IMs & Emails Can Kill Productivity
Jordan Dobson Apr. 17
Have you ever noticed that as soon as you unplug yourself from the world, turn off your Instant Messenger and close your email client that you actually get much more work done!?
It may feel like work when you have your email and IM on… but what are you really getting done? I’d bet not much. Isn’t it much more fun to kick ass on the real task at hand? Without unplugging myself, I have no idea how I’d find five straight hours to kick ass on store layouts for Epitaph, design a 37 page user interface or program some complex AJAX history tracking.
This idea really hit home while I was on “vacation” in Monterey, CA a few weeks ago. I had planned to work from the hotel all day and shortly after I started, the WiFi at the Hotel went down. So, I spent the rest of the day with an Apple tutorial teaching myself some basic Ruby on Rails. (I downloaded that tutorial to work on the plane.) This is something I probably couldn’t have completed with interruptions every 20 minutes or so. PLUS I learned a lot about Ruby on Rails and how much it kicks ass in only a few hours.
Ruby on Rails kicks ass so much that I’m definitely going to push to use it on many Squad projects in the future. So, I’m very happy I had a chance to be “unplugged” and its something I suggest we utilize to remove themselves from constant contact.
Be less available… get more done… kick more ass! What’s bad about that?
Has anyone else found this to be true or found similar experiences? Does anyone know of any related articles online to this type of work approach?
PT said...