I know a lot of you feel the same, so if you want to, print this out and surreptitiously drop it on your manager's desk. Maybe they'll learn, maybe not, but it's worth a try:
Interruptions
Regrettably, there is a certain type of middle manager who just doesn't actually believe they are doing their job unless they are poking. They scale all the way from the ones who poke every five minutes, to the ones who poke ever hour, to the ones who poke every couple of hours, or a couple of times a day. Some only poke a couple of times a week. The 'Saints', I call them.
The poking covers the gamut, too, from the died-in-the-wool bullies who stand there and berate you verbally, if not physically, to the passive-aggressive ones who just drop by for a 'chat' from time to time, to the officious ones who require 'status updates'. Now this is offensive a couple of different ways.
One is the implicit assumption that I'm not doing my job. Like when they turn their back, I work for three minutes and then magically teleport to a mystical Shangri-la where fairies feed me chocolate-covered strawberries, and I get mystically teleported back just before I'm going to get poked again.
Another is the totally irrational idea that somehow, by interrupting me, they are in fact getting me to work harder, or be more 'focused', or work better. I'd like to be in the operating theater when they're getting open-brain surgery some time, so that I could poke the surgeon every few minutes and ask him, "Hey, are you doing alright? Are you being the best brain surgeon you can be right this very second?" I'd just like to see how they come out of that operation. Better, normal, dysfunctional, semi-comatose, or catastrophically brain dead. I'm betting one of the last three.
Another is the ridiculous notion that they can get me to work faster. I only have one speed. Flat-out. If the deadline is short, I can perhaps rearrange things to get some things done first, and if time is short, trust me - I feel the pressure more than they do. But everything is going to take as long as it takes. Sorry, but that's just how life is. I can't get N + 1 things done in the same amount of time as N things. If I could, I would have cancer cured in five seconds flat while simultaneously solving every single problem in the world and getting rich. Since I haven't done that yet, the theory ain't panning out, can we agree on that?
So I'd like to explain what that poke does. Just so you know.
I'm focused, concentrating, and working at top speed. When you poke me, you are forcibly redirecting my attention AWAY from what I am working on to you. What that has done is derail my train of thought, like you'd nuked the tracks. At this point, it doesn't matter anymore if your poke is going to last 3 seconds or fifteen minutes. The damage is done.
Now, depending on how upset I am, I will no longer be productive for as long as I'm being poked plus anywhere from fifteen to thirty minutes - perhaps longer. Why so long? BECAUSE YOU DE-RAILED THE GODDAMNED TRAIN! Now I have to pick it up, get it settled back on the tracks, dust it off, fix it, get in, start it up, and get it back up to speed again. If what I was working on was very difficult, that will take longer than if what I was doing was comparatively simple, but it's not going to be instant, no matter how simple it is. The very best you can possibly hope for is that, by sheer coincidence, the train had just pulled into a station when you interrupted. In that case, it will take me about a minute to realize that it's in the station, maybe another two to recall which direction I was heading next, and I'm off. That isn't likely, though. It's rare as hell. Certainly nothing any sane person would bet on.
If I am more upset, then I will lose even more time because I'm trying to do that while I'm fuming, so it's kind of like trying to work in a dense fog. It's harder to see stuff, harder to move with precision, harder to focus - just harder to do everything.
If your hope was to get me working faster because there is an approaching dead-line, well, congratulations, what you have actually achieved is that the result of my efforts will now be delayed by <time for nudge to occur> + <time to get train of thought back on-track> x <level of difficulty> x <fuming factor>. You've delayed what you need to have done quickly, and it's your own damn fault because I sure as hell didn't ask you to interrupt me.
There is exactly one reason why you should interrupt me, if you must do so. If, and ONLY IF you need me to stop what I'm doing and switch to doing something else. In that case, I have to change trains anyway, and there's no way I'll know I have to do that unless you tell me to, so interrupt away.
If you feel you must have status reports, then schedule a meeting at a specific time each day when I can tell you how things are going, preferably first thing in the morning. Once the status meeting is over, then GO AWAY. Because now I'm working. If you schedule it in the middle of the day, then here's a news flash: It's STILL INTERRUPTING.
And if you can put off that status meeting to once a week, so much the better.
Now in general I have more than one person poking me, so if you only interrupt twice a day, and are thinking, "that's not so bad", well, it ain't just you. It's you, and that guy over there and that guy, and the guy over in the corner. All of you are doing it, and even if all of you are only doing it twice a day, that's still an interruption every goddamned hour, which means my productivity is being cut in half by your collective messing around. I would be farther ahead if you all got together twice a day and ganged up on me.
All of you are absolutely certain that your particular thing is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing, but you know what? Get together with them and work it out among yourselves, because if everything is a top-priority emergency, then it's all just normal stuff. Figure out some priorities and get back to me when you have them sorted. I've GOT WORK TO DO, DAMMIT!
This rant has been brought to you by the Geek-boy. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.
Copyright ©2013 by David Wright. All rights reserved.
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