Re: [O] Tracking Interruptions -- Work Flow Question

[Tim Cross]

One of the problems with the many recommendations for productivity
techniques is that they can never really take account of the endless
number of differences in workflows, working environments and personal
preferences. For me, I found the GTD approach was geared more towards
the procrastination problem (washing windows rather than doing taxes)
and Pomodoro was more about managing interruptions you have been
conditioned to respond to (phone, email) or from colleagues/bosses.

My own journey has resulted in taking some ideas from both
approaches. It is still and work in progress and probably always will
be.

It sounds like your on the same road I was on. The one warning I would
make is that unless you can also do something about managing those
interruptions, just tracking them will likely only make matters
worse. It is even more depressing being able to measure the amount of
lost productivity or interruptions if at the end of the day you cannot
do anything about them. This is where I found the Pomodoro approach
better than GTD. I found GTD was really about organising your work so
that you were more efficient. The pomodoro approach on the other hand
has some concept about managing your environment. It recognises there
will always be people in your environment that are important enough to
be able to interrupt you at any time. However, it also highlights that
many of your interruptions are not from this group and provides one
technique to help you set expectations and agreements within your work
environment which helps everyone.

There is a pomodoro mode for org, but I preferred to use an external
program with a big clear timer. Initially, I used an old monitor and put
the timer on it and set the monitor so that anyone who came to my desk
could see it. When people interrupted me, I would say "Sorry, I'm in the
middle of something important, can you come back in x minutes (x =
coutdown on monitor) or send me an IM/Email and I will look at it in x
minutes.  While it took some time, people soon understood and would even
come to my desk, look at the monitor and then leave without saying
anything, coming back x minutes later instead. 

After me doing this for a while, a number of other staff started to do a
similar thing and now there is greater acceptance of the idea that you
don't just walk up and interrupt someone. We actually had some cultural
change where people now send an IM instead of walking and directly
interrupting someone. More importantly, they don't expect an instant
response to the IM or email.  

There is a relatively inexpensive book (paper, ebook and audio)
available from Pragmatic Pub which is relatively short and has some good
ideas. I would recommend looking at that and try out the org-pomodoro
package for a while to get a feel for it. It probably won't be quite
right, but may give you some ideas.  


regards,

Tim

Raymond Zeitler writes:

> Yes, I agree that it's difficult to assess productivity based solely on the 
> time I'd spend clocked into Taskerruptions.
> I came across one other question in this list about interruptions where the 
> poster was interested in following the pomodoro technique. (There was no 
> reply.) But that technique seems geared toward addressing "internal" 
> interruptions, like when I decide that the windows need washing when I need 
> to do the taxes. (This after about 45 seconds of reading that website.) My 
> interruptions are almost always what you addressed in your last paragraph; 
> they're from people more important than me. I almost never can say, "I'll get 
> back to you." Although I have taken to roping off my cubicle with a stern "Do 
> Not Disturb" sign on occasion.
> Just clocking them would be a great start.Maybe I'll figure out that I can 
> say, "I'll get back to you" in some cases.
> - Ray
>
>       From: Tim Cross <address@hidden>
>  To: Michael Welle <address@hidden> 
> Cc: address@hidden
>  Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2017 5:45 AM
>  Subject: Re: [O] Tracking Interruptions -- Work Flow Question
>    
>
> I'm not sure there is any *good* way to track interruptions. As
> pointed out by others, interruptions are not equal and the actual length
> of the interruption is not necessarily a good reflection of the actual
> impact to your productivity.
>
> I've found two things which have helped me. One has helped to reduce the
> interruptions and the other has provided some (minimal) help when I've
> been questions on why a task has taken longer to complete than
> estimated.
>
> The first has been to use a type of pomodoro technique. Essentially, I
> break my work up into blocks of time where I will not answer the phone,
> email or anyone coming to my desk. I do run a timer which ticks down and
> /allow/ interruptions in breaks between 'pomodoros'. The timer is really
> useful as when someone comes to interrupt me, I can say, come back in x
> minutes. It takes some training of your work colleagues, but they will
> eventually respect your request (and being able to give them a definite
> 'come back in x minutes' helps).
>
> The second thing I do is if an interruption cannot be avoided, I do
> check out of my current task and only check back in once the
> interruption has finished. While this doesn't tell you how much
> productivity was actually lost by the interruption, you can at least do
> some analysis of the clock times and show how often and for how long you
> were interrupted - or at least working on that task was interrupted.
>
> Tim
>
> Michael Welle writes:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> Eric Abrahamsen <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>> Raymond Zeitler <address@hidden> writes:
>>>
>>>> Does anyone schedule and "org-clock" interruptions? I really need to
>>>> quantify how much of a drain they are to my productivity.
>>>>
>>>> I thought I'd include a generic "** TODO Interruption" in my
>>>> todo.org (or an inter.org file) and schedule it every day. Then I'd
>>>> press "I" every time I get interrupted and perhaps tag it with a
>>>> special term.
>>>>
>>>> Or I suppose I could use a capture template just for interruptions.
>>>>
>>>> What do you suggest?
>>>
>>> Seems to me the danger of interruptions is not how much time they take
>>> up, but how much time it takes you to recover from them, and get back to
>>> work. Much harder to clock!
>> yepp. Maybe add a 'braininess' factor to every task. Tasks, that need a
>> lot of thinking, let's say hacking, have a higher 'braininess' than, for
>> instance, sharpening pencils. Depending on the 'braininess' of the
>> interrupted task add another 15 or 30 minutes to the interruption
>> account. 
>>
>> Regards
>> hmw


-- 
Tim Cross