Slashdot Mirror
Meet The Life Hackers
Rick Zeman writes "The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article dissecting all of the myriad ways that people are distracted from their computers in the workplace, and 'how hi-tech devices affect our behavior.' From the article: 'Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is. David Rose, a Cambridge, Mass.-based expert on computer interfaces, likes to point out that 20 years ago, an office worker had only two types of communication technology: a phone, which required an instant answer, and postal mail, which took days. "Now we have dozens of possibilities between those poles," Rose says. How fast are you supposed to reply to an e-mail message? Or an instant message? Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself.' What could be done to change computing to help mitigate this multitasking?"
Some emails trigger different sounds, letting you know they're important. Look into it.
*Dilbert walks into his cubicle, presses button on his answering machine* Machine: You have 2,804 messages. 2,804 are marked "urgent". First urgent message: *beep* Todd: Hey Dilbert, this is Todd. I just called you to tell you that I sent you an email. Okay, bye. *Dilbert hits button* Machine: Messages deleted.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
..sorry but i got distracted by an email. What was your question?
There's also an ex-colleague's tactic of not bathing. Visitors really fall off when you reek. Unfortunately he took it too far and let the miasma stray outside the boundaries of his cubicle. We had a mini-revolt and got our manager to transfer him elsewhere.
Well, for starters, we could stop reading slashdot at work.
Yeaahhhh, I just read slashdot, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.
if a collegue is asking a question about the current project you're working on, prioritise it a little higher than a message asking if you're up for a game of pool later.
Don't wanna be nit-picky here, but I guess you messed up the order.
Back in the day companies had these incredibly useful devices called *secretaries*. These devices would open your mail and screen calls and visitors, there was even a voice recognition function! An incredible time saver they allowed even mid level professionals to concentrate on their jobs! Due to spiraling cost inflation even high level executives now must share the few remaining devices.
Seriously though, bring back the secretary. With high speed internet, VPNs, and so forth, the Remote (Outsourced) Secretary could be an intermediate solution to the attention defecit problem.
Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it
What makes this even more frustrating is that, to follow the analogy, somebody has already peeked into the box but just decides to label it 'cat'.
Literalism isn't a form of humor, it's you being irritating.
At my old job, I had a coworker (more senior than I) who would interrupt constantly. This coworker was sure that whatever he said was of such great importance, that no matter what it was, it should take precidence above all else, and become my central focus.
This coworker would always ask me why I wasn't logged into AIM, and instruct me to log in. I would always leave AIM off, unless I was asked to turn it on. Many coworkers wondered why this was the case.
The answer was simple. This coworker would task me with meaningless, useless junk that would get in the way of my actual work. If it wasn't important enough to walk by my cubicle, call, or email about (especially since email left a paper trail, and people could hear him talking at my cube or phone), then it certainly wasn't important enough for me to do. With AIM turned off, I had a low pass filter on just how pointless the tasking I was willing to take on was.
Sometimes, I'd turn this policy. After all, having an instant message log certainly can be a useful thing... but that's a story for another day.
Unless the new recieptionist is named Steve. Then you may wish to just stop checking you e-mail for a while... or perhaps just change e-mail addresses... perhaps you should consider also changing the bit to the right of the at sign.
That is, unless you're a woman. Then, regardless of the sex of recieptionist, you just hit the judicial lottery, baby! Congrats!