Jason Fried takes a different approach to work productivity in this TEDTalk. For many years he's asked people this question: "Where do you go when you really need to get something done?" Very rarely is the answer "at work." For those who answered "at work," it was usually very early in the morning or late at night when no one was around.
Not surprisingly, the main reason the office is not conducive to getting things done is that there are few, if any, opportunities for extended, uninterrupted time. Jason makes the analogy to sleep. Both are phase/stage-based events. You can't sleep well if you are interrupted all night. Same goes for work. The two main thieves of our time in the office... the M&M's. Managers and meetings. So true. Especially the meetings.
I love one of his proposed solutions... a half day a month where no one is allowed to talk to one another. Four hours of uninteruppted time. That's quite a gift! Emails/IM's/phone calls are distractions we choose. So if we choose to ignore them for a half day, we just found four hours of uninterrupted time for some serious productivity. Maybe it will catch on!
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