Workplace: The New 9-to-5 Oxymoron?

Why do we expect people to work well when they’re being interrupted at the office all day long?

Photo by mari lezhava on Unsplash

Jason Fried, founder of programming company Basecamp and author of REMOTE: Office Not Required (2013), has spent over a decade asking people in different work settings a simple question:

‘Where do you go when you really need to get something done at work?’

Think about it for a minute, you’ve just had a 1-on-1 with your manager, who has requested an unanticipated, big, gnarly report in his inbox by 8:00 am tomorrow so he can show it to the Board.

Where do you go? What do you do?

Fried reports that the answers typically come in three flavors: space, motion, and time:

• Those favoring space cite going to the coffee shop or library when they really need to work.
• Those favoring motion point to the train during the daily commute or on a plane in between sales meetings as their productive motion.
• Others go to the office, but get important work done early in the morning or late in the evening, after the hustle and bustle of the standard workday, hence the time designation.