In my defense, I was quite good at reading Usenet. I tried every new release of every NewsReader on an eternal quest for the one that would enable me to read the most articles in the shortest amount of time. I actually did benchmarks.
I could whip through articles like you wouldn't believe. Seriously—other Usenet aficionados would watch me and ask for tips.
Then one day I came up with the most amazing optimization to the process. I decided to stop reading Usenet all together. I gained a couple of hours each day.
The ultimate process improvement is to eliminate the process. Eliminate, don't automate. (But if you must automate, read Chapter 13.)
The problem is identifying what is worthwhile and what is worth eliminating.
What Is a Time Waster?
I define a time waster as any activity that has a low ratio of benefit to time spent.
Everything has some kind of benefit. Spending five hours playing video games has an entertainment benefit. However, other things have benefits that might be more valuable to you. For example, spending the same
Figure 11-1.
amount of time to increase your quality of living by doing home repairs has longer-lasting benefits than blasting millions of pixilated aliens.
The things that waste our time at work are different—phone calls with people who never stop talking, inefficient processes, waiting around for all our lunch buddies to assemble so we can leave for lunch, etc.
Avoiding the Tempting Time Wasters
Some time wasters are just irresistable. It comes down to "everything in moderation." Short conversations around the watercooler break up the boredom and monotony of the workday and let us return to work refreshed. Multihour conversations about nonwork topics, on the other hand, are not so valuable.
The problem is that it is difficult to do things in moderation. As Oscar Wilde said, "I can resist everything but temptation." It's difficult to say to yourself, "I'll just play video games for a minute" or "I'll just look at the subject lines of my email and only read the important ones." Soon you're deleting spam, replying to requests, and then you look at your clock and see that a few hours have passed.
So what works?
I can avoid temptation if I set up rules of thumb and mantras for myself (see Chapter 3) and then find ways to enforce them.
It would be nice if every five minutes our brains would think, "Gosh, what's the benefit of what I'm doing right now?" That would help us recognize when we've fallen into a time waster and snap out of it. Sadly, we're not built that way.
I've found that it's better to set up rules for myself. Rules such as "When this alarm goes off, I'm going to stop playing this game." At home, I have an old-fashioned kitchen timer with a loud bell that requires two hands to turn off (one to hold the device, the other to turn a knob to 0). Thus, I can't just slap an off button and return to my video game. (I also enjoy the irony of being surrounded by technology but using an antique timer.)
In the office, I'd feel silly with the mechanical timer going off all the time, and the noise would disturb my coworkers. Therefore, I use other alarms and reminders, such as iCal.
Rule of thumb: set an alarm before doing something "just for a minute."
While I find that I can be much more productive in an office with the door closed (due to the lack of interruptions and noise), there are times when having a coworker with me makes it easier to avoid temptation.
Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values—and witnesses.
--Franklin P. Jones
Working with someone on a project can make it easier to stay focused. First of all, if I am interrupted, I have the excuse, "Sorry, I'm working with someone right now. Can you come back later?" However, the bigger reason it works is that I just don't even think about the temptations. For example, I can't check my other email inbox, the one I use for personal stuff, right in front of my coworker.
Common Time Wasters
Here are some common work time wasters and advice about how to better manage them.
Junk items in your to do list . Everyone's to do list has a few junk items. Show your to do list to your manager and see if she faints. Maybe she'll eliminate some items, maybe she'll even take responsibility for speaking to the person who made the request. There may be routine (repeated) items on your list that your manager didn't know about. Once, I showed my to do list to my manager, and he saw that every morning I scheduled 15 minutes a day to manually check and fix a problem we'd been having. Ah, finally he saw the value in getting that system replaced!
Too many email lists . How many mailing lists are you on—10, 20, 100? I remove myself from one email list each month. It's a repeating item on my first-of-the-month to do list. I find that during the course of the month I subscribe to email lists that look interesting. If I don't remove myself from lists every so often, I'll eventually be on every list on the planet. (See Chapter 10 for more email tips.)
Bulletin boards, Usenet , etc. The signal-to-noise ratio is so low on most bulletin boards that they rarely have much work-related value.
Chat systems. While I recognize that many people use IRC and Instant Message systems for work-related tasks, nonwork use of chat systems seems to have very little benefit, especially during work hours.
The office "drop by." I find that people are more likely to drop by and chat if my desk faces the door. Turn your chair so people can't catch your eye from the hallway.
Salespeople and recruiters . I used to find it terribly difficult to get off the phone with salespeople and recruiters who would call me. I found the secret was to say, "Thank you, I'm not interested," and hang up. Only once in 10 years did I accidentally hang up on someone whom I shouldn't have. He called back.
Manual processes. There are many programming languages that are geared toward making it easy for system administrators to automate their tasks. Perl is the most popular. Python and Ruby are growing in popularity. Look for a book on that programming language at your local computer bookstore. The O'Reilly Cookbook series is also extremely helpful for automating tasks. More on the topic of automating processes in Chapter 13.
Office Socializing
Technical people, contrary to popular stereotype, can be very social people. There are certainly business benefits to the bonding and networking that comes from standing around the watercooler, talking with coworkers. However, there are limits.
Once, I had a coworker who liked to talk about politics and could spend an entire afternoon pontificating (he didn't let others talk much) about current events. The benefit of participating in these conversations was very little, and yet they would draw many people out of their cubicles. I disagreed with him, nearly always, so I was often drawn in because I didn't want his opinions to go unchallenged. In fact, I think those who disagreed with him were more tempted to stop working and join in the debates.