The War on Interruptions: When Change is Hard

http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/06/the-war-on-interruptions-an-excerpt-from-switch-how-to-change-things-when-change-is-hard/

by cwan • 16 years ago

45 15 16 years ago

techcrunch.com

buddydvd2• 16 years ago

Placebo effect?

The nurses are aware that the vest wearing policy is introduced to reduce medication errors. Wouldn't the nurses just be extra cautious while wearing these vests (not because there are fewer distractions around them but because they know they are been observed)?

gridspy2• 16 years ago

Wouldn't any placebo effect wear off over the 6 month trial period?

Also : Who cares if the true reason is less interruptions? The environment is reducing the error rate.

houseabsolute3• 16 years ago

I'm thinking that you're right: if the placebo effect reduces the error rate by 50%, then the environment definitely needs a permanently installed placebo like these vests.

houseabsolute3• 16 years ago

I'd be interested in thoughts on how I as a non-leader can modify my environment to reduce interruptions at certain times, but do so in a way that's not off-putting to my coworkers. I work in a row of cubicles and am surrounded on all sides by teammates that I adore, but who love to talk to me (and who I love to talk to). That's great, except when I need to get work done, which is ironically my usual state at work.

michael_nielsen2• 16 years ago

Headphones, even when you're not listening to music.

Any form of easily-understood signal will help; the only requirement is that it not be rude to those around you. (Alternately, it can be so over-the-top rude that everyone thinks it's funny. But they'll also take the point.) The funniest one I've heard is two students in the sciences who were writing theses - they got a hold of a pair of white labcoats, and put them on when they don't want to be disturbed writing their theses. "I'm doing science".

houseabsolute3• 16 years ago

Interesting. Headphones empirically do not work in my situation. Maybe a neon-pink Do Not Disturb sign above my monitor that I can flip into position when I want to zone.

Sukotto2• 16 years ago

I've tried two approaches, both of which work reasonably well.

1) Headphones + a sign saying "Do not disturb when headphones are in place (I used an ANSI sign generator which I can no longer find) 2) Come in an hour before everyone else

I haven't tried it myself, but have seen other people work from conference rooms, cafeterias, etc with a laptop and phone-forwarding.

jamesbritt• 16 years ago

At Happy Camper Studios we had a system of flags. Colored index cards, actually: red, yellow, and green.

Green up meant you were open to interruption for anything.

Yellow meant you were open to interruptions for something work related.

Red meant don't bother me unless the building is on fire.

I was really bad at remembering to change flags, and was always on the lookout for some USB-driven traffic light thing that didn't cost a fortune.

rw140• 16 years ago

Round here we use a variety of techniques:

* As everyone else has mentioned: headphones.

* Work at home when you're doing a particularly complex piece of work.

* Stagger working hours so that there are times when not all employees overlap - start time is anything from (approximately) 8am to 10am.

* Set instant messenger statuses to 'away' or 'in a meeting' for critical work. (This one only works for people not within line-of-sight.

* Have team leads (approx 1 for every 6 people) who can answer more general questions and so act as a buffer between programmers and people who might need to interrupt them.

* Provide people with the ways to find answers rather than the answers themselves (This has the dual purpose of making it less convenient to ask you than to look stuff up, and teaching people to be more independent.)

* Have times when you are more clearly interruptible - this groups the questioning / passing the time of day, so you can get a longer uninterrupted stretch later.

edit: formatting

Sukotto2• 16 years ago

Anyone at YC want to comment on if there's a correlation between quiet working conditions and successfully launching a startup? Of the successful startups you've funded, how many had quiet/private working conditions vs noisy/shared ones?

The War on Interruptions: When Change is Hard

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