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T I M E
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I N S I D E
B U S I N E S S / T I M E
M A N A G E M E N T
Please, Go Away
To aid
productivity, office workers are trying new techniques to curb
interruptions
By WENDY COLE
Monday, Oct. 11, 2004
So much to do,
so little time. And it doesn't help that the guy down the hall is
always dropping by your cubicle to share unsolicited lawn-care tips.
Then there are the phone, the e-mail, the micromanaging boss to deal
with. On a typical day office workers are interrupted about seven
times an hour, which adds up to 56 interruptions a day, 80% of which
are considered trivial, according to time-management experts. "We
pride ourselves on being multitaskers, but the truth is, we're
functioning at a state of partial attention," says John White,
international program director with Priority Management, a training
company based in Vancouver, Canada. "Because of constant
interruptions, our memory, follow-up ability, flexibility and
quality of work start to erode."
That is, quite frankly, a real waste of time. U.S. productivity
growth is slowing, and companies have just about maxed out on
efficiency gains to be had through layoffs and employee buyouts. So
employers are increasingly recognizing that the best hope for
improving productivity is — as wacky as it sounds — enabling folks
to be more productive.
Some of the techniques are surprisingly low tech. At Pitt Ohio
Express, a trucking company based in Pittsburgh, Pa., claims
auditors take turns wearing a special black baseball cap to signal
that they are absorbed in a project. Department head Lois Beggs says
she takes several hours "under the cap" to catch up on her 150
emails a day when she has been away from the office. At Quarasan, an
educational-product developer in Chicago, workers take "focus
blocks" of up to three hours when they absolutely cannot be
interrupted. "They know they don't have to jump when someone comes
to their desk or have a Pavlovian response when the phone rings,"
says president Randi Brill. In any week, about 25% of the staff use
the technique. Signs hang on cubicles, chairs or doors with such
declarations as I AM FEELING TOTALLY FOCUSED RIGHT NOW. PLEASE
RESPECT THIS PROCESS.
There is also a new wave of gadgets that help keep workers on
task. CubeDoors — portable, retractable, mesh-weave panels from
CubeSmart in Fort Worth, Texas — block entry into cubicles,
effectively saying "Busy" to would-be interlopers. In 2003 the
company sold 1,500 "doors," which cost $30 each. Sales are up 300%
this year. New on the market last year: the Quiet Technology
sound-masking system from office-furniture maker Herman Miller.
Designed for open-layout work environments, the system renders
speech beyond a 12-ft. to 16-ft. radius unintelligible with "pink
noise" technology embedded in the furniture. To a user, it sounds
like gentle whooshing. What it does is match the frequencies of
human speech to make colleagues' chatter less distracting. The cost
of creating such quiet zones: 75¢ per sq. ft., about half that of
conventional sound-reduction systems, says product manager Amy
Sremba.
And while online communications are often a time-stealing
culprit, some companies are finding relief in them. All the
employees at Basex, an information-technology research firm in New
York City, use instant messaging. A simple switch to DO NOT DISTURB
status signals that coworkers shouldn't phone, email or stop by to
chat. "There was never a memo on it. We all just started using the
technology," says CEO Jonathan Spira. Finding peace and quiet should
always be so easy.
From the Oct. 11,
2004 issue of TIME magazine
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