Distracted by Maggie Jackson

As I write this blog post, I am going to count how many times I am interrupted by co-workers, email, etc…..

According to Maggie Jackson, multi-tasking is costing the US Economy about $650 billion a year. Well, it’s actually the loss of productivity that she claims comes with multi-tasking that is the problem. Her book, Distracted, has been making the rounds and has been featured in Business Week, Fast Company, BuzzFlash, and several others.

There are some interesting stats to support Ms. Jackson’s claim:

- On average, an office worker when interrupted takes 25 minutes to get back on task, and one-third of the time, they never do {so if I get interrupted 20 times in a day, it may be better if I don’t even show up because at that point I will have negative productivity, right?}.

– A typical information worker’s day can be broken down as follows: 28% Unnecessary Distractions; 25% Productive Content; 20% In Meetings; 15% Searching Through Content (emails and web searching); 12% Thinking and Reflecting. {I’m wondering who gets to judge if a distraction is ‘unnecessary’}

– In a day, the typical information worker turns to email 50 times, instant messaging 77 times and visits 40 different websites. {40 websites…..that may be contributing to the productivity loss….not the multi-tasking}

– The average number of corporate emails sent and received per day is projected to rise from today’s 156 messages to 228 by the year 2011. One reason for the increase is “Spam,” junk email generated by social and business-networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. {I know I am getting old, but ‘spam?’ I guess I don’t have my inbox overflowing with people wanting to be my Facebook friend. One day…}

There is actually a somewhat dark element to the book. Check this out: “Smitten with the virtual, split-split, and nomadic, we are corroding the three pillars of our focus (orienting), judgment (executive function), and awareness (alerting). The costs are steep: we begin to lose trust, depth and connection in our relations and our thought. Without a flourishing array of attentional skills, our world flattens and thins. And most alarmingly, we begin to lose our ability to collectively face the challenges of our time. Can a society without deep focus preserve and learn from its past? Does a culture of distraction evolve to meet the needs of the future?” Yikes.

Well, I had 2 important e-mails to answer and 3 conversations while taking care of this blog post. I’m at the point now where noise and interruptions are the norm and I don’t think I could think if everything was quiet………

Usually when you ‘re-use’ something, it doesn’t go well (think leftovers) and often doesn’t look great.

I realize many people may have heard of this company, but their concept (not to mention their website) is just incredibly cool. Freitag is a Swiss company who makes messenger bags that from ‘re-purposed’ material – truck tarpaulins for the outer part of the bag, old seat belts for the shoulder strap, etc. And here is the amazing part….you get to pick which truck tarpulin your bag is made from AND what part of the truck tarp you want.. This is in the Design your Own section. It will set you back a few bucks ($250), but you’ll have a good story to tell.

Best part of the site is the warning on the page:

“But take care: You are responsible for the design. If it looks ugly, it’s your own fault.” That is strong.

Informal meeting space perfect for instant meetings

If you work in an office environment, then you are very aware that collaboration and working in teams is becoming increasingly important, but how do you design for it?

Below is a summary of a recent article from the Steelcase 360 about how to optimize your office space for collaboration, a topic of discussion in every office redesign. For the full article, please click here.

There’s no ‘I’ in teamwork – But there’s plenty of future (summary)
According to the International Facilities Managers Association, IFMA, the amount of space devoted to conference, training, and break out areas in the workplace increased 17% from 2002 to 2007 and the size of our workspaces are decreasing.

When designing a collaborative space, you should consider and incorporate what Lew Epstein, director of Advanced Product Marketing at Steelcase, believes are the three key aspects of a collaborative workspace.
(1) the social aspect – how people connect, challenge and inspire one another to achieve their full potential;
(2) the spatial aspect – space is key in hosting and boosting collaboration. Collaboration can happen anywhere.
(3) the informational aspect – Workers today use laptops, Blackberries, iPods, wikis, etc. to solve problems and work to innovate together. Turn them into team tools.

For team space solutions or workspaces designed to embrace collaboration, click to view collections from the Steelcase Store.

So if you’re a startup looking for office furniture we can obviously recommend where you should start. But before you buy the furniture, you first need an office. And that’s where Rofo.com comes into play. Rofo, which stands for Right of First Offer, is all about making it easy for small businesses to quick search local real estate listings under 5000 square feet.

Currently only covering the San Francisco Bay area, Rofo.com lets you search by city, space size, type of space, lease type and budget with an easy to use interface and search results that are integrated into a Google Maps view of the area being searched. If only every real estate site was organized this well.

In addition to browsing spaces you can also post a space need (which real estate agents can respond to) and finally you can seek advice on topics for all things a small business may have questions about when looking for new space (leasing, insurance, movers, oh, and of course … furniture).

Discovered via TechCrunch.

A recent article by Sarah More McCann in the Christian Science Monitor suggests that business success can be linked to the shape of your conference table. It is clear from the article that people are tending toward small and informal meeting spots. That is empirically true where I work….we tend to have quick, informal meetings either in “the living room” or in one of several standing height tables. The huge conference rooms where I work tend to be dark and underused. The article relays that different groups have different needs however. To that end, we offer several shapes of tables recommended in the article and can get any size and shape you may want. Just give us a call.