Over the years, I’ve been trying to accomplish the same basic goal as a lot of other people: maximize productivity. For a goal that’s so basic and primal in the office environment, it’s surprising that it is such a difficult goal to actually accomplish.
1. Working in Cubicles – Whoever arose from the pits of office hell to suggest the concept and practice of using a cubicle setup with the expectation of any kind of real productive gain needs to have a thumping. All you are exposed to from the beginning to the end of the day is noise and distraction. Phones ringing, people typing, people interrupting you every 2 min. to talk about American Idol or how awesome a certain movie was or who slept with who over the weekend. If you have any choice in the matter, avoid this type of workplace, or alternatively, add 60-80% to your time estimates that you’re giving your boss. Maybe one day they’ll get the point.
2. The “weekly team meeting” – Seriously, has anything good ever arisen out of the weekly team meeting? You’re forced to share what you’re working on, when everyone already knows what you’ve been working on; and if they didn’t know, then they won’t care. But then you force people to come up with “something” to share to justify where they are. Then to compound the difficulty, there’s a half-hearted attempt at trying to brainstorm any of your sticking points from other team members who probably don’t have the same level of knowledge / skill in the problem area you’re working on (otherwise they’d be doing what you do, not you). Bad, bad, bad.
3. An “untrusting infrastructure” / “Big Brother”- This one is hard to put into context for some out there, but others might understand exactly where I’m coming from. This is an environment that’s setup with the goal of “trapping you”. I’m talking about company practices such as “selective filtering” of office email, continuous deep scans of your workplace machine for everything not ending in “.doc”, completely restrictive firewall rules which only allow a select number / role of person to access the internet, blocking all social media, etc. It’s unproductive (in my case anyways), because most of my creativity and passion (not to mention problem solving) involve accessing multiple sources…forums, twitter, facebook..pretty much anyplace where other developers / developer-types congregate to discuss current issues and/or solutions.
4. Trying to work against your biological clock – Again, this one’s a bit tough to explain but you’ll probably “get it”. This is trying to maintain productivity when you’re at your physiological worst. Maybe you’re a morning go-getter, but forced to work late afternoon/night shifts. Maybe you’re at your best from 10-3, when conversely you typically are forced to have all your meetings. This one’s a toughie and quite difficult to convey to management if they don’t have the same experience themselves.
5. Office Politics / “The Invisible Hand” – I’m not referring to the “Invisible Hand” economic theory that we all learned in high school, but the “Invisible Hand” presence of someone higher in the company making decisions out of thin air or (in some cases) a ghostly presence that your manager has invented in order to keep you and your team in line. Have you always been hearing “That’s a great idea, but they won’t let us”, or “They’ve decided to do it this way” or “That’s a policy they won’t approve of”. The “they” in this case is some invisible upper tier of management and / or this ghostly presence.
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