The Changing Rhythms of Work
If ubiquitous unscheduled access and activity is the future of work, our tools and systems must fit into this world if they are to remain relevant. How do the ways in which we use our devices change us, and what new rhythms will emerge in how we read, react and work with information?
Working like clockwork
The modern industrialised world was built on scheduled, organised, quantifiable blocks of time. The Victorians were the masters of scheduling and the practices and approaches they built up have been the foundation for much of how we work today. From stating this is when the train arrives through to this is when you start and finish work, much of our activities have been defined by schedules. Time is certainty, something we can depend on, we set a place and time and agree to converge upon it. Everything in synchronization, to schedule, a guarantee that the stars will align to successfully achieve our goals. The machine and the organisation’s ‘clockwork’ performance defined efficiency. When thing’s went out of sync and the schedule slipped, our productivity collapsed. Often the need for immediacy and instant answers ran contrary to this regimentally scheduled model.
The organisational principle of time was essential to how we worked, as much of the work we did required us to be in a specific place and use a specific tool or machine. It was the factory model, centralised and uniform. And when it came to information workers this approach continued. The physicality of the tools we used defined the place, from the libraries, record rooms and clerk’s archives through the mainframes and terminals. Historically, even if the information collection was out in the field made by the roaming operative, the information retrieval and analysis was safely behind closed doors. Trapped by location. We had to request access and physically visit the information. Even when we started talking about “surfing the information superhighway” in the early 90s, we still had to get on it at fixed access points. Information was now free to travel as long as we didn’t move, as long as we stayed tethered to our phone line and screen. Thus we scheduled tasks and reports, waited, worked and went home. The datascape was somewhere we visited, not somewhere we inhabited.
This external, location based view is still the way we name and talk about the devices and tools we use to access information; the data centre, the desktop, the laptop, the handheld device. Location has always been tethered to the user, rather than the broader spatial or geolocation. It wasn’t until Bruce Sterling started talking about ‘spimes’ or artefacts located in space and time (at SIGGRAPH back in 2004) that we really started to see the potential. That’s when we began to think about the web of information around us and being part of it. This helped us see how the nature of information was changing. We started to shake off the schedule’s shackles, we started to demand things when we wanted them. We started to reach out and grab what we needed.
Access and immediacy
The mass availability of smart phones and the rise of the networked, connected world has changed our relationship to the schedule. Where once we looked at it as the thing that delivered, that guaranteed access and availability, it’s now often the thing that holds us back. Often it’s seen as the thing delaying us from operating at our most productive. Waiting for a report to arrive or a meeting to happen before a decision can be taken can break our flow or even lose or confuse the context of the issue at hand. Today my devices, help me to live in the data. Now I pull the information I need directly to me whenever I need it, no matter where I am. I can connect things in ways that were never before possible simply by having access to the data in these new open-ended contexts. Time, place and immediacy change they way I use and utilise information. The elaborate and artificial constraints that the schedule requires to keep things ticking along at a predictable rhythm, change when I don’t have to wait. I can maintain flow and continue my train of thought. This is a massive shift in how we work with information and our relationship with it.
You only have to look at how children experience media to see how this changes people’s behaviour. If they want to watch something, they simply find it and watch it — the TV guide is dead, as everything is there for immediate consumption. It takes something very special to force a ‘scheduled viewing’, that is, a viewing in accordance to someone else’s schedule. It also means that the ‘see it now or miss out’ impetus is gone. Things can be picked up, put down, interrupted and consumed in fragments. It’s just as much about the ability to pause and postpone as it is about immediacy. It’s my schedule, one to which I adhere to or disregard at will.
Even the way people meet and socialise is in many cases schedule free. Especially with the young, a close friend(1) observed how his children don’t arrange things with friends in the same we he did as a child. There’s no more prior agreement to “meet at the park at 4pm”, it’s more a case of simply reaching out or broadcasting availability to see who’s in, near or available now. It’s continuous flow rather than predefined blocks, “see you in 10 mins” instead of “see you at 4pm”. This behaviourial change is thanks to the connected device. As it’s always to hand we are always inside the information space rather than outside waiting for an opportunity to look in. Our devices and the way they connect us and position us inside the information space are changing our behaviours both at work and at play.
For many of us, this new access and connectedness impacts us more than we realise. The activities for using and understanding information (often the primary activity at work) no longer need to be scheduled and isolated. We are changing how we process information and in turn that changes us. As Kevin Kelly pointed out when referencing Psychologists Ostrosky-Solis, Garcia and Perez;
“the acquisition of reading and writing skills has changed the brain organization of cognitive activity in general, not only in language but also in visual perception, logical reasoning, remembering strategies, and formal operational thinking.” (2)
Kelly believes that the internet and digital media is impacting us in a similar way to literacy skills. That the practice and emerging literacy of ‘reading the web’ is transformative.
How we interact and experience information changes us. Through the immediacy and connectedness of information today we are transforming our behaviours and ourselves, yet again.
We are changed by the activity, whether that’s:
Glimpsing — Those “micromoments” (3), that reflexive interaction with the device, be that checking the time, viewing an instant message, seeing when the next bus will arrive, or if that payment has been received. These are the fleeting activities that don’t have to interrupt the current focus. Activities that suit a discreet and personal device, such as a smart watch.
Snacking — The bite sized consumption of media and information. Where our ever accessible smart phone comes in to it’s own. It’s not just those ‘stolen’ few minutes; Googling the actor whilst watching a film, replying to that email on the bus, 5 minutes of your favourite game between meetings and even the perusal of Facebook updates during someone else’s presentation. It’s also the quick task, the cheat sheet and refresher before the customer meeting, that bite of nourishing information that helps inform what’s at hand. These can be isolated or a staccato of varied often disconnected activities, the continued switching of attention from screen to surroundings.
Chunking — That traditional behavior of self scheduled activity, where you set aside X amount of time to do something. From the 30 minutes to deal with email to the couple of hours to complete that report. These are more like the work blocks we are used to, where we sit in front of our devices and try our best to focus, knowing we are likely to be interrupted. This where we often end up indulging in many of the other behaviours, whether as self distraction, interruption or to assist the current task.
Immersing — The focus and total engagement in something. When you’re held by a great story, locked into a game, or deep in a flow state as you create, learn or solve something. It’s when the barrier with the device seems to have dissolved and you lose track of your current surroundings — totally absorbed in the activity.
Connecting — This is more like Kelly’s ‘reading of the web’. It’s that fragmented hopping around, the weaving together of different ideas and disparate sources. Where you cross over from work to play, but are continuously adding to the broader context of what you are doing. It’s when we carry over traces from one piece of information to another, from one device to another.
We are now all analysts and ‘footnote’ chasers, checking, cross referencing and validating the information we receive. More over, when we answer email from the bus, view real-time travel information, check the latest sales figures or ‘just Google it’ we pull this information and activity in new contexts, into our current flow. The enforced scheduled hour to do X has vanished and it’s now something we choose to focus on or interrupt at will. The quantifiable victorian blocks of work time are now readily to sliced up and rearranged, in new ever changing ways, ways that fit better with a more complex and uncertain environment.
New rhythms
As our behaviours change, so do the rhythms to which we work. Having multiple devices and access enables us to interact and experience information in ways that fit who we are and how we need to work. You can see this in the responses to the survey (part of the full Research Digest), with the prevalence of spontaneous use across differing devices for both discreet tasks and continuing the same task. This is accompanied by the belief that this activity “improves their productivity”. The respondents can continue at will on another device, no need to postpone it until the next visit to the initial device. Or whilst doing one thing they can use another device for an interim task, something short.
The smartphone is the preferred for device for ‘interim’ activities. It’s always close to hand, it’s our primary access point. This happens at work and at home. For many of us this is our primary screen, the laptop, TV or meeting screen is the secondary slower moving rhythm in the background. It’s this personal, to hand screen that creates a faster, more engaged and intimate rhythm. It’s also this that helps fragment and break down the clearly defined work time vs. play time. I’m always connected, always thinking. It’s not a simple case of work, life balance any more. Our behaviours are crossing back and forth between the two. Being always connected with multiple screens at home and at work fuel the behaviours that I use both at work and at play. I analyse data for work and for my health, the tools aren’t that different and the devices are often the same. If anything we often have more devices and screens in our personal life than at work, but the activities and behaviours are the same. The interim checking, the snacking on content, the focused period, the glimpsing (with the new smaller devices like watches). This is behavioural and reflects how we inhabit the information space, where we are located, connected, and continuously reaching out and exploring the information around us.
With these changing rhythms, we must make a conscious effort to carve out those longer focussed periods because often the tools needed for ‘serious work’ are still fixed to one device. There is new wave of devices are targeted at weening us off our compulsive smartphone use. Attempting to give us the awareness we need of our information space without being constantly pulled to the device, a much calmer relationship. This is creating another layer of rhythms to incorporate into our behaviours. A shift away from reaching for the smartphone to glimpsing the watch or feeling haptic feedback. Where ambient information is always there hinting about the information space around us. The range of devices and screens we have to hand will change and adapt as our behaviours influence them. We want to be able to achieve our goals, complete tasks and experience our data anywhere and at any time we want to. That’s the promise of the unscheduled world.
Of course we aren’t free to do everything everywhere, not yet anyway. We are still limited by the way services and tools have been designed. How the interaction paradigm or technical solution suits device X better than device Y. But as we continue to embrace connectedness and ubiquitous computing, these things that hold us back today will disappear. We are beginning to see that with the birth of the truly smart assistants from Apple, Google, and Amazon, and the rapid growth in artificial intelligence. This shift from simple search and retrieval agents to the creation of platforms that support interaction in new ways means the device will no longer limit what can be achieved. Devices change behaviours, behaviours in turn drive our relationship with information and technology, helping us create new devices and exciting new ways to work with and experience information.
This piece was originally published as part of the Qlik Research Digest: The role of Multiple Devices in the Workplace for Qlik.com.
Download the entire Research Digest: The role of Multiple Devices in the Workplace
See for more articles on data visualisation, BI, decision making and technology check out qlik.com/blog
References:
- Hat tip to Steve Hunt @LegallyFaceless who’s smart thinking and brilliant conversation has been a constant source of inspiration — http://hunty.tumblr.com/
- From: Kevin Kelly, The 2-Billion-Eyed Intermedia http://kk.org/thetechnium/the-2-billion-e/
Original author’s paper says “It may be assumed that the acquisition of the reading and writing skills may have somehow changed the brain organization of cognitive activity in general.” http://en.copian.ca/library/research/acn_illi/acn_i.pdf - Micromoments from: Sridhar Ramaswamy, How Micro-Moments Are Changing the Ruleshttps://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/how-micromoments-are-changing-rules.html
