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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?"
is using Instant Messaging when I'm working. All the other distractions are bad enough without a bunch of little windows popping up all the time. I don't know how people who use it stand it.
Hmmm. I suddenly have this mental image of me yelling, "Get off my lawn, you kids!" while waving my cane.
I wouldn't say e-mail interrupts much - I can read it when I want to. The most disruptive is someone walking into my office - you can't get away from that, although you can tell the person you're busy. A phone call is second to that, although you can just not pick up the phone. It also takes longer to punch in your access code and listen to a voice message then to quickly read an e-mail. Instant messenging would be next in line, although you can wait a few minutes (or hours) to respond to those. To me, e-mail is the least disruptive.
One of the most valuable one-day seminars I attended talked about some of these things. Basically (and though I didn't always adhere), the gist is no matter what the potential interruptions, you map your day and set your own schedule. If something is important enough for immediate interruption you will discover that soon enough.
Some of the highlights included:
As for determining whether to immediately respond to e-mail or phone calls, these today pretty much provide the interface to allow you to at least filter at the "arrival" moment, e.g., an e-mail client that enunciates the "sender" and the subject, or caller-id on the phone indicates if it's someone you NEED to answer.
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?"
At work, I've taken the approach of turning off all notifications that I have new mail. That way I avoid the problem above - I don't know there's anything to interrupt me, so no interruption occurs. Higher priority is given to (work-related) IM and higher priority is given to a phone call. Note that 'higher' doesn't automatically guarantee I'll drop what I'm doing to answer, but you have the second-best chance of getting my attention. The very best method? Be at my desk and speak to me. That's not practical for all situations of course, working from home springs to mind as do remote offices etc., but for my normal work-day that's a fine approach.
My following the order above has resulted in me getting time to concentrate and think a lot more, and and I'm working better for it I feel.
Cheers,
Ian
Not that simple.... the reply to the second one will be a simple "yup" or "nope". The reply to the first one risks being rather involved. Hence, taking response times into account, replying to the second one first will offset the reply to the project email by a second or two, whereas replying to the first one first means your pool buddy might only hear from you in half an hour. The trick, I think, is to find the order which minimises delays due to other replies as much as possible per message. Easy in your example, more involved if there are more emails.
If you want to prioritise work over personal stuff, then do not even read emails that look like they could be personal.
If you are working on something that requires your focused attention then turn off the distractions. When I'm coding at work I turn down the phone ringer and hit the send calls button so that everything goes to voice mail. I also close my email program so I'm not bothered by email notices or tempted to check email.
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Remember those trays people used to have on their desks in the 70's? The ones marked "in" and "out"? You can see how they work in old movies... a clerk sits at his desk, working at a task, and when he finishes it he puts the completed task in the "out" box, and gets the next task from the "in" box.
One of the lessons I learned in dealing with many people and many emails at once, is that you have to treat e-mail a little like an old-fashioned "in"-box. You look at it only after you finish the task you are currently working on. Your inbox requires processing (not just reading): set aside time for this task. It can be twice a day, 5 times a day, or whenever you feel like it; the right moment depends a great deal on the nature of your work. Just as long as you remember that reading email is a task in its own right, and should not be done alongside anything else.
Another good rule to keep is that you have to process the entire inbox, once you get started on it. That's right, it should be empty after you have processed it. If you keep older read items alongside new messages, at some point you'll probably just give up and cry "I get way too much email". Simply process them one by one, each will require one of the following:
1) A short action, say, under 2 minutes. Take this action right away (quick and easy replies, noting appointments in your calendar, things like that).
2) A longer action... anything over 2 minutes or anything that requires a lot of thought. Stick these emails in an "action" folder and get to them later (when you are back into "action" mode).
3) No action. The email can be deleted or archived if it has info you'll need later.
A simple and nicely mindless process... 30 minutes will probably get you through 100 emails, and you will have a good idea about the priority of each of the ones in your action folder.
This is simply about being organised and not allowing interruptions. The hardest thing might be to not read your email while doing other things. Just shut down your email client so you cannot see incoming new mails. If there is something really important, people will call you if you don't respond within 30 minutes, believe me.
Speaking of interruptions... if the nature of your work is such that interruptions can really mess you up (coding springs to mind), turn off e-mail and IM. If you are blessed with a good office phone system, you may also be able to turn your phone off and redirect it to voicemail.
I got this way of dealing with communication tools from the book Getting Things Done; a great book on time management in general. The tips in this book have helped me getting from a state of feeling swamped in work, to feeling relaxed about taking a 2-hour lunch to let some material sink in, or just ignoring emails, things like that. (Yes I am still doing the same amount of work).
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Precisely why I used quotes. The term is being used lightly and only used because I've seen it elsewhere - similarly misused. Most of us probably very much agree but the point is well taken. It is, however, all relative.
Expectations do vary locally and between people, within organizations or groups, etc. How does one's boss, or anybody, know how often another checks email? It's when they reply. If you communicate with someone via email often enough, you can develop a sense as to when you might hear back from them. Lunch time? Late afternoon? Within 3 hours, by the end of the week, etc.
Many people are at their desks all day and have reliable email they are expected to check quite often. It all comes down to expectation and it's easy to get burned when judging reliability/ping times.
The trick is to train your boss (or sender) to not expect a response in the middle of the day if you are often out of the office, at a job site, etc. Reply always at the end of the day to signal to them that delivery is not reliable in the middle of the afternoon but you can usually get back to them by 4:30p or so.... even if you see their email during the day, just hold off or respond and postpone (or schedule delivery) till later.
This can backfire and reduce efficiency within an organization but the technique can be put to good use for those that tend to be especially nagging or demanding of "immediate" responses.
Text/SMS can be a good alternative to calling somebody when you can't rely on email. The reception confirmation is of course again ambiguous (ask them to send a simple "OK" reply), but people carry their cell phones far more places then their email access. Delays are minimal and you don't need to get involved in a conversation for simple requests, informative notes, or reminders.
Any amount of exchange however will often take a shorter amount of time with a simple call than with lots of back and forth over SMS. It is however great for flirtations, sending your hubby/wife an "I'm thinking of you," for noisy environments where talking is difficult, or where talking on a cell is rude (this is many more places than most people believe!)
You can actually send text messages to email accounts and email/AIM to cell phones - check your provider or post tips in reply for others.
Email is an unguaranteed delivery mechanism. It should never be used for truly urgent communication.
Therefore I do what I've always done: Check my email when I damn well feel like it. Turn off the message notifier, turn off the ability for an email to reach your phone or page you or anything of that sort. You'll check your email when you get around to it and not before then.
Really, if you don't want to be interrupted, make yourself less available.
This behavior trains those around you to not treat email as a good mechanism for urgent communications as well. After a few times of people coming to you because you haven't responded to the email they sent 10 minutes before, they'll stop sending you emails that require your immediate attention. They'll call you on the phone instead. In fact, they'll gradually stop attempting to email anybody for anything truly urgent. Eventually. It takes time for some people to get in the habit of this.
If you really want to get your attention span back, then stop using email notifier programs, but also stop using IM software. Of any kind. IM is about the most intrusive thing that can exist, since it jumps to the foreground and harshly interrupts your work at the whim of anybody else in the world, more or less. If somebody really wants your attention, they can pick up the phone and dial 10 digits instead. It's faster, and for anybody out of college, the slightly extra price (in some cases) shouldn't really be a factor. If they're not willing to spend their "minutes" or whatever to call me, well, then it's not urgent enough to interrupt me.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
There aren't a myriad of new forms. There's:
You could add cell-phone and maybe pager into the list but that's still just a phone, albeit one that is more likely to reach you. The solutions are still the same:
E-mail. Just like snail-mail. Answer at regular times. I enjoy getting home and opening the mail... it helps that I've done the legwork to eliminate most junkmail. Most mail is meaningful and it happens once a day. Same with e-mail, except more often. Open and read every hour, two, or four depending on what works for you. Answer the ones you want, set aside others for later, and delete the rest. Again it's far less of a chore if you do the work to get rid of the spam.
IM. It's just like the phone. You realize you can either set your status as "away" or simply not answer, right? There's a reason all IMs start with something like "You there?" And personally I'd rather click on a little X than listen to the damn phone ring for 30 seconds.
Cell phone/pager. Again, just in case you didn't know, here's a little secret. Don't tell everyone ok... you don't have to answer these either. In fact, my cell-phone has a feature they just introduced where I can even turn the ringer off! I'll get the model number/provider if anyone's interested...
I would say that interruptions like phone calls/IM are less irritating nowadays because you can actually see who the hell it is before you answer. "Private Caller" is lowest on my list... as in perhaps if I'm lost in the desert and trying to distract myself from the wild dogs gnawing at my torso.
My problem is the amount of available information. I can lost looking at interesting but meaningless things (like talking about the amount of information available... ooo how post-modern...). It requires more willpower... but overall life is easier.
I guess the one true irritant is the wife who calls at least twice a day. It requires 5-10 minutes of sub-vocal grunting before it clicks that perhaps I might have actually been doing something when she called besides staring at the phone waiting for her to call (like reading Slashdot damnit). And yet still the calls come... and when you have kids you pretty much will always choose to answer. Or else you might be a bad parent. You wouldn't want to be a bad parent would you? No, I didn't think so. Good for you.
What's up with all the homophobia at Slashdot? It's almost as bad as the Bushophobia.