

Jason Fried: Why You Can’t Work at Work [video] - faramarz
http://bigthink.com/ideas/18522

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hnsummary
Video summary:

Jason Fried is one of the co-founders of the software as a service company 37
Signals and gives a good pep talk in this video that is sure to resonate with
anyone that works in a typical office with more than a handful of employees in
it.

He believes the modern workplace is “optimized for interruptions and
interruptions are the enemy of work.” Work is like sleep in that we can’t
immediately fall asleep and we can’t immediately get work done. There is a
period of ramp up time before real work starts but there are so many
distractions in the office that it makes it nearly impossible to stay in the
flow of doing real work.

Jason plugs a few of 37 Signals software tools such as Campfire which allow
employees to work with each other and communicate in an efficient manner
without interrupting each others work flow. He also gives a few good jabs at
managers who make a job out of interrupting the employees rather than just
letting them work.

<http://hnsummary.com/2010/03/29/why-you-cant-work-at-work/>

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arnorhs
One more thing. If your managers suck and they keep interrupting _all_ the
time or at the wrong time or don't respect your time and that it is a failure
when they interrupt you, then you have a sucky manager and he's probably not
even going to log into campfire or whatever, he'll just ask or interrupt
anyways, so I think the biggest problem with interruptions is lack of respect
for interruptions and stupid managers.

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arnorhs
Ok, I agree with some of what he's saying, he says: "It can wait a day". Well,
yes. In theory.

The truth of the matter is that if you're doing actual client work, you have
to contact the client, then you might have to pinball things with your
programmer or your designer or whatever, those things take time. If they all
wait a day, and the client waits a day for you, before you know it, it's been
a week. Maybe two weeks, and you don't have a clue why it took so long. This
is just one example.

Of course this totally depends on what line of work you're in, but that's
maybe my point. Not all companies are 37signals working on a SaaS product.

If you take a week to respond and do something for your client and your
competitor does it in a day, you're going to lose.

Of course reducing interruptions is paramount for any business, but you can't
get rid of them completely in most fields. You just have to control the
interruptions, learn to distinguish between important and not so important
stuff, keep as much communication in an asynchronous manner as possible, but
when you need something asap, you need it asap.

Sorry for the long winded response.

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zacharydanger
Eliminate as many interruptions as you can, but no more than that.

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nickpp
One great advantage of "work": gives you a reason to SHAVE every day.

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hopeless
Not in my case. In fact, doctors appointments, haircuts & family gatherings
etc provide my main imputes for shaving -- or when the stubble starts getting
trapped in my phone :)

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patrickryan
This was basically his Startup School talk. He definitely has many great
points but I question a few. Such as, using IM as a replacement for speaking
directly to a coworker within an office. How can this be more efficient? I
don't see it.

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hboon
I didn't watch the video, but you can ignore IMs or reply to them later, not
unlike emails, but much less so when someone is talking to you face to face.

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dannyr
For me, it is important to personally know my coworker. You cannot do that
with chat.

If coworkers know each other, there's a degree of comfort to be much more open
and honest to each other without taking offense.

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bmj
_For me, it is important to personally know my coworker. You cannot do that
with chat._

I disagree. My employer's development group (only six people) is split between
Pittsburgh and Santa Cruz, CA. Most of my work is with one of the programmers
in the California office. I have spent probably a total of three weeks with
this person (over three years), but I'd argue we have a very good working
relationship, and a good friendship.

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Hexstream
I tried to rate the video five stars and it was just THROWN ASIDE and the site
tried to force me to login.

Usability FAIL.

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jrockway
The video says it will be available in 14,000 days. I will probably have
forgotten by then.

