Thursday, November 25, 2010

Why work doesn't happen at work

The real problems are what I like to call the M&Ms: the Managers and the Meetings.
  - Jason Fried

I am huge fan of flexible work locations - coffee shops, home office, whatever. I enjoyed this Ted talk by Jason Fried about why work doesn't always happen at work. Where do you go when you really need to get something done? The answer is rarely the office, and usually either early morning or late at night. Especially creative people (take event producers, for example), need long, uninterrupted time to complete productive activities.

Jason makes the connection of work and sleep. Both are stage-based activities. Sleeping in multiple short bursts is ineffective and you are more exhausted in the morning. Working in multiple short bursts is ineffective and you don't accomplish as much as if you were working on one major task at a time.

Solution possibilities:
  • No Talk Thursdays.
  • Switch from active collaboration to passive collaboration - meaning don't pop in to each other, use email and other things that can be managed on your own schedule.
  • Cancel your next meeting.
What would happen?