Zero second Interruptions
December 8 by Leon Ho | Productivity, Uncategorized
The day has come. If you think email, IM, blogs, RSS, MySpace are the king of interruptions – try again. Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users introduces a service called Twitter which is basically a community answering one simple question: “What are you doing?”
Not that I am impressed by the service, but the article brought out an interesting point – technologies is getting quicker and less turnaround on responses. Consequently, this also leads to more interruptions and less time between each interruptions. Both are big problem for all of our productivity seeking individuals.
Towards the middle of article, Kathy brings out the topic of Flow, which is the state of focus and maximum productivity – and interruptions kill your chances to get into flow.
Worst of all, this onslaught is keeping us from doing the one thing that makes most of us the happiest… being in flow. Flow requires a depth of thinking and a focus of attention that all that context-switching prevents. Flow requires a challenging use of our knowledge and skills, and that’s quite different from mindless tasks we can multitask (eating and watching tv, etc.) Flow means we need a certain amount of time to load our knowledge and skills into our brain RAM. And the more big or small interruptions we have, the less likely we are to ever get there.
As always, Kathy has some great illustrations and great tone to bring you to her ideas. It is a recommended read.
The Asymptotic Twitter Curve – [Creating Passionate Users]
[...] The author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, professor of psychology at Claremont Graduate University in California, is the author of the concept Flow. Put simply, we all have the ability to develop a flow with the activities we participate in whether they be work or recreation related. We often describe this sensation as “being in the zone,” periods of time that are often accompanied by heightened creativity and productivity. Unfortunately we are reminded by Leon Ho at Lifehack.org, as the proliferation of information technology continues we find ourselves being consistently bombarded by minute distractions that break this cycle. technologies is getting quicker and less turnaround on responses. Consequently, this also leads to more interruptions and less time between each interruptions. Both are big problem for all of our productivity seeking individuals. [...]
I find it interesting that one of your bloggers actually introduced me to twitter. I guess one of the hardest thing in this whole “life hack” business is defining productive. For me, being in more effecient contact with the world is a kind of productivity all to itself and being locked in the closet actually working on my stuff is counter productive. Weird, huh?