This Ain’t No CNN.

This is an article that appeared on the intranet site at work. As one who can easily be distracted at times, I found it kind of motivating.

Calling time out on work interruptions
6/7/2012
Edited from an article by Rex Huppke, Chicago Tribune

For most, the modern workday is one long series of interruptions punctuated by brief bursts of productivity.

For example, it took me 17 minutes to write that first sentence. I got an email after the word “modern,” had to send a tweet after “interruptions,” and then a co-worker stopped by after “brief” to tell me that if you sprinkled powdered sugar on Newt Gingrich, he’d look like a beignet.

The devil is in the distractions.

At a recent multi-generational gathering, we began talking about ways that we waste time. We unanimously agreed that cell phones, social media and the Internet were responsible for countless misspent hours. We were also quick to recognize that electronic gadgets weren’t the only culprits. In fact, any activity that we do too much or that interferes with daily responsibilities becomes a candidate for wasted-time status. Even supposedly lofty pastimes, such as reading, practicing a musical instrument or going to the gym can be distracting if we do them instead of completing our chores. The key isn’t condemning modern devices. Rather, it’s managing the myriad disruptions we encounter throughout the day.

Ever since work was invented, humans have struggled to avoid distraction. But at times even a passing piece of dust can be more exhilarating than writing a status report, so our attention is called in other directions.

And the interruptions have proliferated.

A study released last year by the market research firm uSamp found that 45 percent of workers make it only 15 minutes before being interrupted, and more than half say they waste at least an hour a day on distractions.

The study was based on a survey of more than 500 employees at U.S. businesses of varying sizes. Predictably, most of the interruptions, nearly 60 percent, involved email, social networks and instant or text messaging.

Many of us see our incessant toggling between tasks as proof that we’re brilliant multitaskers of a wired world. But research does not bear that out.

Every time you take your attention away from one task, it takes a little time to catch up once you return. That’s time wasted.

A 2009 Stanford University study found that people who routinely receive information from multiple sources don’t pay attention, control their memory or move from one project to the next as well as workers who handle one task at a time.

“Our human physiology has been in formation for tens of millions of years,” said Jeff Davidson, author of “Breathing Space: Living & Working at a Comfortable Pace in a Sped-Up Society.” “We are hard-wired to give our attention in one essential direction when it’s a major task or project we’re undertaking. Yet here we are, making excuses as to why we need to be interrupted around the clock.”

Part of that, I believe, is our innate desire to feel important. Admit it: When cellphones first became prevalent, you felt kind of awesome walking around with one. It meant you were someone of such value that you had to be reachable at any moment.

That vanity-driven sensibility is alive and well, with smartphones pinging throughout the day to announce urgent emails or texts.

“We have people that cannot confront solitude,” Davidson said. “They need to know who has noticed them lately in the world. We all have become hooked on the next communique. We make excuses all day long about why we need to be on all the time, wired, connected, ready to be interrupted.”
And that comes at a cost, forming what Davidson calls “a perfect Catch-22.”

We face so many interruptions that we struggle to fit our work into an eight-hour day. So we multitask, which makes it harder to concentrate on an individual task, and we’re still allowing interruptions to happen, so we’re not getting everything done. Thus we work longer hours and multitask more, and on and on.

Clearly, we would benefit from breaking the cycle of distraction. But how?

“It comes down to self-confidence,” Davidson said. “We need to get back to a state in which we say, ‘I know myself, I know how I work, I know what it takes for me to do this kind of job.’ So then you give yourself, for example, a two-hour stretch uninterrupted.”

That’s, like, five years in Twitter time. But a big part of dodging interruptions is recognizing the ones that we can control.

Julie Morgenstern, author of “Never Check Email in the Morning,” said: “It’s important to recognize how much is coming from outside and how much is self-interruption. I think we self-interrupt just as much as we’re interrupted by others.”

She called email “an interruption chute” on which you can easily close the lid. By not letting yourself check email until 10 a.m., you can secure a good hour or more to focus on bigger things.

“The temptation is, ‘Let me take care of all the little things people need from me, and then I can relax and focus,’ “Morgenstern said. “That’s kind of misguided, because the little things never stop.”

She recommends flipping that plan – tackle the big tasks first and then pay attention to the ticky-tack stuff.

Morgenstern and Davidson agree that if you introduce a no-interruption policy for a couple hours a day, your bosses and co-workers will not only understand but also might follow suit.

“Everyone is dealing with the same problem,” Morgenstern said. “You could ostensibly have a department meeting, a team meeting, a meeting with your boss and talk about how you need to balance responsiveness with individual work streams. Say, ‘Can we agree that generally speaking the mornings are for uninterrupted work, unless it’s a real emergency?’ ”

I can say from personal experience that the two times in my life I’ve focused solely on work have been fabulously successful.

But while we face a blinding array of potential distractions, it’s bound to get worse as technology grows and we start getting Googles implanted in our bionic eyes.

To that end, Davidson points out the importance of training yourself now to shut down interruptions.

“Every day for the rest of our professional lives, the pace of society, the pace of business and the pace of communication are going to speed up,” he said. “We’ve got to put our stake in the ground now and say, ‘I’ve got to establish some personal discipline here, I’ve got to carve out some breathing space.'”

I suck at debating about politics. I suck at writing about politics, too. I freely admit this. I tend to get red-faced and people tell me that I’m yelling whenever the subject of politics comes up. When I write on the subject I tend to write irrational things. My synapses don’t connect well enough for me to convey my words and they end up sounding half-baked and idiotic.

That being said, what the fuck is wrong with you people in North Carolina?

For those that don’t follow the news, yesterday the fine citizens of North Carolina voted an amendment to their constitution banning same sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. In laymen’s terms, it is now illegal to marry someone of the same sex in North Carolina but it is still perfectly legal to marry your first cousin, as long as it’s not your gay first cousin. This new amendment passed by around 70%. The hopes of thousands of loving gay couples across the state are now dashed and they can not affirm their loving commitment to one another because a bunch of bigots voted on their equality. One has to remember that until 1971, North Carolina had a law on the books banning interracial marriage.

I’m really disappointed by this turn of events in the fight for equality but there’s a part of me that isn’t surprised. This is where the irrational words come to mind. I want to write things like “and their BBQ sucks!” and “I can’t wait to see what the hurricanes do to the god fearing citizens down there.” But other than childish outbursts of emotion, these words really serve no purpose, though I must admit that I am happy that I wrote them down. I am still a kid at heart, I guess.

I guess it just bothers me that this thing is still such a hot topic, still up for debate and that people still have their head shoved so far up a collective ass that they feel they need to spread such hate through legislation. That is what they’re doing, you know. They’re legislating hate. They are trying to redefine love to a very small definition. These folks don’t have the ability to think for themselves, so they cherry pick a few verses out of a very old book, spin them to their liking and then decree that everyone must follow this watered down formula. I think one of the greatest gifts from God is free will. It’s a shame that so few choose to use it.

I know that one of the happiest moments in my life was walking into the banquet room on October 13, 2011 and seeing all the love and support from our families and friends as Earl and I prepared to take a marital vows. That was love, right there, in that moment. It was love between Earl and me, it was love from our family and friends. I’ve mentioned a few times that I didn’t think that getting legally married would make a difference in my life, after all, Earl and I had been together for over 15 years at the time, but the truth of the matter is, it means a great deal to me to introduce Earl as my husband. When Earl was in Urgent Care a few months ago, I couldn’t get in to see him until I told the desk attendant that we were married. I can’t fathom being denied access to my soul mate when he is in need, simply because someone decided that we can’t be married. For this, I am grateful that we live in the Empire State. If someone were to take this right away from us, we would look to relocate elsewhere.

I said that I’m not good at debating and I’m not good at writing about politics. I know that when I woke up this morning and saw the vote results, I wanted to stay in bed and pull the covers over my head. Though it has absolutely no bearing on my marriage, it affects thousands of couples just like us. And that makes me very sad. It makes me fearful for the direction of our society. It makes me realise that there are many that a desperately trying to go backwards in time, to a place that never really existed.

The growing fight to move forward continues.

Nothing gets a good politician worked up to a frothy state (see what I did there?) like the mention of the Affordable Health Care act a.k.a. “Obamacare”.

Now before I continue this blog entry, I must say that I don’t like the term Obamacare. It’s snarky. And even though the Obama administration has begun “owning” the term by using it themselves, I still think that it’s a snide way of referring to the Affordable Health Care Act. We don’t call Social Security “FDR Security” or “Roosevelt Security” and we don’t call Medicare “JohnsonCare”, but those programs were started back when people had more class and respect for one another, at least in a general sense, so we didn’t do things that way back then. “Obamacare” just rubs me the wrong way.

Anyway, I think that the Affordable Health Care Act is generally a good idea. I agree that ALL Americans, regardless of socio-economic standing should be afforded the same basic healthcare benefits. No one should be forced to choose whether or not they can treat cancer or HIV or the results of a catastrophic accident on the basis of financial standing. And quite frankly, I don’t believe that people should be turned away from insurance companies due to a pre-existing condition.

Now I fully believe in smaller government and I believe that the government is involved in way too many things that quite frankly is none of their business. But with that being said, I do believe that the government should impose regulations on insurance companies and the medical industry (the word ‘industry’ is completely on purpose) to keep costs under control so that medical care is affordable and available for everyone. Personally I think that regulation should dictate a cap on the percentage of profits made from medical care and associated services (pharmaceuticals, etc). It goes completely against my Libertarian streak but if they can’t behave themselves then someone has to reel them in.

However, there is one thing about the Affordable Care Act that just rubs me the wrong way. There’s actually a couple of things, but I’ll focus on the main thing so that I don’t sound like I’m completely ranting.

I have issue with Americans being penalized for not carrying health insurance. I had a problem with Massachusetts instituting that approach and now that it’s in the ACA I have an even bigger problem with it.

There are people in the United States that do not believe in Western medicine. Admittedly, the percentage is quite small, but there are folks that do not believe in loading up their body with man-made chemicals designed to treat symptoms of a problem. Some simply believe that they should strive to eat healthier and make healthy choices with their lifestyle instead of taking a cholesterol lowering pill that’s going to slowly destroy their liver. There may be some women that don’t believe in blasting their boobs with radiation on a routine basis. There could be men that might not want to know about the size of their prostate. Do I agree with their choices? It’s none of my business, but if they decide that they don’t need health insurance because they’re never going to use it then they shouldn’t be penalized for opting out of a plan. There shouldn’t be a tax, there shouldn’t be a fee. At no time should the government say, “you have to buy xxxx from a privately run corporation”. Sorry, I have a problem with that part of the Affordable Care Act. Most disagree with me. Some counter that it’s like paying school taxes when you don’t have kids. I get the theory behind that (investing for the future after all, the children are our future and all those other lyrics), but that bothers me too, but not as much as the mandate in the Affordable Care Act.

I’m rather anxious to hear the Supreme Court’s decision on the subject in June. I really hope that don’t throw out the entire act and do the sensible thing by ruling on just the mandate instead of ruling the whole thing unconstitutional, because in the overall scheme of things, that would be bad. As a relatively sensible individual, I’d rather see the mandate than have Americans denied health insurance based on the whims of the greedy insurance companies.

But every time that mandate part is mentioned around me, I’ll roll my eyes and sigh.

U.S. American readers are urged to read the text of the 2012 State of the Union address. It is available on the Washington Post website.

Agree or disagree, it never hurts to be informed.