Too Much Collaboration, Too Little Time to Think: Managing Your Interruptions

Too Much Collaboration, Too Little Time to Think: Managing Your InterruptionsLuis Suarez(KM Specialist, IBM) Posted 4 hours ago
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Very interesting, and thought provoking, weblog post, that one ofMelanie Turek, over atCollaboration Loop, around the subject ofToo Much Collaboration, Too Little Time to Think. Melanie, in just a few paragraphs, gets to relate how important sometimes it is to actually disconnect from everything else. Literally, disconnected from everything! Not having a live Internet connection so that you wouldn‘t get interrupted all of the time with different requests coming from all over the place and therefore getting more of your daily work done. She gets to describe a recent experience she went through in total disconnect mode where she actually gets to state how beneficial that was.
And while I can certainly relate to what she is saying I must say that I rather prefer to look at things from the other side of the spectrum. Yes, working in a disconnected mode can certainly have its own advantages (Able to concentrate better, perhaps, no interruptions of any kind, getting the job done quicker, etc. etc.), but we should not deny either the number of disadvantages that come through with it most of the times. If you would remember, some time ago Icreated a weblog post where I was relating how for a number of hours I had actually lost access to the network due to a local DSL problem. I must say that it was everything but a pleasant experience. In a distributed world like today‘s, where most of your interactions take place with different colleagues from all over the world, being disconnected for an X amount of time is probably not the very best of scenarios.
In that particular example I mentioned above, initially, I thought, like Melanie, that I would have some time to get some work done before the end of my day. So no interruptions, no getting in touch with people, just plain get the job done! However, within minutes of diving into a number of different tasks I realised how much I actually needed that live connection. Why? Because for a good chunk of the activities I had to get done it would require from me to check out different systems, talk to different people, connect with others for the first time, etc. etc. and not having access to that network connection resulted in me getting frustrated because I knew where all the information was but I couldn‘t access it or collaborate with others to produce the actual outcomes, just because my Internet connection was not working.
And, of course, you can imagine that the world continues to spin, whether you are there or not. So after the network problem got fixed, not only did I have to carry out the different tasks that I couldn‘t get done in disconnected mode, but also I had to catch up with everything else that was going on. Goodness! In no time I had a whole bunch of stuff coming through my way that needed my attention and just because I was in disconnected mode I couldn‘t action it earlier. You can imagine how my frustration rose to new levels thinking that I could have done all those different tasks if my Internet connection would have worked in the first place. So getting the job done in disconnected mode? I don‘t think so.
Over time I have strongly started to think that, whether we like it or not, more and more we are dependent on such live Internet connections to get our jobs done in such a virtual and distributed world. Collaboration and knowledge sharing are starting to become second nature and people are starting to have an increasing need to connect and collaborate with others. Teams and communities are starting to proliferate at a higher pace and rate than ever before and the tasks that could get done in the past with just one or two individuals are nowadays a whole lot more complex and they would require not only your full attention but that one of others as well, which is what collaboration is all about. So I am not really that sure that I would want to be in disconnected mode any time soon again.
However, you may be wondering that all this being permanently connected is going to have a very high price as far as constant interruptions are concerned. So much so that perhaps technology‘s impact in our work and personal lives is becoming much more relevant than ever before. So you may be thinking that we may not have much that we could do, right? Well, while you are thinking about that, let me point out to youa related weblog post I created not so long ago where I got to comment ona recent article published by Thomas Friedman on the impact of technology in our day to day lives where I get to discuss that to me the key successful factor to make it all work is just one that I have been advocating for some time now: balance, because after all, "We create our own distractions and just need to learn how to manage them". And this is just something that we all need to learn and master over time with a bit of patience and perseverance. Don‘t you think ?