Getting work done is an illusive thing. I get my real work done early in the morning -- everyone has their way of getting the uninterrupted time they need to do something useful.
Jason Fried from 37Signals has this great TEDx talk on the subject.
In the presentation he talks about the two Ms: Managers and Meetings, from which come all things that prevent getting real work done.
Here are some good quotes:
- Managers are people whos job it is to interrupt people.
- They don't really do the work so they have to make sure everyone else is doing the work -- and that is an interruption.
- The thing that is worse (than interruptions) is the thing that managers do most of all and that is call meetings.
- Meetings are just toxic, terrible, poisonous things during the day.
- Meetings procreate. One meeting leads to another meeting...
What to do?
He goes on to suggest three ways to make the office into a place where work gets done:
- No talk days -- so people can actually do some work
- Switch from active communication (meetings) to passive communications (email)
- Cancel the next meeting -- you will find that everything is just fine.
Jason Fried runs 37 Signals, a company that provides elegant web based tools for getting work done. They have a pretty good blog called Signal vs Noise that I recommend to anyone interested in this subject.