Are Interruptions Driving You Crazy?

In these disparate environments—cockpits and hospitals and IT workgroups—the right behaviors did not evolve naturally. Nurses weren't “naturally” given enough space to work without distraction, and programmers weren't “naturally” left alone to focus on coding. Instead, leaders had to reshape the environment consciously. With some simple tweaks to the environment, suddenly the right behaviors emerged. It wasn't the people who changed, it was the situation. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

The above paragraph is taken from Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. The chapter is entitled "Tweak the Environment" and the subject is interruptions and their impact on performance. Statistics show that we are interrupted, on average, every eight minutes. Not only do we lose time due to the interruption itself, but the time to recover, to regroup our thoughts, and get back into the flow of our work can often take more time than the length of the interruption itself.

To make the problem worse, we live in a world that gives us more and different ways to interrupt each other. We carry phones in our pockets and whip them out when it is convenient for us. We give little thought to what the person on the other end of the phone call might have been doing before the phone call interrupted it. Leaders profess the merits of an "open-door policy" and at the same time bemoan they can’t get anything done due to non-stop drop-in visitors.

Let's face it, to get anything done, we have to have uninterrupted blocks of time. I have written before in this space how we can each carve uninterrupted time for ourselves. But what if you or I are the leader of the organization? What if we are in a position to tweak the environment?

Is email a help or hindrance in the culture of your workplace? If everyone is expected to check email constantly and respond ASAP, expect little work of real value to be accomplished. If, on the other hand, email is used instead of drop-in visits, email becomes a time-saver. We can check and respond to email with the ebb and flow of the day instead of responding to whoever appears at the door.

Are meetings being held simply purely for the purpose of making announcements and random information? One well-worded page can often replace a three-hour meeting. Are meetings called on the spur of the moment, teaching everyone in the office that constructing a plan for the day is an exercise in futility? 

My background was educational leadership. I witnessed numerous schools where intercom announcements were made randomly throughout the day. The result was each of those announcement interrupted learning in every classroom in the building, all for the sake of administrative convenience.

Likewise, parents, family friends, and salesmen often wanted to “visit” teachers who were busy teaching students. While each visitor wanted “just a minute,” they failed to realize that “just a minute,” multiplied by the 20 students in the room, has just turned into “just 20 minutes.” Factor in the amount of time needed to recover from the “just a minute” of interruption, and an entire lesson is easily derailed.

When someone else is in charge, we are at his or her mercy to protect our time. Good policies and practices will protect our time and allow us make significant progress on worthy projects. Poor policies and practices fragment our days and try our patience.

Every good thing we do for our students is done through the dimension of time. Preventing interruptions helps us get the most out of the time we are given. Protecting the time of our colleagues helps them be more productive. We can and we must "tweak the environment." The right behaviors are then sure to follow.

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Saying "No" Isn't Just OK; It's Imperative

During one presentation, participants and I talked about how to organize the task list to get the most done in the shortest amount of time. One participant asked, "Is it OK just to not do something?"

What a great question, and what an important question! The answer is not only "yes," it is OK to leave certain things undone, it is essential. Today's world presents unlimited choices and finite time. We could easily spend all day watching YouTube. One diversion blends into the next and all of them are "nice."

There is nothing wrong with a little diversion, but I think there are two important points to be made:

• We must recognize when we are engaged in diversion.
• We must recognize that if important tasks are not being handled, minimizing what does not need to be done in the first place is a prime place to start recouping some time.

Take a good look at your to-do list. Is it longer than you would like? If the answer is "yes," start looking at what could simply be eliminated with no harm being done. This sentiment was echoed by Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, in his keynote to educators several years ago at a national conference. Collins advocated having a "stop doing" list.

Examining your to-do list will help in another way. When you realize the volume of what you have on your plate, you are less likely to take on trivia.

When we say "yes" to one thing we are by definition saying "no" to something else. In these busy times, let's make sure we are saying "yes" to the right things. Learning to say "no" to the others is a good place to start.

Does Work Actually Happen at Work?

Where does work happen? For the knowledge worker, the answer is typically "at the office." However, as technology has made us more connected and allows us to collaborate on projects from different locations, "home" has become an option for many. The topic of working from home versus working at the office has been in the headlines recently as Yahoo! CEO, Marissa Mayer, put an to end the work-from-home program and insists that people come to the office.

In this TEDx Talk, Jason Fried makes the case that the office is the worst place to actually do work. As you listen to his argument, see how many of the bad practices he highlights are alive and well where you work.



Fried's talk centers around the interruptive culture in most offices. Working from somewhere else eliminates them.

On the other hand, when we are in the same location and looking eyeball-to-eyeball, we can hold each other accountable. We can bounce ideas off of each other. We can validate the old saying "Two heads are better than one." How many times have the best and most creative ideas happened when you and someone else were communicating in a face-to-face setting? How often has the motivation to move forward come as a result of human contact?

I found Fried's talk to be filled with points that accurately describe the culture in so many offices. It's a talk to watch again and again as we remind ourselves that smart people often do things which inhibit productivity.

If we value the other peoples' time and structure practices which demonstrate that respect, we really can get work done "at work."

What did you hear in this that you could implement in your own office?

The Campaign is Over...for Now

Election day is behind us, at least for now. My mailbox now gets a rest from the daily stack of political advertisements. Too many of them do nothing but attack the opponent. Most fail "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" test. Virtual all reflect more on the resourcefulness of the ad agency than the actual ability of the candidate to do the job.

The billboards and the buttons are pretty, but do they really make the case for who can do the better job? Why do we spend so much money on something that has so little to do with ability?

As technology gets more sophisticated, the tactics grow in frequency and intrusiveness, which brings up the worst offenders...the "robocalls." I long ago lost count of how many times creative thought has been interrupted by a recording of little substance and sometimes even less truth. Enough is enough. The game is reminiscent of the "Spy versus Spy" spots in MAD Magazine during my childhood days.The strategies got more elaborate, yet in the end, somebody and somebody loses.

There are good uses of technology, and below is what I think is one of the best. The candidates made use of a technology that was still fairly new to political campaigns and a technology that had become common to most homes...the television. If you have never heard this debate in its entirety, the 50th anniversary of it is a good time to step back in time.



Kennedy v. Nixon was like Lincoln v. Douglas with one notable exception. The former could be viewed by an entire nation.

Why can't we use technology to get back to that? Let's put the candidates face-to-face on stage. If one starts to stray from the truth, the opponent stands right there to call the offender's hand. Let's use the power of technology to record those events and make them available as video posted on the websites of our daily newspapers. Some of that is being done, and it's a step in the right direction.

And let's give some of the other a rest. For sure, let's stop the robocalls, so that we can get some work done. Let's rethink the huge amounts of money spent on slick ads and instead focus of that which really speaks to the job someone will be able to do.

No single candidate is to blame for a system which has gotten out of hand. Every snowflake in the avalanche pleads "not guilty." When one candidate spends a mint on slicks ads, the other is pretty much forced to do likewise. When one starts the robo calls, the other must follow. When one plays loose with the truth, its tough for the other to still take the high road.

Maybe I am the only one who feels this way. But make no mistake...look at the worst of this campaign season, and left unchecked, it will be far worse the next time around two years from now. Let's take the idea of  Lincoln and Douglas, bring it to everyone like Kennedy and Nixon, and use the power of the Internet to make the face-to-face debate the bread and butter of the campaign.

Decreasing the Junk

In an earlier post, I talked about the situation we all face: many sources of incoming stuff. My least favorite has always been the telemarketer (who somehow can always sense when have just sat down to a meal). One solution is to get on the "National Do Not Call Registry." That can be done by going here. Even before this registry came about, one technique that worked extremely well was this letter:

TPS
Direct Marketing Assocation
P.O. Box 9014
Farmington, NY 11735-9014

To whom it may concern:

We have become annoyed by the frequent and unsolicited telephone calls to our home from telemarketers. We wish to be placed on your "do not call" list. Various companies selling their mailing lists will have us listed using, perhaps, any of the following names:

(I list here different ways my name or wife's name appear, such as with a middle initial, without middle initial, using my wife's maiden name, etc.)

Other pertinent information is as follows:

(Here I put my home address and phone number, and then close the letter.)

The letter seems to do the trick, reducing the number of calls from daily to almost never.