Monday, August 13, 2018
Employing Interruptions for Gain - Interruption Management
The London subway system was experiencing a growing problem of unwanted vandals and thieves in their tunnels. So a plan was devised to play classical music and opera, such as Vivaldi, Mozart, and Pavarotti, in the effort to make unwelcome visitors uncomfortable with the subway environment.
Studies have shown that this type of music is unfamiliar and unacceptable to the thugs who hang out in the subway. Making them miserable with music they don't enjoy will drive them away. By making the subway tunnels and stations a caustic environment to the nature of thieves and vandals, the vandalism and thievery were greatly decreased. Labels: ., classical music, environment, interruption, music, thieves, vandalism
Friday, August 03, 2018
Sunday, July 29, 2018
Constant Trivia Interrupts and Enslaves - Interruption Management
"In the absence of clearly-defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily trivia until ultimately we become enslaved by it."
Robert Heinlein Labels: achievement. Heinlein, focus, goals, productivity, trivia
Saturday, July 21, 2018
The Value of Being Concise - Interruption Management
Here’s a good article by Dr. Donald Wetmore on the importance of being concise in our communications. In a nutshell, appropriate “concision” benefits all parties! Labels: communication, concision, productivity, work
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Stay Focused and Win - Interruption Management
When you're besieged by information on a continual basis, you begin to feel overwhelmed, which leads to the feeling of overwork and stress, and decreased concentration.
When you eliminate a lot of the extraneous information and distractions that make their way to you, you will not feel as overworked or overwhelmed. Get off mailing lists, drop most subscriptions, and avoid extraneous information whenever you can. Labels: concentration, extraneous information, focus, information overload, junk mail, overwork, stress
Friday, July 06, 2018
Rules Can Impede Progress - Interruption Management
Once a rule is put in place it's difficult to eliminate it even though the original reasons for its generation are long gone, according to author Roger von Oech. His prime example:
In the 1870s the leading manufacturer of typewriters at the time received complaints that too many of the typewriter keys were sticking together if the operator went too fast. In response to this, the company produced the QWERTY type keyboard -- a configuration standard on all keyboards -- to slow down operators so that the keys wouldn't jam together.
Today, technology permits us to produce typewriter keyboards that can operate much faster than any human could possibly type, but the QWERTY configuration still dominates and likely will for the foreseeable future.
The nugget for us all: introduce new rules, new regulations, and new procedures carefully, and monitor their long term effectiveness. Labels: conformity, effectiveness, impede, regulation, rules, von Oech
Thursday, June 28, 2018
Driving Distracted? - Interruption Management
Eleven years ago... and the problem remains: NBC Channel 10 in Philadelphia reported that "New Jersey legislators pushed forward a plan to make it illegal to text message while driving. The Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee voted unanimously to release the proposal after several legislators admitted to frequently firing off text messages while behind the wheel, even though they know doing so is dangerous."
"Assemblyman Paul Moriarty acknowledges doing it himself, but he's not proud of it. 'It's very, very dangerous,' he said. Citing that risk, the Democratic assemblyman wants to stop motorists from sending text messages while driving."
"'It's more dangerous than talking on a cell phone because I believe you can keep your eyes on the road when talking on a cell phone,' Moriarty said. That's not the case when typing and sending text messages, he said. 'I only assume they're using their knees to drive,' Moriarty said." Labels: car accident, cell phone, driving, freedom, government regulation, insanity, madness, safety, text messaging, traffic
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.jpg "Jeff Davidson - Expert at Managing Interruption Overload")
