What Happens At Work...

In today’s blog I will cover material from a new source that has been brought to my attention in class. TED.com is a site dedicated to community and communication through sharing knowledge on a user-created content site. TED.com offers discussion and enlightenment on many topics.

I have watched a segment from Jason Fried on why work doesn’t happen at work. I think this is an important topic as my generation moves from being in a classroom to being in an office environment. Jason narrates a situation on a typical office situation where companies build offices with all the necessary items and expect people to work in these spaces. He proposes that typical workers want a different, environment like a basement, coffee shop, or library and even at different times to get work done.

Another important point Jason makes is that the distractions we face that takes away from work are voluntary distractions. Offices ban Facebook and Twitter to keep workers off, but Jason points out that these are modern day smoke breaks. Tiny breaks to take a breather. The real problems Jason points out are meetings and mangers. “You don’t find managers and meetings at the places you prefer to do your work because they interrupt your time while you are trying to work,” Jason points out. Meetings aren’t work, they are time taken out of your day to plan work you could be doing.

What can managers do instead to turn around the anti-office mentality? Jason suggests things like No-Talk Thursday, a day where once a month no one talks to each other. Quite time at the office is valuable. He also suggests replacing meetings with email and instant messaging. They might be distracting but you can be interrupted on your own schedule.

I completely agree, I have spent over two years of work in an office environment and honestly, did not get meaningful work done. It even stretches into my homework. My creative thoughts happen when I am thinking about something else. It’s not quite a House moment where I stare at a cup of coffee and think “it’s not Lupus,” but I’ll look at that cup of coffee and think about the fluid interaction if I were to knock it off the table and how I can make that feel translate into a website. Abstract, but it always works for me. I also think that I had more work done when I was not involved with interruptions, meetings, and being micromanaged. As an intern it was easy to worm my way out but I fear that this is not a choice when working for other companies. The office is not an enemy but sometimes it can feel like a battlefield when trying to compete with a deadline.