3 pragmatic isolations

Becoming more productive is one of the common topics in a whish list of many people. How to cope with many tasks we put to our to-do list every day and how to find time for even more is a question we often ask again and again. Due to our brain's structure by nature we're not multi-tasking beings (at least most of men) and hence can work efficiently with one task at any time.

An analogy comes from the computer world where until recent times most of the computers were single CPU machines and had  to emulate multi-tasking. To make an impression of executing several programs at a time an operating system had to switch between the programs so often that a user feels that all of the tasks are executing concurrently and smoothly. That worked fine until the number of tasks grew out of the computer's capacity to manage it smoothly. Not only did the tasks ate running time one from another but the time required to switch between the tasks accumulated into meaningful sensitive amount of time.

A similar situation occurs with human attempts of becoming multi-tasking creatures. Using the computer language we can use the same recourse for two different tasks concurrently whether the recourse is the brain or the legs or the throat. We can sometimes use different recourses for different tasks concurrently - to listen to music while jogging or to see TV while eating. But unfortunately we can't assign different tasks for the same resource - the IRQ is taken.

Coming back from the analogy world - how to increase our productivity assuming the analogy makes sense to a certain extent? I suggest to improve productivity one should care about dedication and isolation. By dedication I mean to deal with one task for a time interval to let the task occupy the resource (actually our mind) completely. By isolation I mean to remove all disturbing factors including switching between several tasks. This is not a new concept and there have been many materials in the net about it. I just wanted to share my vision on isolations.

Dedication (Isolation by activities)
You lock yourself from everything but the dedicated task. For people working with a computer a typical list of disturbing factors may include spontaneous Internet browsing, chatting and messaging, checking stocks, reading news, making coffee, and so on. These are clear disturbance factors and touching them during work time looks unambiguously as wasting time even for the waster. But there are tasks looking as part of the working activities but in fact diluting productivity and decreasing efficiency - answering phones, reacting on every email, rescheduling calendar, organizing to-do list, and so on - all kinds of tasks that one won't do during vacation but nevertheless diverting from the current task.

At the same time I have to admit that at least in high-tech it's, if not impossible permanently to isolate your self, at least counter-productive as paradoxically it may sound. Sometimes you're expected to answer an email, check a link, and react back in a chat. 37Signals points today to an interesting article in NYTimes talking about this paradox. I think to be productive in the "conditions close to high-tech" one has to be very disciplined and combine isolation with controlled interruptions.

Isolation by time
Here we provide single-tasking mode for a special task for a period of time. Actually it's an addition to the Dedication and together with it can be used effectively and pragmatically. But besides simple dedication to a task I propose assigning concrete time in the schedule for certain tasks. For instance an early morning hour before the work hours can be spent for reading or meditation or sport. The point here is to allocate this time on a permanent basis. Make this allocation in the schedule so everybody (starting from you) knows this time is taken. It's true not only regarding our job duties but even our topics from the whish list should be treated as task and managed properly - first of all by having allocated time.

Isolation by place
Here we physically change the working place not only isolating our selves from external disturbing factors but changing the customary working environment. Both reasons separately make sense to try physical isolation.

Together with time isolation it may work for studying and reading. Not always you can take one hour before your work to study and read and of course you can't come to the office earlier to do it there. Stop in your car in a nice place on your way to the office and read there. Not only doesn't anyone disturb you there you're doomed to study in such conditions.

Another cause to try changing working environment is to make special settings for special thinking. When you need to make an important decision changing the customary working environment to something unusual may serve as an additional catalyst.

My experience says that enforcing single-tasking mode by combining these isolation you can increase your productivity at least for the applied times.

Technorati tags: GTD, isolation, productivity, discipline