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
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.
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.
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...
"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...
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.
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.