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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.'"
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.
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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.
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...
Hmm, it sounds like an overgeneralization to me. "Office workers" is a pretty broad term that presumably encompasses pretty much all white collar jobs. Some jobs have always been interrupt-enabled, such as stock traders and financial analysts, and some are constantly on the phone, like sales and marketing types. Then you have people who are always on their feet, such as teachers and police. Writers such as journalists (like the guy in the article) have traditionally worked in open offices with phones ringing constantly.
This fellow Honore is probably thinking of certain professions such as computer programmers and IT professionals and architects and graphic designers, where you really do need periods of uninterruptedness to get some solid creative work done.
As a programmer, I'm willing to bet that most people in these fields have long since discovered the power of ear buds (and noise-cancelling headphones, my own favorite) to blot out the world around them. To a lot of us, IM and email are just a bit of line noise that we easily put up with. I usually welcome a little interruption now and then, and in fact it helps spur the creative juices sometimes to have a context shift.
Overall I think this article is a bit alarmist, though there's probably something to it in terms of the frenetic pace of life in modern offices.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
"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...
Yeah, I know it is quiet on the weekend. It is quiet in the evenings as well. I used to do this all of the time.
Only one problem with this - eventually this behavior is expected, and essentially you become a slave rather than an employee.
The worst that I remember was a time when I was so exhausted by the weekend, that my Saturdays consisted of lying down to take a nap in the mid-afternoon, and not waking up until about 10pm. At that point, there was nothing to do but just go to bed. Maybe by Sunday afternoon, I was starting to feel somewhat human again, but by then it was time to chuck myself back into the chipper on Monday.
These days I REFUSE to work evenings and weekends any more. Having a life outside of the office is important to me now.
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.
If I were placed back in a situation where regular work on evenings and weekends were required, I would plan on looking for a new job. Even leaving the industry, if that is what it takes. There is no way I am going back into that hellhole.