninterrupted minutes for the brains to get into a really creative state" was interresting but where did it come from? I'm trying to talk my manager out of a really bad office design and this kind of information would help.
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
These things only bother the ignorant and the self-important. Anyone that's dealt with an office environment where you have 5 ways of being contacted knows that if you want to be highly focused on a project or whatever, you turn all that crap off and deal with it later.
Personally I only answer the phone if it's my wife (w/ small baby at home) or a number I don't recognize which is rare. As for email, IM, etc., they are turned off and only checked twice a day.
And by the way, for any low functioning PHBs that read slashdot: none of that other shit is any more distracting than you walking by my desk, pulling up a chair and asking "so, where are we" every couple of hours. In fact, probably all of them combined are less distracting because I can ignore them easily and don't get pissed off every time they interrupt me. You on the other hand...
Of course, The ultimate way to get around this is to go nocturnal. "Real programmers do their best work between 1 and 6 am" -- C for dummies :D
Stupid Canadian geese. With thier honking and lying and thier tasty flesh. They're going back to Canada to plot agaist me that what!
And then there's the woman whose sole goal in life is to find the next cool sound effect for the group PC. She has just gone from a telephone ringing everytime she hits [enter] to a god forsaken emergency klaxon (I kid you not!), and this in a lab environment where there really are warning and emergency buzzers and bells. URRRNT! URRRNT! URRRNT! Someone restrain me before I have at her with a large hammer. No, this isn't about technology, it's about damned unthinking nitwits.
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Same thing happens to Linux users defecting to Windows, except they get rammed up the backside by Bill Gates.
Actually, *everyone* using Windows gets f****d by Bill Gates, they just don't notice it because his penis is so small...
When I really need to concentrate on something creative, I'm thankful that most things used to get ahold of me have an off button or can be exited.
Since switching over my landline to mobile, and taking my number with me - things have been a lot better. I get less calls, and people get the picture that I don't want to be disturbed.
Going this route wouldn't really work people who need to answer their phone, e-mail, or IM on the spot - but has done wonders for when it comes to staying productive for extened periods of time.
I wear ear plugs, and a blind fold.
-)Check your e-mail once an hour, not constantely. -)Have different IM accounts for work/private. When i'm working, i don't need to be talking to my niece about who just bought what car etc... -)And only use the phone when it's urgent. If not, an e-mail will suffice. I know this is not something you can do yourself, but a little professional courtesy isn't asking too much, now is it?
ohmmm...not now Lumberg...I am real busy
Besides, I've got a meeting with the Bobs in a few minutes.
When something is broken (instant communication & interruptions) and you try to fix it (email, IM, & voicemail) try to repair it, any way you can...
Set your availability to away and if you can, only check your emails and voicemails only so many times in one day. Take your work to a quiet area where you will not be disturbed. Is this realistic? Not if you are chained to your desk.
How much creativity does one gain after 8 minutes of undisturbed work? Is this an average time, or, are the more creative people able to compensate for these distractions and can get into their groove after say, 5 minutes?
I would write more but I am getting a phone call...
BRB....TTYL....TTFN....AWOL
-----------
You and me are floating on a tidal wave together...you and me are drifting into outer space
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Well, now we know why people don't RTFA!
(1) the three minute average is silly. You can work uninterrupted or be in a meeting for an hour - this means you'd need other spans of near constant interruption to hit that average. Most likely this was a survey, "3 minutes" was a choice and it came up most often. People like to complain to inquisitive strangers who are paying attention to them, and you see the events, not the space between them.
(Same problem accurately estimating cloud cover. Here's an exercise: Take a sheet of plain paper. Fold it in half the short way, tear a big circle out of the middle. Open it back up. You have a rectangular paper donut. Tear the round piece in half. Put one half in your pocket, tear the other into about a dozen random shapes and sizes. Lay the donut down. Lay the random pieces into the open hole. Ask passers-by to tell you how much of the hole is filled. You'll get big numbers. 70-80 % coverage. You can prove it's really only 50% - you have exactly half the hole in your pocket untouched.)
(2) the 8 minute ramp-up is almost as silly. Suppose it's roughly right. Office workers are required to be in "a really creative state" to get any work done? Nonsense.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Thus, those who can isolate themselves from such communication and be creative are destined for the top!
I hope!
except for the fact that many of us can phase out emails and IM's, multi-task if you will, and not actually get distracted by them.
;)
As was said above, it's the people that decide to show up in person to have a 20 minute conversation at (now with) you regarding something that could have been a 1-paragraph email...that's the distracting crap. Oh, and the constant meetings.
But IM's and emails? So long as they're short and sweet, no distraction. There's several generations that are growing up with this ability; the older workforce better watch out, cause we're networking
With MS SQL this would not have happened. Instead, it would have been a script kiddy from the other side of the globe who would have done it ;-)
Which, to sum up, is why I should have a secretary
The good software and hardware engineers give us features like:
Away Messages on Email
A Send Calls button on our phone (AT&T/Lucent/Avaya G3i and a 6408 desk set.) that pushes any calls to us off to our first coverage point. Mine dumps into my voice mail.
Most importantly - you can learn to ignore a ringing phone, or a trilling IM window. Ask any dad - his selective hearing is fully functional. I've just gained it through years of practice.
I've also perfected the skill of putting on an unaffected look when people are spouting something off at me. They then ask if I was listening and I can recite their diatribe pretty much verbatim.
It's just too fun to mess with people.
I've gotten some of my best coding work done in the strangest of places....planes and trains. Why? Well, for one, you've got no internet (usually), therefore no distraction from email and IM. You're also unlikely to have anybody to talk to, or anyplace to get up and walk to. It's just you and Emacs. It is a very purifying experience.
My previous boss once said in total seriousness that he would pay to just put me on a train and drive me back and forth from Boston to New York if it meant that much of an increase in my productivity. I offered to take him up on it, but the higher ups didn't understand the idea.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I just ordered the book on Amazon. One of the options was to have it rush shipped to me by tomorrow.
That is why some people use methods like timeboxing (check your e-mail twice a day), deliberately do not run message programs, and really extreme: Let the voicemail enter the phone, if they do not leave a voicemail, it is not important.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
While I'm at work, I don't seem to have any problems focusing on Slashdot for a couple hours at a time.
Even worse: e-mails that say "call me."
Or voicemail messages that say "call me."
Hey buddy - you just called me. How about you actually leave a hint as to what you want to talk about?
(But your pet peeve reminds me of the character on Harvey Birdman who is constantly interrupting to ask, "Didja get that thing I sentcha?" Hee.)
Technique for getting back to work in distracting situations:
Last week I read "How to Work the Competition into the Ground and Have
Fun Doing it" by John T. Molloy. While the "color" material of the
book is obviously from the 80's, all the substantive information
contained within the book is still a goldmine.
One of the techniques I thought I'd share that I picked up in a book
was a way to stay on task. It helps recover back to the task at hand,
as well as making you plan what you're going to be doing.
In the book, Molloy describes two concepts as essential for keeping at
a task: Concentration and Focus. Concentration is attention to a task
without an interruption. Focus is returning to a task after an
interruption. If your task is number crunching and you can manage to
keep crunching numbers when Leslie, the hot secretary walks by, you
are good at concentrating. If when Leslie walks by, you start to
daydream about fun things to do/with said secretary for a little but
then you catch yourself and go back to crunching numbers, you've
exercised your focus.
The following technique is inspired from those in the book to simulate
and strengthen your own focus:
You do this by setting a periodic alarm to go off every 15 minutes.
When it goes off, you ask yourself "What did I do in the last 15
minutes? What will I do in the next 15 minutes?". You can recognize
when you've drifted from your task, and get back to it. While Molloy
doesn't name this technique, I call it the "Did/Do" when referring to
it.
I use Peter's Ultimate Alarm Clock to do these
reminders as I don't use Outlook and I find it highly customizable.
I've set it to popup the questions I posted above, and to make a
pleasing chime go off. (To really make that program useful, you need
to use the "ADVANCED" form of periodic timer).
I've already noticed my focus improving, even when not at work. When
I'm hard at work, my improved focus allows me now to get over the
slight disruption of the alarm clock and get back to my task at hand.
--Michael
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
No one else gets their most creative algorithms formulated while on the toilet?
Turn based strategy game that runs over XMPP. Phalanx
There's an interesting article (pdf here) in the January 2005 Scientific American about this very problem and one company's solution...apparently, Microsoft is test-driving a system called Bestcom that uses Bayesian decision-making incorporating information about keyboard & mouse usage, recent calls, recent emails, and other markers such as whether or not the caller is listed in the recipient's address book. After evaluating all the parameters, it decides whether or not a phone call/email/whatever (including, interestingly enough, application alerts/dialogs) is important enough to disturb the employee.
you can have some faith in the slashdot readers yet.
I was merely fishing for a Simpsons quote, which seems to have worked quite well...
Before it was the desk phone.
The phone would ring and I'd have to wait for the answering machine to pick up.
It would eather be for the boss or it would be the boss trying to reach me. If it's the boss I pick up.
The boss seldom calls and only on an emergency but a lot of people call for the boss. Why? Don't know don't care.
Now I have a cell phone of my own. The boss uses the phone companys answering service plus the office phone is locked up in a diffrent office so I don't have access to it (let alone hear it ring).
Only the boss has my phone number so only the boss calls.
I use a "pay as you go" service that after 3 months I have to buy more minuts no matter what. I make those minuts last the whole 3 months. It saves me huge amounts of money.
So I tell the boss "Use up my minuts and the phone will turn off". Now the boss only calls on sereous emergencys.
(Some times she'd call me to check up on her husband when he works late. He turns his cell phone off so she can not reach him)
No calls from Mom telling me the latest plot twist on a show I care nothing about.
I can turn off IM if it becomes annoying. I uninstalled ICQ for that reason. *Insert Monty Pythons Spam soung* Dose anybody sereously use ICQ anymore or is it just nonstop spammers?
I don't actually exist.
My favorite is I get a call. Something is down. I am in the middle of fixing it and I get 20 more calls about it being DOWN. YES I FREAKING KNOW IT'S DOWN!!! LET ME FRIGGIN WORK!
Gorkman
This reminds me of an great story (hang on... check slashdot... reload...) umm where was I.. oh I'd better get that invoice out right away (umm check slashdot... reload... ) ok now.. lets see oh that deadline is coming up... (wait... check slashdot.. reload... ) mmmm oh damn it's my girlfriends birthday today and I didn't get her anything! Hmmm what should I get her (just a sec... check slashdot... reload...) oh here comes my boss - he's going to ask if I finished that bug fix yet... but I've been too busy!
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I hate phones, I really do. I've resisted getting voice mail set up on the cell phone I got for when my car dies, because if I get voice mail, then people will leave me messages on it, and act very surprised when I don't pick them up, because I don't actually enjoy being needled by messages every goddamned waking hour.
There's a tragic disconnect between the level of horribly annoying technology we can construct, and the level we should construct.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
He did formal studies (assigning the same task to a large number of programmers) and compared productivity. The ability to turn the telephone ringer off and having a private office with a large desk were the biggest predictors of productivity.
This is an older study, predating IM, and probably back when email wasn't such a part of daily life, but it seems to me obvious that the same principle applies.
This is reported in a book called Peopleware.
mt
Yup, you're right. It wouldn't have happened had I been using MS SQL b/c 'rm filename.database' would have given me an error. I learned a *very* valuable lesson that day.
You can defer email.
You can defer IM.
You can not defer a persistent phone caller, because your co-workers will bug you about the ringing.
You can not defer the goon squad from popping by your cubicle every 5 minutes to ask you something.
(That said, my visit to Novell in Provo back in 1996 was enlightening. They had cube walls that went up to the ceiling. And doors that closed. I tell this story every time it comes up at my current job that people are complaining about goon-visits, in hopes that management will get a clue).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
...whith the publishing of "Peopleware" by DeMarco and Lister:
http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html
I first read about it in "The Art Of Designing Embedded Systems" by Jack Ganssle. The crux of the argument:
1. It takes 15 minutes to fully make a context switch
2. Interruptions (especially in cubes) come about every 10 minutes, on average
3. The most productive coders were about 260% more productive than the least productive coders
4. The most productive coders had quiet workspaces without interruptions. Experience, etc, mattered much less in the productivity rates.
5. Therefore, quiet workspaces can yield a 260% increase in productivity.
Following that, private offices are *cheaper* (by an order of magnitude or more -- see Ganssle for the calculations) than cubicles, because the increased productivity swamps any increase in cost/sq ft.
That would be the one where Homer has cannonballs fired at him... Though I am still somewhat disturbed by your suggestion that faith may still be placed in the readership of Slashdot. To do what, exactly?
*thinks*
Oh dear God, please don't answer that.
Where does this eight minute figure come from? How reliable is it, and how dependent on environment and corporate culture is it?
All the distractions can be managed by being turned off except at designated intervals. Now if we could only cut down on the hours of pointless meetings.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
I will not deny what they are saying about creative states being true, but a majority of the affected workers are not "creative" and it's often their job to answer these phones, emails and IMs. So screw you CNET News.com for another useless bit of commentary.
As for those who are creative workers or manage creative workers, I'm pretty sure this is not news and that you have "pretty good reasons" for not ensuring that the work environment remains as free from interruptions as possible... right?
...simulaniously solve 3 problems at once, with one person on speaker phone, one e-mail problem and three people lined up at your desk, you really need to get out of tye sysadmin business...
What did the aricle say? 3 miniutes? I'm lucky if I get 1 miniute per problem. Voice mail? Fsck that. If I had enough time to review my voice mail, I'd be fscking retired.
Users without challenging problem or not having work stopages (I get to decide what constitutes a "work stoppage") get kicked to the back of the priority queue.
Just because I'm at work righ now checking up /. and posting replies doesn't mean I'm distracted at work ;)
Another good distraction at work is making your own blog,lol.
http://www.kunae.blogspot.com/
> we must have really high tech phones here because of this funny button called "do not disturb" I use it all the time.
Actually, a -large- percentage of companies don't have those buttons on the phones, and many that do do not permit people to use them. I believe Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister have some comments from programmers in such companies in their book, "Peopleware"
The messaging interrupt problem is one of complexity. If we had a single "inbox" for all messages, showing their subject, sender, and suggested priority, we could manage them better. We could whitelist/blacklist their real priority against a complete directory of senders, including "friend of a friend" associations. We could cross-reference our calendar, blocking out "solitary" time and blocking in "collaboration" time, for weighting message announcement priorities. Services like Spotlight and Dashboard could show prioritized messages' context of other messages/work/status, to quickly dismiss messages. All that technology would use all our information, automatically, to "defend" against incoming information distracting us.
But the main defense is not just computers, or even personal discipline like "concentration". Mainly, we need to care more about our jobs. When our work itself is engrossing, we aren't as distracted by mere "wazzup?" messages from friends when we're busy. The real best use of the technology will be to keep all the administrivia of our jobs from sucking up our time, where we're most vulnerable to pleasant distractions.
Personally, since my work is even more fun that posting to Slashdot, I get in my time only during the interstices between work tasks. Makes task switching seem like a social break. So I can work many hours at a time, without leaving the keyboard. On second thought, maybe I should be taking a walk to talk F2F with some real humans...
--
make install -not war
Some of the other replies had some good ideas. The main thing I would suggest in this case is (assuming your boss is neither irretrievably stupid or malicious) to bring up the issue and see if you can work out some sort of "do not disturb" situation. Maybe pick specific times of day in which you can be approached, and others when you can't. Possibly set up an area less centrally located where these impromptu meetings won't occur, that you can use at least sometimes.
I encourage my staff to send people to voice-mail based on the caller ID presented when it comes to phones. Face to face I encourage the use of a big "GO AWAY" sign for my staff. This forces these people to me. I use the 'send me the requirements' sign and allocate work on the basis of documented requirements and business priorties. Of course, if this doesn't work I am not above telling others to 'take a number'....
Management likes open plan offices so they can check at a glance that no-one is slacking, skiving off, playing Nethack or whatever. In my office they banned any furniture or partitions above about 1.1m high, except for the tops of monitors, on the pretext that if there is a fire alarm the checkers can see if anyone is still at their desk.
The result is that every conversation, phone, and squeaking printer can be heard all over, women walking past are a constant distraction, and I am suffering agoraphobia.
I quite agree.
/. is because this is one of two breaks I take every day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to check e-mail, answer phone messages, browse the news and, yes, occasionally post to /. Sometimes I wonder how I ever did design in the "real world"!
I used to work with someone that had his e-mail setup to play an annoying sound every time he received an e-mail. I can't tell you how many times we were in the midst of a technical conversation only to have that damned annoying sound occur and then he had to immediately look in the inbox to find out what it was about.
I, on the other hand, turned the automatic feature off. I deliberately log in and check e-mail twice a day, when it suits me, and ignore it the rest of the day. I just don't do IM!
It isn't just e-mail and IM, however. The whole office environment is setup for constant interruptions all day. Whether it is your boss dropping by to "chat" about the latest thing that's got a bug up his ass or the guy in the next cattle-stall (notice how offices are soooo out of favor nowadays?) ordering parts for his hot-rod, the office environment is designed for constant interruptions.
I now work for myself, in a basement office, and I am amazed by the productivity increase. I do NOT have a phone by my workstation, e-mail is handled the way I stated above and the only reason I am posting to
Most of the posts I've read related to this article bemoan the negative effect of interruptions to the authors' personal productivity. Are these people not hired to support the organization's purpose rather than their own? Why is it that technologists that so easily understand the value of interconnectivity of computing systems cannot see the same value in the interconnectivity of people? I think if many of these same people looked at the organization as a system to be optimized--like, say, a manager would--they would rightly be among the first to excise these communication "bottlenecks" in the name of organizational efficiency.
Are you the guy in this Flash animation?
The worst distractions for me at work are not the emails or IMs coming in, but rather the other guys on the team who are regularly lobbing those small rubber plugs that come in the network jacks over the walls.
No matter what you are doing, how can you not immediately retaliate? There goes ten minutes of productive work down the tubes...
> I now have the Friday afternoon rule. If a "crisis" comes up after 3PM on Friday, it couldn't
> be so important that it cannot wait until Monday.
Good general rule. I made the rule a long time ago, that I get to decide what is an emergency worth working late/coming in early or on weekends for.
95% of the time, I refuse. Two examples where I didn't refuse:
-QA testing found a showstopper bug on Friday at 4PM, with testers planned to work the weekend. The programmer fixed it by 5PM, but the build/release manager wasn't there; left early for the airport. Since I wrote the build scripts and the release specifications, I stayed later in order to rebuild the release and send it to QA.
-The Netherlands ran into some unexpected defects in an application. Only occured in their localized environment. Due to time difference, I came in 3 hours early to have a conference call with them. Since I was knew more about localization issues than anyone on the team, even though it wasn't my project, I came in for the call.
The key difference between these and the usual case is, in the usual case, the 'emergency' was manufactured by managment error, or worse, by management refusing to acknowledge issues raised in a timely manner by development staff. By preferring to ignore the issues, and problem can be turned into a crisis.
My kingdom for mod points. Very interesting article.
I have managed to get 2 days per week working from home; with a sho' 'nuff office. Desk phone? Heh, it's 60 miles from me and I don't care how often it rings.
A riposte to the constant distractions is to 'Be somewhere else.' Not always possible, but you can try...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
Is that why I need to spend at least 8 minutes on the can??
At Kinko's was the boss (and co-workers) who decided that since I knew how to do everything, anything they didn't know how or couldn't be bothered to do, they would dump on me. Eventually I started telling them things like "you're number 3 in the queue. It's gonna be awhile." They backed off after awhile when I made it clear that once you're in the queue, you stay in the queue until your turn comes, however long that is. I was valuable enough that they couldn't just fire me (though the next manager tried, and he got his ass handed to him by HR when I gave them a heads-up).
At my current job the main problem was people ambushing me as soon as I walk in the door with every little question they've come up with that morning. I've gotten them trained to where they know if I walk in and go straight from my mailbox to my office, I have something to work on already; if I come into the lobby area where they are after checking my box, they're free to drop whatever on my plate. The new trouble ticket system we just installed helps too, as they can enter a ticket as soon as they think of a question or encounter a problem, instead of feeling frustration until I get there. I'm working on getting them trained to realize that instead of coming down 3 floors to change someone's default e-mail client or whatever, I can do almost anything software-based that needs to be done right from my office (and probably do it better since I have all my reference materials and tools for various things right in front of me, to say nothing of direct access to the servers if something server-based needs to be done).
It's slow work, but we're making progress. Next up will be getting them to plug their own Ethernet cables back in when they've been pulled out from the wall (no, I'm not kidding).
-- Old Man Kensey
I bet you find condemnations of western medicine everywhere you look.
I'd like to sell you a piece of toast that mysteriously came out of my toaster with an image on the side that condemns western medicine.
One of the things I like about e-mail is that I have a permanent record to refer back to. I usualy don't take notes, especially electronically, when talking to someone in person. If I do at all, I do so afterwards when the memory is always fading.
Plus, with an e-mail, you can support your CYA policy.
Due to all of the quality children's programming watched while I was a child, I have the attention span of a gnat anyway.
Find coupons in Greeley
my mind is always in a creative sta... ooooh a Microsoft /. story!! brb!
because:
a) the whole business world has ground to a halt since the introduction of technology
b) businesses are becoming less effecient and so need to hire more and more people to do the same amount of work. Unemployment is now at an all-time low, down-sizing is non-existent.
c) there are more and more "journalists" and pseudo social-scientists that are making up statistics and anecdotes they cull from all the email they are addicted to.
Please sit right back and enjoy a healthy serving of shut-the-fuck-up.
Okay, so basically society as we know it is going down the crapper (again). This time the over-achievers and obsessive-compulsives are slaves to email and txt messaging. Oh the horror.
I blame the terrorists and evil-doers. Damn those evil-doers!
No sig.
Unplug your phone. Log out of your IM. Close your mail client. It's so easy. Free yourself.
Thats why its called microsoft!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
3 minutes is about how long my short term memory timeout value is.
if I am interrupted every three minutes by a 3 minute call/task.
Then spend a minute or so remembering what I was doing and getting back to it.
I work only 1/3 of the time.
66% raise !
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
What employers provide developers with a quiet work environment - like an office with a door?
I'd work for less money and be more productive for just such an employer.
...is probably incapable of handling the technology that is around them. I buy gadgets / use aim / email / phone because I find I get more done with them than without them. Of course I am a student, and the work I do is more result-oriented than task-oriented compared to most office workers.
When a cow-orker would NOT shut off the sound notification on his IM. Even better, he was the networking guy at a former startup, and the network had issues, so every five minutes: "uh-oh" "uh-oh" "uh-oh" "uh-oh" "uh-oh". Now, as y'all may guess from my moniker, I work on digital signal processing. This is fairly mathematical stuff, and when you combine it with machine language for speed, things get kinda intense, and there's nothing like being in the middle of an arcane inner loop only to have your concentration shattered by Yet Another IM Noise. HOLY LIVING MOTHER OF FUCK, WILL YOU TURN THAT GODDAMN THING OFF! Nope, he couldn't. He claimed he needed to know right away, even though the IM window would top itself over everything else anyway.
And they wondered why I wasn't as productive after they moved my desk within earshot of this schmuck. Christ, my fingers still twitch at the thought that it wasn't strangling distance.
I work at home now.
The result,[...] is a situation where the digital communications that were supposed to make working lives run more smoothly are actually preventing people from getting critical tasks accomplished.
That's because the digital communications aren't for you, the recipient, they're for the sender. Most often, the sender is a customer who wants to give you money. As such, making it easier for them to get in touch with you increases the amount of money you can collect.
It doesn't mean that you can get more work done, it just means that people who need to get in touch with you, can. The problem is that now that it's so easy for them to get in touch with you, people abuse the privilege and interrupt you for trivial reasons without thinking for themselves first.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I left an IT job where I was constantly distracted by phone, email, IM and people dropping by. It left me exhausted every day. I left the IT industry for a job with few distractions. Some days I never get a phone call or an email. Now I find I can't work without distractions...hence why I still browse Slashdot :-)
...with these articles about technology distracting people
The solution is simple. Pull all the plugs. And since when are you interupted by email unless YOU want to read it. Sounds like this guy doesnt know how to organize his life.
Yeah, i agree, the problem is not IM, e-mail, phone et al. After all, you can turn off or unplug them :-)
The big problem is like my current IT job. Open boxes, a big room with about 30 people. Most of the time they speak and lough loudly, make meeteings all over the place, showing off, yell at each other instead of walking and so on... It looks more a party than a work place. It is really disgusting and completely disturbing. Believe me, my most productive time is when i have to work late at night or during weekends, with NO one of those assh**** around disturbing.
- This can't be... - Be what? Be real?
"The problem, [IBM researcher] Russell said, is that there are only certain types of tasks that humans are good at doing simultaneously. Cooking and talking on the phone go together fine, as does walking and chewing gum..." ...so cell and IM and email interruptions in the office are bad for PRODUCTIVITY, but cell in the car is just dandy for DRIVING.
Tired of battling with copyright theives and complaints from consumer groups over its pricing practices, Microsoft has elected to offer its next-generation operating system for free when Vista (formerly known as Longhorn) hits the streets in early 2006.
"In the half decade or more of development on this product we've had a lot of time to think about our business practices and the kind of company we want to be," said Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. "For example, we learned from the Open Source community that we really needed to reconnect with our users. Letting people use Vista for free is just one step in that direction.
To offset the cost of development, the company will begin charging for security patches and bug fixes, according to executives.
Even so, the customer-centric company would only charge an average of $10 or so for each patch, a great deal for consumers according to industry watchdogs.
"I can't see any ill will behind the move at all," said consumer advocate Ralph Nader. "Honestly, it looks like Microsoft has really learned their lesson. The only way profit motive would be to release really awful software in the hopes that people feel trapped enough to pay for the fixes, but why would they do that?"
to your friends, family, and cow-orkers.
Force them to use your voicemail or email.
Non sequitur: Your facts are uncoordinated.
Hmm, this sounds familiar ... it sounds almost exactly like that book I read 5 years ago ...
And, btw, as many did point out already: why people still insists on offices, huh? Offices are great for meeting and discussing, but really creative thinking is never done by a committee. It's done by individuals, alone with no one talking to them, on the bus, on a walk, in the car, while walking, bathing or even sleeping.