Instant Messaging: An Interruption? Or A Better Way Of Interrupting?
from the depends-on-who-you-ask dept
There are plenty of people who absolutely dislike instant messaging, claiming that it's distracting and tends to interrupt other important work. However, a new study suggests otherwise, noting that instant messaging conversations may happen more often, but they tend to be quicker and more to the point than other types of interruptions. Thus, if someone can get the useful info they need via IM, it's likely to take a lot less time and be much less of an interruption than a phone call or a personal visit. So, before condemning instant messaging, perhaps think of how many phone calls or annoying visits it's helped keep away. The real trick, honestly, is for people to learn to use instant messaging in asynchronous ways: that is, if you're really busy working on something else, ignore the flashing window until you have an opening and can deal with it.
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Filed Under: instant messaging, interruptions
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I always thought that was intuitive.
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Depends on the job
Not everything I do requires the hyper focus, of course, and IM is just fine if I'm writing docs or doing research or even for most bug fixing. And it's hard to really convey to someone who hasn't ever done a serious coding project exactly what's going on when you're getting things done. It's not entirely unlike writing a term paper, where you're thinking, "I've got to make sure and support this claim in the next section, come back and make this part flow later, I know there's a good quote to add here..." only more so. You end up holding large portions of code flow in your head that aren't yet written, necessary to see where you're going, and this tends to be very hard to sustain while doing something else. So, the IM and Email have to go off, phone off the hook. Door shut would be excellent, if you're lucky enough to not be in a cube.
Very few jobs are like this, and in fact most days my job isn't like this, but when it is, I'm really not kidding. And so few non-programmers I've worked with, even my own managers, understand this. The correct way to deal with this is "Hey, come get me when you have a minute. This is (urgent|important|somewhat important|by the end of the day|)." And then leave. There _are_ natural breaks, when the mental stack gets emptied out and it's no big deal to emerge intact, and usually within half an hour.
I imagine there are other jobs that work like this, with the need for periods of intense concentration. A lot of scientists are probably familiar with this.
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Re: Depends on the job
As far as IMs go, I agree. The only thing I despise about IMs are the buzz feature. Do away with that and I would rather IM than talk on the phone for quick conversations.
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Re: Re: Depends on the job
I'm not a programmer, but I found than when doing programmign assignments/projects in college that I'd need a decent amount of time uninterrupted to be able to make sure all of my thoughts came out unhindered into the coding. I can hold a lot of stuff in my mind, but if you introduce something to me at a bad spot then I'll lose whatever train of thought I had.
This follows into lots of other things. Namily writing (which is very similar to programming) a technical or legal document. You have to be able to focus on the detail and the overal structure of the document while creating it. 75% of the time it doesn't require that "level" of concentration, but when I'm in the middle of a paragraph that requires me to synthesize a response based on data reviewed over the last 2 days then your interuption is a major set back.
You're right good business is about the "art" of communication. Part of art is knowing just how much white space is needed so as not to distract from all of the involved pieces.
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Re: Re: Depends on the job
In my job I do a lot of data entry, unless someone made a mistake or reference I can't understand, I don't generally need to talk to anyone to get my work done. The rest of the office has more socially involved work and I spend the majority of my time in my cubicle forgetting everyone else is their while I get my work done. (today I am ahead of the curve on the workload)
Ironically, it is the reason I like IMs so much. Like the blog post says "quicker and more to the point". I need to talk to someone I can get it done faster than other means, even going and finding them to talk.
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Re: Re: Re: Depends on the job
Then again, women are better at multi-tasking.
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Re: Re: Re: Depends on the job
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I always thought that was intuitive.
Yeah - me too - or just mark yourself away with a comment, set it to 'do not disturb' or just log off, lol
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Depends on the job
Yeah. Of course you did.
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If you don't understand don't pretend you do..
I'm sure you have read the odd book right Dock? Now imagine enjoying a wonderful.. ah Stephen King novel and every 8 minutes or so your phone goes off or a co-worker 10 feet away from you starts up random conversations.
When I'm doing graphic work, interface design, most debugging etc.. no worries. But when I'm writing new code of any importance with any complexity the odd interruption can cripple a work day.
Currently I'm writing a new Invoice and Quality control system, after days of meetings, I quite bluntly told my boss to "leave me alone for a couple weeks", and he knows excactly what I mean.
Communication comes in many forms, and being unavailable for anything but the most critical of interruptions is NOT a lack of communication by any means. If I communicate to you that I need to concentrate for a few hours and you fail to understand my message, well that is your lack of communication skills not mine.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Depends on the job
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text is better for multitasking but...
sms is the same way. you can carry on several conversations at once or in sequence because of the nature of text vs. the nature of voice.
on the flipside, there is no tone of voice in text, so subtleties like sarcasm are often lost in translation. if you need an answer to a yes/no question, then im/sms is awesome.
also, it's much easier to log text communication than it is to log voice communication. most im clients have a mechanism for logging and there is always good old copy and paste. logged text has all of the tone of voice issues inherent with all text communication plus the added bonus of being an essentially permanent record. how many scandals have been made public over the years thanks to leaked emails and IM's?
granted, you can record a phone call as well, but it's tougher to do and tougher to edit.
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Re: Re: Depends on the job
However, while I don't really use IM clients anymore, I've always found they can be quite a time saver in the long run, if you treat them as a little less "instant" than they traditionally are. When I'm actually trying to get something done, I treat IMs the way I treat emails - I get to them when I'm no longer in the middle of something, unless there's reason to think it pertains specifically to the task at hand. So unlike drop-ins or, for the most part, phone calls, IMs and emails let you keep your focus where it belongs until those "natural breaks" come along, without seeming exceptionally rude. Provided of course you have the self-discipline to ignore them when you should, and you adjust your settings so they're as unobtrusive as possible.
As far as "the art of communication" goes, since when does communication mean you have to respond to someone immediately? Part of effective communication is (or should be) knowing that the person with whom you would like to communicate doesn't always have time to talk to you on YOUR schedule.
Of course, if you're the guy's boss, he might want to make time every now and then or he'll find himself without that pesky job to get in the way of a nice chat ;)
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Re: If you don't understand don't pretend you do..
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Re: If you don't understand don't pretend you do..
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Re: Depends on the job
You control the app; the app does not control you.
Woadan
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Re: Depends on the job
Learn to use the tools properly instead of complaining about them. I bet you have your development software tweaked to make your job easier.
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Troy
Anyway, ya I text message like crazy at times, but believe it or not a distraction is distracting to some people. If you can read a book and watch TV at the same time and get the full benefit of both, well I envy you.
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Re: Depends on the job
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I love IM
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IM
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Re: IM
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Re: Depends on the job
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IM: The Bane of The WorkPlace???
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Re: IM: The Bane of The WorkPlace???
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Re:
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Re: Re: Depends on the job
When I code I often times have some type of background noise such as relaxing music or, if I'm up to it, hard rock. When you literally have one hundred lines, or more, of code in your head and you have the direction you need to go it is not possible to just write this down and pick up where you left off. Many times you will end up writing sloppy code this way and introducing many more bugs than previously may have happened.
Programming is a very different position than many of my other careers I have had. It is also much more intensive than many others that I know the inner-workings of.
Dock, people work differently. This must be accepted, otherwise communication will never fully occur.
Pass by value is VERY different than pass by reference.
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We used to...
It's fast, it's easy, it opens a phone line, our long-distance bill is SOOOOO much less, and we don't have to drop everything to answer the telephone.
We can simply wait until we're done helping our customers/talking with vendors on the now-free telephone/dealing with e-mail/dealing with customer details/pricing and organzing inventory/etc...
We love IM.
And when it's super OMG!!!!!!11!!!!!eleventy-one!!!!!!!! important, we can still pick up the telephone and call.
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Re: We used to...
'Hey, how are y'all? Staying busy? Yeah, us, too. Really? Well, that's interesting... Look, I'm calling about ; do you know anything about that? Okay, thanks... Yeah, I got it... Yeah, totally, I'll call back if I have any questions... Oh, hahah, yeah, that's funny... Well, okay I've got to... No, really, there's a customer... Yes, I understand but I have to go... Okay, bye.'.
I hate that.
Let me repeat.
We love IM.
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Depends on the job
however, because it is a RARE abiltiy, it's unrealistic to apply the standards of the level of distraction someone like you can handle to everyone else. most people need an uniterrupted period of focus to perform cognitively intensive creative tasks (i.e. computer programming) and even even EXTREAMLY brief (few seconds) interruptions to this focus period can be very costly, possibly adding an hour or more to the completion time.
Saying this should be dealt with by people just willing themselves not to be distracted isn't a workable solution.
finally, can we please keep the 'women are from mars, men are from venus' misogynist/misandrist comments to ourselves please? saying "I can do blah blah blah so freaking well because I'm a man/woman/hermaphrodite" is frankly just crass and inflamatory, especially when it's off-topic
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Programming and Working from Home
The reason is simple: there are fewer barriers to communication face to face. People tend to focus on winning as a team and that's reflected in the code. Simpler code that's solves immediate need, not complex frameworks where someone off in their ivory tower codes castles in the air.
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Re: Re: Depends on the job
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