ideen streichen muster

so i'm going to talk about work; specifically, why people can'tseem to get work done at work, which is a problem we all kind of have. but let's sort of start at the beginning. so, we have companiesand non-profits and charities and all these groups that haveemployees or volunteers of some sort. and they expect these peoplewho work for them to do great work -- i would hope, at least.

at least good work, hopefully,at least it's good work -- hopefully great work. and so what they typicallydo is they decide that all these people need to cometogether in one place to do that work. so a company, or a charity,or an organization of any kind, unless you're working in africa,if you're really lucky to do that -- most people have to goto an office every day. and so these companies, they build offices.

they go out and they buy a building,or they rent a building, or they lease some space, and they fill this space with stuff. they fill it with tables, or desks, chairs, computer equipment, software, internet access, maybe a fridge, maybe a few other things, and they expect their employees,or their volunteers, to come to that locationevery day to do great work.

it seems like it's perfectlyreasonable to ask that. however, if you actually talk to people and even question yourself,and you ask yourself, where do you really want to go when youreally need to get something done? you'll find out that people don't saywhat businesses think they would say. if you ask people the question: where do you need to gowhen you need to get something done? typically, you get three differentkinds of answers. one is kind of a placeor a location or a room.

another one is a moving object, and a third is a time. so here are some examples. i've been asking people this questionfor about 10 years: "where do you go when youreally need to get something done?" i'll hear things like, the porch,the deck, the kitchen. i'll hear things likean extra room in the house, the basement, the coffee shop, the library.

and then you'll hearthings like the train, a plane, a car -- so, the commute. and then you'll hear people say, "well, it doesn't reallymatter where i am, as long as it's early in the morningor late at night or on the weekends." you almost never hearsomeone say, "the office." but businesses are spending all this moneyon this place called the office, and they're making peoplego to it all the time, yet people don't do work in the office.

what is that about? (laughter) why is that? why is that happening? and what you find out is, if you dig a little bit deeper,you find out that people -- this is what happens: people go to work, and they're basicallytrading in their work day for a series of "work moments" --that's what happens at the office.

you don't have a work day anymore.you have work moments. it's like the front doorof the office is like a cuisinart, and you walk in and your dayis shredded to bits, because you have 15 minutes here,30 minutes there, and something else happens,you're pulled off your work, then you have 20 minutes, then it's lunch,then you have something else to do ... then you've got 15 minutes, and someonepulls you aside and asks you a question, and before you know it, it's 5 p.m., and you look back on the day,

and you realize that youdidn't get anything done. we've all been through this. we probably went through it yesterdayor the day before, or the day before that. you look back on your day, and you're like,"i got nothing done today. i was at work. i sat at my desk.i used my expensive computer. i used the software they told me to use. i went to these meetingsi was asked to go to. i did these conference calls.i did all this stuff.

but i didn't actually do anything. i just did tasks. i didn't actually getmeaningful work done." and what you find is that,especially with creative people -- designers, programmers,writers, engineers, thinkers -- that people really need long stretchesof uninterrupted time to get something done. you cannot ask somebodyto be creative in 15 minutes and really think about a problem.

you might have a quick idea, but to be in deep thought about a problemand really consider a problem carefully, you need long stretchesof uninterrupted time. and even though the work dayis typically eight hours, how many people here have ever hadeight hours to themselves at the office? how about seven hours? six? five? four? when's the last time you hadthree hours to yourself at the office? two hours? one, maybe?

very, very few people actually have long stretches of uninterruptedtime at an office. and this is why peoplechoose to do work at home, or they might go to the office, but they might go to the officereally early in the day, or late at night when no one's around, or they stick aroundafter everyone's left, or go in on the weekends, or they get work done on the plane,in the car or in the train,

because there are no distractions. now there are differentkinds of distractions, but not the really bad distractions,which i'll talk about in a minute. and this whole phenomenon of havingshort bursts of time to get things done reminds me of another thingthat doesn't work when you're interrupted, and that is sleep. i think that sleep and workare very closely related -- not because you can work while you'resleeping and sleep while you're working. that's not really what i mean.

i'm talking specifically about the factthat sleep and work are phase-based, or stage-based, events. sleep is about sleep phases, or stages --some people call them different things. there are five of them, and in orderto get to the really deep ones, the meaningful ones,you have to go through the early ones. if you're interrupted while you'regoing through the early ones -- if someone bumps you in bed,or there's a sound, or whatever happens -- you don't just pick up where you left off. if you're interrupted and woken up,

you have to start again. so you have to go backa few phases and start again. and what ends up happening --you might have days like this where you wake up at eight or sevenin the morning, or whenever you get up, and you're like,"i didn't sleep very well. i did the sleep thing --i went to bed, i laid down, but i didn't really sleep." people say you go "to" sleep, but you don't go to sleep,you go towards sleep; it takes a while.

you've got to go through phases and stuff, and if you're interrupted,you don't sleep well. so does anyone hereexpect someone to sleep well if they're interrupted all night? i don't think anyone would say yes. why do we expect people to work well if they're being interruptedall day at the office? how can we possibly expectpeople to do their job if they go to the officeand are interrupted?

that doesn't really seemlike it makes a lot of sense, to me. so what are the interruptions that happenat the office but not at other places? because in other places, you can haveinterruptions like the tv, or you could go for a walk,or there's a fridge downstairs, or you've got your own couch,or whatever you want to do. if you talk to certain managers,they'll tell you that they don't wanttheir employees to work at home because of these distractions. they'll sometimes also say,

"if i can't see the person,how do i know they're working?" which is ridiculous, but that's oneof the excuses that managers give. and i'm one of these managers.i understand. i know how this goes. we all have to improveon this sort of thing. but oftentimes they'll cite distractions: "i can't let someone work at home. they'll watch tv, or do this other thing." it turns out those aren'tthe things that are distracting, because those are voluntary distractions.

you decide when you wantto be distracted by the tv, when you want to turn something on, or when you want to godownstairs or go for a walk. at the office, most of the interruptions and distractions that really cause people notto get work done are involuntary. so let's go through a couple of those. now, managers and bosseswill often have you think that the real distractions at work

are things like facebook and twitter and youtube and other websites, and in fact, they'll go so faras to actually ban these sites at work. some of you may work at placeswhere you can't get to certain sites. i mean, is this china?what the hell is going on here? you can't go to a website at work,and that's the problem? that's why people aren'tgetting work done, because they're on facebook and twitter? that's kind of ridiculous.it's a total decoy.

today's facebook and twitter and youtube, these things are justmodern-day smoke breaks. no one cared about letting people takea smoke break for 15 minutes 10 years ago, so why does anyone careif someone goes to facebook or twitter or youtube here and there? those aren't the realproblems in the office. the real problems arewhat i like to call the m&ms, the managers and the meetings. those are the real problemsin the modern office today.

and this is whythings don't get done at work, it's because of the m&ms. now what's interesting is, if you listen to all the placesthat people talk about doing work, like at home, in the car, on a plane,late at night, or early in the morning, you don't find managers and meetings. you find a lot of other distractions,but not managers and meetings. so these are the thingsthat you don't find elsewhere, but you do find at the office.

and managers are basically peoplewhose job it is to interrupt people. that's pretty much what managers are for.they're for interrupting people. they don't really do the work, so theymake sure everyone else is doing work, which is an interruption. we have lots of managers in the world now,and a lot of people in the world, and a lot of interruptionsby these managers. they have to check in:"hey, how's it going? show me what's up." this sort of thing. they keep interrupting youat the wrong time,

while you're actually trying to dosomething they're paying you to do, they tend to interrupt you. that's kind of bad. but what's even worse is the thingthat managers do most of all, which is call meetings. and meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things during the day at work. we all know this to be true,

and you would never see a spontaneousmeeting called by employees. it doesn't work that way. the manager calls the meeting so the employees can all come together, and it's an incredibly disruptivething to do to people -- to say, "hey look, we're going to bring 10 peopletogether right now and have a meeting. i don't care what you're doing, you've got to stop doing it,so you can have this meeting."

i mean, what are the chancesthat all 10 people are ready to stop? what if they're thinking about somethingimportant, or doing important work? all of a sudden you tell them they haveto stop doing that to do something else. so they go into a meeting room,they get together, and they talk about stuffthat doesn't really matter, usually. because meetings aren't work. meetings are places to goto talk about things you're supposed to be doing later. but meetings also procreate.

so one meeting tendsto lead to another meeting, which leads to another meeting. there's often too many peoplein the meetings, and they're very, very expensiveto the organization. companies often think of a one-hourmeeting as a one-hour meeting, but that's not true,unless there's only one person. if there are 10 people, it's a 10-hourmeeting, not a one-hour meeting. it's 10 hours of productivity takenfrom the rest of the organization to have this one-hour meeting,which probably should have been handled

by two or three peopletalking for a few minutes. but instead, there's a longscheduled meeting, because meetings are scheduledthe way software works, which is in increments of 15 minutes,or 30 minutes, or an hour. you don't schedule an eight-hour meetingwith outlook; you can't. you can go 15 minutes or 30 minutesor 45 minutes or an hour. and so we tend to fill these times up when things should go really quickly. so meetings and managers aretwo major problems in businesses today,

especially at offices. these things don't existoutside of the office. so i have some suggestionsto remedy the situation. what can managers do -- enlightened managers, hopefully -- what can they do to make the officea better place for people to work, so it's not the last resort,but it's the first resort, so that people start to say, "when i really want to get stuff done,i go to the office."

because the offices are well-equipped; everything is therefor them to do the work. but they don't want to go there rightnow, so how do we change that? i have three suggestionsto share with you. i have about three minutes,so that'll fit perfectly. we've all heardof the casual friday thing. i don't know if people still do that. but how about "no-talk thursdays?" pick one thursday once a month,

and cut it in half, just the afternoon --i'll make it easy for you. so just the afternoon, one thursday. first thursday of the month,just the afternoon, nobody in the officecan talk to each other. just silence, that's it. and what you'll find is that a tremendous amountof work gets done when no one talks to each other. this is when peopleactually get stuff done,

is when no one's bothering themor interrupting them. giving someone four hoursof uninterrupted time is the best gift you cangive anybody at work. it's better than a computer, better than a new monitor,better than new software, or whatever people typically use. giving them four hoursof quiet time at the office is going to be incredibly valuable. if you try that, i think you'll agree,and hopefully you can do it more often.

so maybe it's every other week, or every week, once a week, afternoons no one can talk to each other. that's something that you'll findwill really, really work. another thing you can try, is switching from activecommunication and collaboration, which is like face-to-face stuff --tapping people on the shoulder, saying hi to them, having meetings, and replace that with morepassive models of communication,

using things like emailand instant messaging, or collaboration products,things like that. now some people might sayemail is really distracting, i.m. is really distracting, and theseother things are really distracting, but they're distracting at a timeof your own choice and your own choosing. you can quit the email app;you can't quit your boss. you can quit i.m.; you can't hide your manager. you can put these things away,

and then you can be interruptedon your own schedule, at your own time, when you're available,when you're ready to go again. because work, like sleep,happens in phases. so you'll be going up, doing some work, and then you'll come down from that work, and then maybe it's timeto check that email or i.m. there are very, very few thingsthat are that urgent, that need to happen, that needto be answered right this second. so if you're a manager,

start encouraging people to usemore things like i.m. and email and other things that someone can put away and then get back to youon their own schedule. and the last suggestion i have is that, if you do have a meeting coming up, if you have the power, just cancel it. just cancel that next meeting. today's friday, usually peoplehave meetings on monday. just don't have it.

i don't mean move it; i mean just erase itfrom memory, it's gone. and you'll find out that everythingwill be just fine. all these discussions and decisionsyou thought you had to make at this one time at 9 a.m. on monday, just forget about them,and things will be fine. people will have a more open morning,they can actually think. you'll find out all these thingsyou thought you had to do, you don't actually have to do.

so those are just three quick suggestionsi wanted to give you guys to think about. i hope that some of these ideaswere at least provocative enough for managers and bossesand business owners and organizers and peoplewho are in charge of other people, to think about laying off a little bit, and giving people more timeto get work done. i think it'll all pay off in the end. so, thanks for listening. (applause)

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