The modern workplace is an interruption factory that leads to the exact opposite of productivity. Between open offices, emails, and digital distractions, our highest value work is rare, valuable, and cognitively demanding. We need to find a balance between high-value work and high-productive work.
The Questionable ROI of Open Offices
Does the open office actually lead to a negative ROI?
- According to Steven Kotler, it takes 90 minutes of uninterrupted creation time before you reach a state of flow, in which you achieve a 500% increase in productivity, and performance goes through the roof.
- In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues for a different kind of open office: a hub and spoke model.
Adopt a Rhythmic Philosophy for Deep Work
The easiest way to consistently start deep work sessions is to transform them into a simple regular habit
- This deep work approach is feasible for knowledge workers in the modern workplace, but it produces all the conditions for flow
- An hour of uninterrupted creation time and focus on just one task
Build a culture of focus and depth
Make a distinction between urgent and important work
- Set times for communication related activities like email and meetings
- Every meeting should have a purpose and agenda
- Incorporate symbols that establish boundaries
- High quality distractions like going for a walk or having a serendipitous conversation are all good
Gain an Unfair Creative Advantage
Create a swipe file of your best creative strategies
- It includes a free assessment tool to audit the design of your environments
- Follow these principles to kill your endless distractions, do more of what matters to you, and have a higher quality and less time
Leadership Sets the Tone
Leaders set the tone for their organizations
- They face the biggest challenge in changing their behavior
- For leaders, it’s worth asking whether or not an email is leading to an action that aligned with the organizations objectives
- If not, maybe there’s no need to send
The Library Rules at Basecamp
A good litmus test of whether time spent on something is “high value work” would be if it meets these three criteria: rare, valuable, and cognitively demanding
- The cost of a library would be chump change in comparison to the design of an open office
Get Information Out of Silos
Slack became our shared consciousness for our team at Unmistakable Creative
- It reduced the amount of back-and-forth emails and increased the speed at which things got done.
- Notion is the place where our team manages all of their workflow
- Can do all of the following: Write, edit, proofread, share files, comment and collaborate on projects
Design a Distraction-free Digital Environment
Turn off notifications, shut down your inbox, and turn off anything else that might disrupt your focus during your deep work blocks
- Every interruption that you shift your attention to causes attention residue, affecting the original task you were working on for a non-trivial amount of time
Email fails the litmus test
Everyone is capable of reading and responding to email
- It’s not valuable
- Responding to emails doesn’t produce revenue for a company
- Not cognitively demanding
- You don’t have to sustain your attention for an extended period of time to reach inbox zero
Social Media
It’s not valuable because it doesn’t take a lot of training, skill development or knowledge to share things on social media
- Social media fails the litmus test
- Causes people to confuse attention with accomplishment and gradually turns them into the cognitive equivalent of an athlete who smokes
- A not so harmless byproduct for a seemingly harmless habit
