37signals is spread out over four cities and eight time zones. From Provo, Utah to Copenhagen, Denmark, the five of us are eight hours apart. One positive side effect of this eight hour difference is alone time. People need uninterrupted time to get things done.
There are only about 4-5 hours during the day that we’re all up and working together. At other times, the US team is sleeping while David, who’s in Denmark, is working. The rest of the time, we’re working while David is sleeping. This gives us about half of the day together and the other half alone.
Guess which part of the day we get the most work done? The alone part. It’s not that surprising really. Many people prefer to work either early in the morning or late at night – times when they’re not being bothered.
When you have a long stretch where you aren’t bothered, you can get in the zone. The zone is when you are most productive. It’s when you don’t have to mindshift between various tasks. It’s when you aren’t interrupted to answer a question or look up something or send an email or answer an im. The alone zone is where real progress is made.
Getting in the zone takes time. And that’s why interruption is your enemy. It’s like rem sleep – you don’t just go to rem sleep, you go to sleep first and you make your way to rem. Any interruptions force you to start over. rem is where the real sleep magic happens. The alone time zone is where the real development magic happens.
One tip to help you create some alone time is… Set up a rule at work: Make half the day alone time. From 10am-2pm, no one can talk to one another (except during lunch). Or make the first or the last half of the day the alone time period. Just make sure this period is contiguous in order to avoid productivity-killing interruptions.
A successful alone time period means letting go of communication addiction. During alone time, give up instant messaging, phone calls, and meetings. Avoid any email thread that’s going to require an immediate response. Just shut up and get to work.
In the past there have been days were I’ve hit “the zone for” for 18 hours straight, but it’s always been while I’m working in a quiet environment. I check my emails once every few hours, turn off the messangers, and phone. The truth is, I have work to do, my work needs done if I’m answering the phone, writing emails, or messanging I’m usually directing other people on how to do THEIR work while this is also a part of my job it is a part that can be condensed into 2 or 3 hours a day. At one point I worked from home it was optimal, wake up give all the designers, coders and graphics people directions for the day for the first two hours, and then turn off those communication channels. Work for 5 or 6 hours on my projects finish usually 3 or 4 per day and then check up on everybody and see if anybody needs anything. In a few months I had finished more work then I had in the prior few years, while feeling confident about the quality of my work and decisions.
Fatigue comes from NOT getting projects done, not being overwelmed. Noise, phone calls, going out for lunch, having to drive 5 minutes to Starbucks for coffee, and interruptions by coworkers – especially interruptions by coworkers – all knock you out of the zone. If you take a 1 minute interruption by a coworker asking you a question, and this knocks out your concentration enough that it takes you half an hour to get productive again, your overall productivity is in serious trouble. What works best for me in an office, email and chat are off for large time blocks everyday. I break tasks into small projects so I “finish” parts.
Avoid interruptions, all high quality work and productivy starts and ends with this basic point.