“The alone time zone” – avoiding interruptions

Jason Fried has posted a blog entry at 37signals, the home of Backpack information manager and Ta-da to-do list manager. He mentioned their experiences on how developers spread out across timezones actually helped their productivity.

Guess which part of day we get the most work done? The alone part. This is why many people prefer to work either in the early morning or the late nights — they’re not being bothered.

I am totally agree on their view. For example in my organization, there aren’t any enforcement on when do you need to get to work or leave work. We even encourage them to come to work eariler or later, so that they can get some alone time to concentrate on their part of project.

So, what do you do if you aren’t 8 time zones apart and forced into alone time? You require it. Set up a rule at work: make half of the day alone time. From 10am-2pm, no one can talk to one another (except during lunch). Or make the first half of the day alone. Or the last half. But make sure to make the alone time zone contiguous — interruptions kill productivity.

Getting Real: The alone time zone – [Signal vs. Noise]