One of the great journalists, Clive Thompson has written a good piece on interruptions we faced at work. This is a serious issue for us at work, especially there are different sort of ways on distracting us – your computer, mobile phone, PDA, your colleagues, your boss… Think about when you need to tackle a bigger project – you really need a good block of time to do it. The article mentions when you are distracted from a task, in average a worker need 25 minutes to return to a task. After that worker only spends around 11 minutes on project before another interruption kicks in:
… When Mark crunched the data, a picture of 21st-century office work emerged that was, she says, “far worse than I could ever have imagined.” Each employee spent only 11 minutes on any given project before being interrupted and whisked off to do something else. What’s more, each 11-minute project was itself fragmented into even shorter three-minute tasks, like answering e-mail messages, reading a Web page or working on a spreadsheet. And each time a worker was distracted from a task, it would take, on average, 25 minutes to return to that task. To perform an office job today, it seems, your attention must skip like a stone across water all day long, touching down only periodically…
With this figure, for 8 hours work time, work out there are only roughly 2 hours (8 * 60 / (11+25) * 11) on quality project time. Think about this figure verse the rest of 6 hours. Wouldn’t you want to improve this? (Yup, that’s why you are reading this site.)
The article then goes on and Clive interviewed many great people and talks about the movements on solving interruptions. For instance, he interviewed Microsoft researchers on interruption and UI design.
Hat tips to Venki for forwarding this URL.
Meet the Life Hackers – [New York Times]
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[...] Ho over at Life Hack did the math on an 8-hour work day: (8 * 60 / (11+25) * [...]
[...] Ho over at Life Hack did the math on an 8-hour work day: (8 * 60 / (11+25) * [...]
I have also recently read that it takes 20 minutes to regain your productivity, once it has been broken by interruption, and that the original ‘thread’ may be irretrievably lost. Times this by 10 to 20 innterruptions within a day, and it becomes hours of time. Imagine, for example your a writer, and you rely on the continuum of fluid thought to create some of your best work, then imagine never ending telephone calls, people dropping by for on thing or another, or the uneeennnddding car alarm and any other daily noise pollution………..
Well their goes your concerntration right along with what could have been your best results.
And it’s not just limited to creative types either, a Manager or Builder or Teacher etc,
can also fall victim to this type of constant distraction, and god forbid that you may decide to contemplate your next 5-6 moves for the day/week. This can be observed as you really not having a great deal to do with your time and hence become a great opportunity for co- workers to strike up a conversation about your day, or week, or life. I know this experience first hand and have often avoided open acts of contemplation in order to avoid open act of interruption, it’s a bit tough to handle however when your job requires a lot of contemplation.
One very irritating misnomer is the one regarding anyone whos’ work appears to be ‘fun’ or ‘glamourous’ or ‘artful’ and the perception that one is not actually working but mearly playing, hence the percieved idea that what ever it is your working on is an open invitation for all and sundry to rightfully and continually interrupt anything your doing as if it’s all O.K, *because what your doing doesn’t really require any real thought,* when in reality the actual work can be a lot more demanding than that of someone with a lesser workload. At the end of the day it really is little wonder that various vocations will tend to gravitate toward on another, when their experiences are so relateable. I’m mean to say it’s a terrible thing when you start snapping at people due to the utter diregard they can display for you.
It doesn’t take Einstein to know that a person can be at the end of their rope by days end.