Corey Waldin of Internet Simplicity, a Silicon Valley web dev firm, wrote in to tell us about the firm’s “no talking time.”
We have our own “no talking time” during the afternoon where every just designs, programs, works. No talking at all (unless there’s a client meeting). We even made a little sign that goes up during this time so when people come into the office they don’t forget.
But in his review of REWORK, software developer Henrik Paul worries about taking the idea that “interruption is the enemy of productivity” too far.
If you abolish all kinds of interruptions, you would effectively seal everyone to their own small little soundproof, locked-door cell, and nobody may talk to each other directly. The piece does mention that passive communication is ok (e.g. email), while active is not (talk, meetings, phone, IM.)
The key to a successful project, in my mind, is good communication. Communication should be open, and there shouldn’t be any protocol to do that. Once you put obstacles in front of communication within your project, people will slowly just stop asking about those little “meaningless” things. It turns out, those meaningless things are often not that meaningless after all, but those nuances that take your product from merely good to excellent.
Sure, nobody likes interruptions. But I like to communicate with my collagues. Consider a good compromise. My suggestion (as if I would have any weight) is to cut unnecessary interruptions. Allow people to opt-out from interruptions, don’t interrupt people with out-of-topic things. But don’t discourage communication. That’s not a workplace I want to work at.
It’s all about striking the right balance. You don’t want to discourage necessary communication – do that and you’ve thrown out the baby with the bathwater. But you do want to move away from a de facto “tap on the shoulder” environment that constantly breaks up the workday.
Every interruption comes with a tax. There’s a slight price you’re paying. And that adds up.
Make sure what you want to discuss is worth that cost. Whatever you’re about to tell a colleague needs to be worth taking them away from what they’re doing. If it’s not, take it to an email or some other way that won’t take that person out of the zone.
Amber Shah
on 22 Apr 10For me it’s not as much about NO INTERRUPTIONS as it is about having a clear distinction between focused-work time and collaboration time. When working with the right group of people, coming together in a meeting room and figuring something out can be many many times more productive than having each person sitting at different desks and shooting around emails, everyone with a different idea of what is going on. And for some jobs or people, collaboration may take up more time in your day than others, and that’s fine too.
The loss of productivity comes in when you try to mix the two. When you’re trying to focus on something and someone comes in for a chat. Or when you’re trying to hold a meeting to figure something out and someone’s reading email on their iPhone.
Brian Burridge
on 22 Apr 10Effective communication does not mean an abundance of communication. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. I do want to be sealed in my own ‘small little soundproof, locked-door cell’ in order to be productive, but obviously not 24/7. There is a time and place for communication, and its not whenever the mood strikes you, otherwise you are saying your need for communication outweighs my need to be productive.
You can’t just tell people ‘no unnecessary’ interruptions as a solution because everyone thinks their issue is urgent. So there has to be schedules, times when you know you won’t be interrupted save for an emergency, and times when communication is open. Of course, with asynchronous communication channels, you can always fire off an email or a chat message and get a reply when the other person is available. It’s really not complicated. There are just some people who love to talk with a human the second something pops into their head. Unfortunately for the rest of the team, those people usually become a huge distraction to everyone else.
Kevin Mackie
on 22 Apr 10There’s a software developer by the name of Stephen Jenkins who would likely agree with you, to the point that he published a short paper on the subject titled, “Concerning Interruptions”.
http://www.erudil.com/pdf/ieee2006-unabridged.pdf
Further studies show that passive communication methods such as email, also have flaws. Many users tend to interrupt themselves by checking email every few minutes even when they’ve set notification to occur at a much longer interval.
Your ultimate point is a good one, though. Awareness of the cost of interruptions can help everyone make good decisions and choose the most appropriate medium.
Ian Silber
on 22 Apr 10Thanks for posting this guys! You just made us interrupt our “no talking time” to talk about this. Shame! :)
Our no talking time rule has worked great so far. We still talk over email / IM, just no verbal communication. Keeps it quite and let’s us focus.
-Ian Silber, CTO Internet Simplicity
Bryan Craig
on 22 Apr 10A company I work closely with has implemented “Groove Time” between the hours of 9:30-11:00 and 1:30-3:00. Taking part is optional, but if someone wants to focus and remain uninterrupted during those times they simply hang a sign on their door.
It also teaches people that their question isn’t always important or necessary. If someone has a question and the person they need is “grooving”, it has to wait. A lot of times the question is resolved without requiring an interruption.
It isn’t a perfect system, but it seems to be pretty effective.
Jim B
on 22 Apr 10I think a big part of how successful the implementation of something like this is depends upon the current culture of the work environment.
My current environment is disgustingly quiet most hours of the day and there is not a direct correlation to productivity. If every body in the office tends to get along and work well together, I think the quiet time will be respected and effective.
In an environment that is not the most fun or engaging to work in the way it is, something like this will only make a bad situation worse.
Carl
on 22 Apr 10My solution is to keep an agenda file for each person I work with. When the file contains a few things I need to discuss, I make sure that the person is available and I go discuss the various points on my list. This result in less interruptions and more efficiency.
Mark
on 22 Apr 10Sounds more like nursery school than an office space occupied by adult. Quiet time? Seriously?
Why’s this need to be any more complicated than just common sense and curtesy? If you see someone head down into their work, just leave them alone and/or shut the f* up?
Also, these designated times seem to be built on utopian sand. Sure, quiet hour probably works brilliantly when the team is all 100% in to their work. But what about the poor schmuck who had a fight with their spouse, or a sick kid or something else that’s distracting them, despite the ordained non-distraction period? It’s a pretty common solution that a little mind break in the form of some unstressed small talk can get a person back on track.
Frankly, I’d rather work for the company that recognizes I’m an adult and so are my co-workers, and if we need a quiet moment, we can express that without help from a policy.
Nate
on 22 Apr 10I wish I had these in the past! These days it’s awesome because I can have as much quiet as I want. But yes, back when I worked for other people, peace and quiet was hard to find. I’m pretty social, but that balance is just not there in like 99% of offices out there, unless you sneak away to some broom closet like area, and it always feels like sneaking. I once got in trouble for squatting in a completely unused office with a door and walls, just because I wanted to work all day without all the noise and interruptions around me. :) How can one get in trouble for wanting to be more productive and work harder?
I love what Zappos is doing and people seem to dig working there, but I know I’d still probably need Zapoos to implement quite hours if I worked there, and even with all their happy employees they might just need a little bit of a balance back in that direction
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m6KWTZjUvI
:)
Ian Silber
on 22 Apr 10@Mark: It works fine for us, and doesn’t feel at all like a nursery. We all agreed to it before we implemented it so that probably helps. We break the rule if necessary and all understand the reason we have this no talking time is to be able to focus, not to turn the office into a school classroom.
I can imagine it wouldn’t work for some offices, probably larger offices were employees don’t have much of a say.
Mark
on 23 Apr 10@Ian – I wasn’t specifically targeting your company. Just in general, the concept of a policy to be quiet seems really prepubescent.
I mean, honestly, if companies are going to set up “fun” work environments and hire younger employees, they’re kinda setting themselves up for a disruptive environment, right? Seems backassward to set an environment up like that and then put in “be quiet” policies.
I want to hear what my employees have on their mind. I want them to bounce ideas of each other and find inspiration and solutions in things and conversations that don’t have anything to do with the project at hand. I pay them cause I’ve done my due diligence and know they get quality things done in a timely manner. If that stops happening cause they’re spending too much time yakkin’ it up or shooting free throws to the ping balls falling out of the ceiling, I don’t put up a new “get to work” policy, I simply thank them for their time and show them the door.
Mark
on 23 Apr 10Finally, regarding the so-called “interruption tax”, I would argue that the costs from that come not from those little moments of person to person unplanned discussions (we do live in a social world now, right Mark Zuckerburg?), but rather the true tax is incurred by the company leadership either [a] not setting up an appropriate culture and or physical setting that underscores the importance of undisturbed time and [b] has established a “buddy/buddy” relationship with the team instead of one of authority.
Mark
on 23 Apr 10Seems a bit draconian to me …
Dave M
on 23 Apr 10Yet ANOTHER case of pointless overreaction by 37s critics, Henrik Paul and @Mark included. Why does EVERYTHING they say have to be prefaced with, “This is how we do [X] and why it works for us. It may not work for you. Use your own judgment.”
I would like to think that the actual gospels in the Bible should not be taken so literally.
Todd
on 23 Apr 10I work in a very larger corporation.
I recently moved out of development into a smaller team. I’ve put a rule in Outlook to send all of the development list-based emails (RMIX 1.1.41 released to alpha production build server 551) to a special junk folder. After 2 weeks, I have 286 emails in that folder:
So that’s about 30 per day. Even though they are mostly auto-generated garbage, they still required 20 seconds of mental energy to process.
(20 seconds * 30 emails) / 60 seconds = 10 minutes per day.
10 minutes * 5 days = 50 minutes a week
(50 minutes * 48 weeks) / 60 minutes = 40 hours.
(1 work week * 1000 offshore developers) / 50 weeks = 20 work years
An entire GENERATION of productivity is being lost each year due to excessive, auto-generated spam emails!
Mark
on 23 Apr 10Likewise @Dave M, why do responses in disagreement need to be thus tempered and disclaimed?
If you want to run a “be quiet” policy, go right on with it. Me, I’d prefer to work for and/or find individuals who have some common sense, courtesy and are plugged in enough to the culture, project, time constraints and environment to know when it is a good time for idle chat, meetings and other distractions and when it’s not – without having to be told.
Chad
on 23 Apr 10I think you hit the keyword here: BALANCE
All things must be done in balance. Yes, there must be quiet, focused time to work, but some days, more communication is required than others, and some jobs require more than others.
But if there is not at least some “alone time” to focus without interruptions, then yes, productivity declines significantly.
Ben
on 23 Apr 10Want to stop unnecessary interruptions? Just wear some headphones (whether you’re listening to anything or not). People will avoid interrupting you with chatter, but will interrupt you for something they deem important.
Trevor
on 24 Apr 10I have no problem with IM – I don’t feel very interrupted by it – but physical interruptions that require me to take off my headphones and completely disconnect from the screen are what I find the most annoying and counterproductive.
Markus
on 26 Apr 10In my opinion it doesn’t even need someone talking at you to get disrupted. Even in the “zone” I get easily interrupted by simply hearing others talk to each other. There are certain words (e.g. names) that somehow break my concentration and make me focus on the talk. This must be some evolutionary driven build in impulse; unsuppressable.
This discussion is closed.