The War on Interruptions: When Change is Hard | Hacker News Reader

The War on Interruptions: When Change is Hard

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45 pointscwan15 comments

Anyone at YC want to comment on if there's a correlation between quiet working conditions and successfully launching a startup? Of the successful startups you've funded, how many had quiet/private working conditions vs noisy/shared ones?

I'd be interested in thoughts on how I as a non-leader can modify my environment to reduce interruptions at certain times, but do so in a way that's not off-putting to my coworkers. I work in a row of cubicles and am surrounded on all sides by teammates that I adore, but who love to talk to me (and who I love to talk to). That's great, except when I need to get work done, which is ironically my usual state at work.

Headphones, even when you're not listening to music.

Any form of easily-understood signal will help; the only requirement is that it not be rude to those around you. (Alternately, it can be so over-the-top rude that everyone thinks it's funny. But they'll also take the point.) The funniest one I've heard is two students in the sciences who were writing theses - they got a hold of a pair of white labcoats, and put them on when they don't want to be disturbed writing their theses. "I'm doing science".

Interesting. Headphones empirically do not work in my situation. Maybe a neon-pink Do Not Disturb sign above my monitor that I can flip into position when I want to zone.

Do headphones not work with everyone, or only with a subset of people? It wouldn't surprise me if some people didn't take the hint, but I guess I'd be surprised if nearly everyone missed it.

I know one person who tried a Do Not Disturb sign. Like yours, it was a bit over the top, and that seemed to help. Again, worked with some of his coworkers, and not with others.

I've found headphones work better if I use them no more than 30-40% of the time or so; then people wait until I don't have headphones on to ask me something. Doesn't work if I have them on all the time.

I've tried two approaches, both of which work reasonably well.

1) Headphones + a sign saying "Do not disturb when headphones are in place (I used an ANSI sign generator which I can no longer find) 2) Come in an hour before everyone else

I haven't tried it myself, but have seen other people work from conference rooms, cafeterias, etc with a laptop and phone-forwarding.

At Happy Camper Studios we had a system of flags. Colored index cards, actually: red, yellow, and green.

Green up meant you were open to interruption for anything.

Yellow meant you were open to interruptions for something work related.

Red meant don't bother me unless the building is on fire.

I was really bad at remembering to change flags, and was always on the lookout for some USB-driven traffic light thing that didn't cost a fortune.

Round here we use a variety of techniques:

* As everyone else has mentioned: headphones.

* Work at home when you're doing a particularly complex piece of work.

* Stagger working hours so that there are times when not all employees overlap - start time is anything from (approximately) 8am to 10am.

* Set instant messenger statuses to 'away' or 'in a meeting' for critical work. (This one only works for people not within line-of-sight.

* Have team leads (approx 1 for every 6 people) who can answer more general questions and so act as a buffer between programmers and people who might need to interrupt them.

* Provide people with the ways to find answers rather than the answers themselves (This has the dual purpose of making it less convenient to ask you than to look stuff up, and teaching people to be more independent.)

* Have times when you are more clearly interruptible - this groups the questioning / passing the time of day, so you can get a longer uninterrupted stretch later.

edit: formatting

Placebo effect?

The nurses are aware that the vest wearing policy is introduced to reduce medication errors. Wouldn't the nurses just be extra cautious while wearing these vests (not because there are fewer distractions around them but because they know they are been observed)?

Wouldn't any placebo effect wear off over the 6 month trial period?

Also : Who cares if the true reason is less interruptions? The environment is reducing the error rate.

I'm thinking that you're right: if the placebo effect reduces the error rate by 50%, then the environment definitely needs a permanently installed placebo like these vests.

That makes me wonder how much of everyday life is based on accidental placebo effect - item designs, behaviours, procedures.

One day, will someone notice that the vests have no obvious link to the tasks and promote removing hem for cost cutting?

I agree with you 100%.

All I'm saying is the nurse example doesn't really prove the main argument, which is that fewer interruptions equals fewer errors. Right now, it appears everyone reading this wants to apply this seemingly proven technique in their own work place, when (maybe) all they need is a device that reminds them that 1.) they make mistakes and 2.) their mistakes are being measured and observed.

Yes. You make an interesting point about how the research doesn't clearly isolate the cause of the changes. What it does highlight is that you can change the environment to effect performance improvements.

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