Moving to the Basement, or Why I Can’t Work at Work

Last year, I discovered an absolutely wonderful video by Jason Fried (of 37 Signals fame) entitled “Why You Can’t Work at Work”

I love this video so much. I’ve watched it at least a dozen times. He is able to explain all of the problems with the workplace environment in a concise, 6 minute video. Some of my favorite quotes:

… there’s phones ringing all the time. People are walking around. It’s all about interruptions. And people go to work today, and then they end up doing most of their real work after work, or on the weekends.

We’re a service oriented business, so phones are part of what we do. The trouble is sitting a few desks over from where that happens.

I’m astounded by how much walking around there is. I think walking around is essential to your body’s health, so I have a timer to make me get up and move, but I don’t go walking over to people’s desks during that, interrupting them and everyone around them.

And I always get my best work done at home.

And so I think that’s something we’re focused on, is trying to remove every possible interruption from people’s day. So they have longer and longer periods of uninterrupted time to actually get work done.

In another one of Jason’s videos, he really focuses on the fact that it isn’t a work day so much as work moments. 15 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe 30. When was the last time you even had a half day, 4 hours, of uninterrupted work? 3 hours? 2? 1?

And one of the best ways you can do this is to shift your collaboration between people to more passive things. Using our products or someone else’s products. Things that you can put aside when I’m busy. So, if I’m busy, I don’t have to look at Base Camp, I don’t have to check email, I don’t have to check IM. I can put those things aside and do my work. And then when I’m done with my work and I need a break, I can go check these things out … But if someone’s calling my name, or tapping on my shoulder, or knocking on my door, I can’t ignore those things. I can quit a program, but I can’t quit someone knocking on my door.

This is a huge point. Let me control my interruptions; don’t force them on me. I check my email between projects and my IM between big thoughts. It’s perfect. Yet people still insist on interrupting me at my desk.

And the other thing about interruptions and calling people’s names, and ringing them on the phone and stuff, it’s actually really an arrogant sort of move because you’re saying that whatever I have to ask you is more important than what you’re doing. Because I’m going to stop you from doing what you are doing for me to ask you this questions that probably doesn’t matter anyway.

This paragraph speaks for itself.

I tore through his book, Rework, which I greatly enjoyed. I did feel lucky that many of the problems presented in the book didn’t apply to my job, like endless meetings.

Most recently, I discovered two more talks he did on the video, one at Ted and an interview with Spark. I still find the original six minute clip at Big Think to be the best, but I’ll never get tired to hearing him speak on this subject.

My job involves a lot of programming. I love it, but it requires extreme concentration and focus at times. I picture my thought process like this:

A streamlined, focus train of thoughts. Running smoothly, all thoughts lined up.

Then someone has a question. Or someone guffaws over something funny that happened last night. Maybe customer service gets frustrated with a caller and vents about it. Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And look what happened to my nice train. Imagine how much work it will take to clean up that mess, fix the train, and get it back on the tracks. A lot, right? That’s exactly what I feel like when I need to refocus. Not all the time of course, sometimes I’m just doing some light research or simple HTML and I can refocus without a problem.

Otherwise though, it can sometimes take me a full five or even ten minutes to get back on track. After getting interrupted I’ll think, hey, why not check out what’s new on Twitter or Google Reader. Which delays my work further.

All I want to do is get my work done.

The funny thing is, while I’m sure I come off as a misanthrope here, I like communicating with people face to face. It’s often the most efficient way to communicate, especially when trying to teach someone. If I only worked with one other person in the office, then it wouldn’t be a problem, because taken on a person-by-person basis, those interruptions are manageable. But it’s when Person A interrupts me, then ten minutes later Person B, twenty minutes later Person C. And in between all that, Person D complains about their weekend, Person E chats with Person F, and Person H watches a funny video (sound and all) on their computer. Then it all begins again.

So I’ve begun implementing my last resort: Moving to the basement. Yes, just like the I.T. Crowd. I work in an absolutely beautiful converted library, with high arched ceilings and 12 foot tall windows. But I’m giving that up to work in a dark, damp basement room so that I can work …

… at work.

Tags: work