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Why Work Doesn’t Happen at Work

This week’s first post is a somewhat provocative lecture by Jason Fried (software entrepreneur), with his theory and research where he asked the question: Where do you go when you really want to get something done? The answer is rarely the office. People tend to prefer their home, car and basically where they can’t be interrupted. Why is it so?

Frieds theory is that your workday is fragmented into work-moments. At the office there are constantly people interrupting other people in doing their work. Especially creative people need longer periods of uninterrupted time. The people most responsible of these critical interruptions are, according to Fried, managers. This is because their job is to ask other people how they are doing with doing their job. They do this by having several meetings – and in these meeting they will talk about what people should be doing. With such a fragmented work schedule, it can be hard to look back at your day and identify what you have achieved. You did “the work thing”, but you can’t see what you actually produced. Some managers will argue that the real interruptions are sites like: Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. Fried argues that these sites are modern smoke breaks. The things people talk about during smoke breaks are – presumably – what you can read on Facebook.

Frieds suggestion to how you can optimize your workday is e.g.  to have a “No talk Thursday” – just once a month. This concept should help the employees to get more work done, and increase the quality. It is better than giving everybody new computers – just give them time to use them. Interesting and perhaps worth a try?