Why people can’t work at work

I found this to be an interesting take on the office work environment.

1. Offices are built for distraction.
2. Distraction leads to nothing getting done during the work day.
3. Nothing getting done during the work day leads to working weekends and late nights.

I think this is true. I’ve worked inside of large corporations as a consultant and had such little space to get things done, I had to convince them to let me work from home.

A distributed work environment done right removes these distractions. Everyone is available by IM or email depending on the urgency. And each of those can be ignored dependent on the hierarchy:

I go out of my way to give my guys the space they need, but push them to contact me if they are blocked or I can help accelerate something. I can, and often do, need to ignore their request if I’m on a call or in the middle of something more urgent, but I expect them to respond to my requests quickly. And I think that makes everything work better and everyone happier.