Don’t let the technology kill your creativity!
Are you familiar with TED talks? Well, for those who are not familiar with, TED means Technology, Entertainment, and Design. It’s an organization which spreads ideas and powerful talks. For those who are, in this article, we are going to talk about working from home/cafe instead of working in your regular office, and for that TED talks will help us.
Our first TED talk will be from Jason Fried. He is talking that work, actually, doesn’t happen at work. Our jobs almost always require a boring office, full of desks, people chatting or writing on their keyboards, noise, etc. But they need something different to get their work done.
And when people are asked where they go to finish their work, they were giving 3 answers:
- Kind of a pace or a location or room — people were talking about an extra room in their house, kitchen, porch, coffee shop or a library
- Moving object — their moving object was a car, a train, a plane
- Time — their work did not depend on the location, but it depended on the hours: early morning in the morning, late in the night or the weekends.
Jason has been asking this question for almost 10 years, and he has never heard someone to give him the answer: the office.
People are coming to work, and they are definitely not working the whole time. They just have some moments; let’s say 1 hour or so when they do their job. At the end of their day, people realize that they haven’t finished their work.
People like to finish their work where there are few distractions — in a quiet non-stressful place. Furthermore, Jason speaks about the voluntary distractions when people are working at home or coffee place: you can decide whether you are going to watch TV, listen to music or you are going to ignore those things and focus on your work. Whether in the office, there are no voluntary distractions. You have to cope with them. Some managers are banning types of websites (facebook, twitter, youtube).
But according to Jason, the real problems are what he calls M&Ms — The Managers and the Meetings.
Managers are interrupting people’s work while they are doing their work: checking if you are doing your work. Meetings are ruining creativity; people need to stop in order to go to a meeting — no one knows whether they need to stop doing something important.
At the end of his talk, Jason gives 3 very interesting suggestions in order what the managers should to for people to like to go to their office and finish their job.
→ His first suggestion is No-talk Thursday. He says that the first Thursday of every month, in the afternoon, people should go to their offices and get their work done while no one is talking.
→ His second suggestion is passive way of communications like messages and emails instead of tapping people on their shoulder. With this, he suggests that you can decide to ignore your email and open it when you are free, but you cannot ignore your boss.
→ And, his last suggestion is the cancellation of a meeting. Why have a meeting which is not so important? Cancel it.
Feel free to watch his video, just click play.
“Technology interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on our cell phone” — STEVEN SPIELBERG
It is clear that the technology has changed the way people were working because it has become very hard for us to keep up with all the trends. But the technology has given us a gift: working from and when whenever we want.
We are under the pressure of our smartphones buzzing during the day and the night. We have to check our phones whether there are any missed calls or messages — this habit is disruption our social pattern. According to a study, 34% of the people admitted that using social media is a form of mental break for them.
Let’s see a day of an average worker:
07:30 am— Going to work; 18% of the workers admitted that they check their email while driving
08:00 am-12:00 pm—The working days usually start with meetings. During those meetings, 92% of the workers are multi-tasking — checking their email and replying.
12:30 pm-06:30 pm — During these hours, people are trying to work but they are disturbed by their email and social media.
06:30 pm-11:00 pm — After finishing the working day, people are going home, having a dinner and 70% of them are taking ‘rest’ with their smartphones — still checking their email, checking other social media, watching TV. Because of the smartphones, it takes longer for them to fall asleep.
Checking our smartphones all the time, causes stress and disturbs our sleeping pattern. Furthermore, disturbs our creativity during our work. According to a study, checking email 3 times a day causes no stress.
People say ‘I lose my concentration easily’ — actually, this is not true. No one is losing their concentration, but they are directing it in a wrong direction. Whenever you decide that you are going to check your smartphone — this is where you make a mistake. So, focus on your job, finish it — and then you can do whatever you want, but don’t let the TECHNOLOGY KILL YOUR CREATIVITY!
To learn more about productivity, read this interesting white paper: https://www.hintsa.com/white-paper-shifting-gears/
