In both my Canadian work places I was (and am) working in a cubicle setting. Now I realize what a luxury it was in The Netherlands, where I shared a rather large room with one colleague. In France, I worked from home, which is again different.
I never felt so much distracted as I did before. I have to get used to unwillingly overhearing telephone conversations, people passing my desk who don’t come to see me (I’m on the way to reception and exit, so there is some traffic going on). When I read about distraction, it’s mainly about incoming e-mail messages. Well, these are the least of my concerns! I know how to shut these down or how to filter them, but I find it harder to close my ears and my eyes for the other work environment-related distractions. The problem is: the more often I’m distracted, the more chaotic becomes my work style. What happened to the efficient-working me? I’m starting 101 new tasks, but have to keep a list of activities; otherwise I just forget to finish them. This has nothing to do with multi tasking, which at least has the sound of efficiency, but jumping from one task to the other.
On the blog Lifehacking.nl, which I discovered recently, I read about Attention Firewalling (posting is in Dutch). That’s what I should do: put a firewall on for the noise around me and people walking by. Sort of ear and eye cups. Maybe I just need an iPod with silence!
I hope it's just a matter of time...
Comments