I wish I could take credit for this idea, but I can't. I first read this in Peopleware by DeMarco & Lister. But before I shoot into the specific point in Peopleware, let's pull back to the big picture.
When things are hectic, there is way too much that must be done, and you are generally drowning – one of the key practices to getting out of that mess is the following. Each morning identify several items you will complete that day. Sometimes the list is long, sometimes it's one thing. Some items are fully completing a task while other items are moving another task forward one step.
Now these items will not fill your day, they may total up to just an hour because of all the other things you have to work on or respond to. But what is critical is that the list you come up with can be completed that day. And you write the list in the calm first moments of the day.
At the end of any given day you won't see much difference due to this practice. Truly all you did was complete some tasks instead of others – no real difference for that day. But after a week you should see a couple of critical issue be completed. After a month you should see that the number of serious issues on your plate has lessened. This focus over time is very powerful.
Ok, so with that side trip lets now talk about getting people at work as productive as possible. Using the above approach, let's say I can do one thing, just one thing, to improve productivity. What would it be?
Eliminate interruptions.
Granted, this helps for some jobs more than others. But for programmers and others that are heads down concentrate on the work jobs, this will boost productivity more than anything else. Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister have spent their professional lives studying programmer productivity and they distill it down to this – eliminating interruptions helps more than everything else put together.
So how do you do this? Well the easy part is individual offices. It's a bit more effort to create a corporate culture where a closed door means do not disturb. Not knock first but DO NOT DISTURB. This takes direct reminders by managers when someone interrupts another to ask – was that worth totally blowing their concentration. I've found this takes about 3 weeks (at one company I had to sit in the main hallway for 2 days to get it started).
The hardest part is getting people to shut down their communication. We now expect everyone to always be immediately available. Getting people to close IM, turn off email (set Outlook to work offline), turn off the cell phone, etc. – that is a lifestyle change. And you can't mandate it and have it work well. What I have found works pretty well on this is to ask people to try it for 2 days. And they will find disconnecting some parts ok, while other connections they find themselves missing.
And so you get part way there. And then after a month or so, when someone is behind on some really hard work, suggest they disconnect again just while getting caught up. They know the drill, they have seen the improvement from the communication they have already shut down while working, and most people will disconnect to get caught up.
Now the bad news. If you manage a group where you are encouraging them to disconnect from the world to get their work done, then you have to be always available. Because the rest of the company is going to insist that they can talk to someone, and talk to them immediately. So you have to be available to run interference. And this also means when someone wants an update on work in process, you will have to tell them that you may not get an answer for 4 hours – which most people consider unacceptably long in today's world. But waiting longer to get a status report equates to having the task completed sooner.
So a question for all of you reading this – if you could do one thing at work, what would it be?
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