Bullshit. Unsourced, but I think I found the study. Sample size: 48 college kids pretending to do a job they have no experience in. Besides, they found that interrupted work gets done faster at the same quality when interrupted! Not that I agree with such a limited study, but if I did, it would support what I’m saying.
Check flow state citations in intro
Sure, “flow” is a thing, but intense, focused concentration on a single task is a small minority of jobs, as I alluded to in my last comment. Most jobs (especially office jobs) require quickly swapping between several different mental points of focus.
Search for “lean [your field]” and whichever lean principle you’re curious about
The least productive meeting I’ve ever had was where my company brought in some Lean specialist and paid him more money than I think I want to know about to have us play card games and sell us on some oversimplified bullshit that we all promptly forgot after the next day, and gave us some cool certificates. It’s a way of thinking about things and organizing priorities that is resonable if you’re not an idiot but overly restrictive if you dogmatically adhere to it (which you will do, if you’re an idiot). Lean consists of a lot of good ideas that a smart manager will listen to and attempt to implement because they’re just good ideas. If you need it wrapped up in a package and labeled as “lean” then you’re not a good manager.
I feel like all the various “how to do your job” philosophies are a lot like diets. Sure, they all have pros and cons and some are better researched than other but 98% of it is just make sure calories in < calories out. Picking specific diets is just gonna change that other 2%. For work, the 98% is just “do your job, if a problem comes up fix it”. The obvious prerequisite to that is knowledge and ability; a lot of companies are so siloed that individual workers don’t understand where they fit in with the company’s goals, and that’s an institutional problem. And by ability I don’t just mean competence, I also mean things like having the permission to fix problems without manager approval, etc. Or the ability to go to someone on another team without having to route everything through your respective managers.
To bring that back to meetings specifically, there’s a lot of bullshit meetings out there, I think we all agree on that. But they shouldn’t kill your productivity for the rest of the day (or leading up to the meeting). That’s not normal. That’s why we’re in the ADHD community with this post. Minor interruptions may stop your “flow”, and if you’re in one of those jobs where you need it, that’s not good. But for most jobs, you don’t need flow. You need flexibility. Minor interruptions should not prevent you from doing your job. For a lot of jobs, minor interruptions are the job, or a critical part of it.
All of the science isn’t based on a single study with fifty college kids. Here’s another one and another one and another one and a meta study. Since you disagree with accepted science and literature, I’m gonna disengage. If you’d like to provide more than your interpretation of the world, I’d be happy to continue. I’d take some analysis on cognitive load, maybe some understanding that people other than you exist, certainly less rambling about a specific bad experience(s) you’ve had with explicit methodologies.
I don’t disagree with the experiments themselves, I just think the results are too broadly applied to “work” rather than “the specific task replicated in the study”. The meta study you linked actually brings up that point, but it’s paywalled and the abstract doesn’t give the results. I’d be interested to see their conclusions.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I’d really like to see some citations.
I know sharing facts won’t necessarily change your opinion; I wanted to highlight I’m not talking out of my ass to everyone else reading the thread.
Bullshit. Unsourced, but I think I found the study. Sample size: 48 college kids pretending to do a job they have no experience in. Besides, they found that interrupted work gets done faster at the same quality when interrupted! Not that I agree with such a limited study, but if I did, it would support what I’m saying.
Sure, “flow” is a thing, but intense, focused concentration on a single task is a small minority of jobs, as I alluded to in my last comment. Most jobs (especially office jobs) require quickly swapping between several different mental points of focus.
The least productive meeting I’ve ever had was where my company brought in some Lean specialist and paid him more money than I think I want to know about to have us play card games and sell us on some oversimplified bullshit that we all promptly forgot after the next day, and gave us some cool certificates. It’s a way of thinking about things and organizing priorities that is resonable if you’re not an idiot but overly restrictive if you dogmatically adhere to it (which you will do, if you’re an idiot). Lean consists of a lot of good ideas that a smart manager will listen to and attempt to implement because they’re just good ideas. If you need it wrapped up in a package and labeled as “lean” then you’re not a good manager.
I feel like all the various “how to do your job” philosophies are a lot like diets. Sure, they all have pros and cons and some are better researched than other but 98% of it is just make sure calories in < calories out. Picking specific diets is just gonna change that other 2%. For work, the 98% is just “do your job, if a problem comes up fix it”. The obvious prerequisite to that is knowledge and ability; a lot of companies are so siloed that individual workers don’t understand where they fit in with the company’s goals, and that’s an institutional problem. And by ability I don’t just mean competence, I also mean things like having the permission to fix problems without manager approval, etc. Or the ability to go to someone on another team without having to route everything through your respective managers.
To bring that back to meetings specifically, there’s a lot of bullshit meetings out there, I think we all agree on that. But they shouldn’t kill your productivity for the rest of the day (or leading up to the meeting). That’s not normal. That’s why we’re in the ADHD community with this post. Minor interruptions may stop your “flow”, and if you’re in one of those jobs where you need it, that’s not good. But for most jobs, you don’t need flow. You need flexibility. Minor interruptions should not prevent you from doing your job. For a lot of jobs, minor interruptions are the job, or a critical part of it.
All of the science isn’t based on a single study with fifty college kids. Here’s another one and another one and another one and a meta study. Since you disagree with accepted science and literature, I’m gonna disengage. If you’d like to provide more than your interpretation of the world, I’d be happy to continue. I’d take some analysis on cognitive load, maybe some understanding that people other than you exist, certainly less rambling about a specific bad experience(s) you’ve had with explicit methodologies.
I don’t disagree with the experiments themselves, I just think the results are too broadly applied to “work” rather than “the specific task replicated in the study”. The meta study you linked actually brings up that point, but it’s paywalled and the abstract doesn’t give the results. I’d be interested to see their conclusions.