May I interrupt?

Last week was a really bad week at work. I had THREE two-hour meetings (two of which went over the scheduled two hours, as if two hours wasn’t bad enough), one one-hour meeting, and numerous smaller appointments with people, and that’s not counting all the emails and phone calls I had to respond to. And of course I have other tasks, like maintaining the work blog, ordering books, evaluating databases… I felt like a hamster running in its wheel, not quite managing to keep up.

So it was kind of good, at the end of the week, to pick up the New Scientist, and see that there was an article in the mag about the daily interruptions those of us who work in offices have to put up with. The article, Got a minute? by Alison Motluk claims that for many people a day at work can be just

…one long string of interruptions with only the gaps in between to get anything done. However bad you think it is it’s probably worse. When researchers at the University of California, Irvine set out to quantify the problem, they figured people were probably overreacting, that we probably got in a good quarter-hour or so between disruptions. But after shadowing a dozen information workers for three days, they found that on average, they got just three sustained minutes of work in before being diverted. “I was shocked,” says Gloria Mark, who ran the study. [emphasis mine]

Actually when I first saw the article I was still slightly stressed from the week, and could only bear to skim read it. It was only after I’d had my bowl of Japanese curry that I could stand to read the article properly. And then I felt quite relieved – yes that was my week, it’s not just me, huzzah! (This is why I like the New Scientist, it validates me – pop psychology by CW.)

It wasn’t always like this. In the good old days, if somebody didn’t have the chutzpah to walk over and disturb you in person, they pretty much had to rely on the telephone or the post. Now your friends and colleagues think nothing of emailing, texting, leaving voicemail and trying your mobile, and if you don’t respond instantaneously to any of these, they pop by to see what’s wrong. Out of touch is out of the question.

This is why my mobile is usually switched off. I’m sure it’s a sign that I am an old fart, but despite my love of technology I have never been able to cope with the idea of being always contactable. (I have to laugh at those people who get rung up while they’re in the loo.)

Anyway, the NS article talks about a so-called cyber-secretary that will decide whether an incoming interruption is really worth interrupting us for: “They’ll recognise when we can handle being disturbed and when we want to be left alone. They will apologise when they get it wrong. Our lives will cease to be a cacophony of beeps, buzzes and rings. Instead our interruptions will be perfectly orchestrated thanks to our perfectly intuitive, round-the-clock techno-assistants. Or that’s the idea.”

I don’t know whether this will really work, although the developers of these systems say they can work really well once they’re “trained”. Microsoft is one of the developers. They’re going to have to work very hard to convince me that their cyber-secretary is nothing like that bloody paperclip/puppy/wizard that pops up asking inane questions at stupid times. “You look like you have too many emails. Would you like me to mark all incoming emails for next hour, as spam?”

Me, I think I just need to take the phone off the hook and switch off my email during the day. I wish I had the guts to take work to a meeting: “You guys keep talking, I’ll just be working on this here in my corner.”

Categories: work-life-balance

P.S. This week, thankfully, hasn’t been as bad as last week.