Impatience and Bad Planning: Working With Endless Interruptions and Distractions

It'll probably take me several hours to write this post, even though it's not terribly complicated, and probably will require no background research.

The thing is... it's doubtful I'll have more than 90 contiguous seconds to actually write before something will "come up" that requires me to stop writing and focus elsewhere for a while, before returning to writing. 

OK, so maybe "90 seconds" is an exaggeration... but it certainly feels that way, sometimes. For the sake of accuracy, five minutes is probably more truthful.

Even so, that's still not very long.

Creating My Own Reality

I'd like to blame the fact that I have a bad case of "Too Many Interests Syndrome," but it's a pretty thin excuse. I chose this life, when I chose to become self-employed.

I CREATED this reality.

And-- if I have to be completely honest-- I seldom worked for more than five minutes straight, even when I was part of Korporate Amerika. And I remember how much it annoyed me, at the time.

If you do anything at all that requires interaction with others, odds are you'll never have more than a few minutes before a "change of direction" is required.

Memory of an Old Friend: Work Ethics Across Cultures

This post-- itself-- is a "distraction" that grew out of a different post I was writing (about productivity) which sent me down memory lane to some observations a friend once made.

He was actually a friend of my parents' who lived in Houston, Texas but was originally from Hamburg, Germany... and he was one of my "sponsors" when I came to the US to go to University, back in 1981. He was an oil company executive... and he pulled me aside-- at age 21-- and explained how work (then) in Europe and the US differed.

"The reason Americans have these 50-hour work weeks and no holidays," he explained "is that they spend as much time distracting themselves with TALKING and COMPLAINING about work as they do actually WORKING."

Of course that was a rather biased and harsh comment... but I discovered a certain level of truth in it, nonetheless.

Some years later, I found myself "getting friendly" with a woman who worked in the HR department for a local Fortune 500 IT company where I also did contract work... and she "confessed" that the company loved hiring Europeans because "they are convinced they are supposed to actually WORK every moment they are at work, so we get way more productivity out of them!"

Being Danish by birth and upbringing, I sort of related to that. And I related to the fact that I'd rather work 36 hours a week and get six weeks paid vacation from a company that OWNED me when I was at work, than be "at work" 50 hours a week and only get two weeks' vacation with the be "time wasting" being acceptable.

It all reminded me of another work-related "cultural truism" I'd heard: "Europeans complain about how MUCH work they have to do, Americans complain about how LONG they have to work." 

Of course, this was in the 1980's.

Meanwhile, the Endless Interruptions Continue... Our "Instant On" society

So now I work for myself, and I still live with endless interruptions... why?

In a nutshell, because we living in a culture where we have come to expect everything to be "instant," and around the clock.

When I sell something on eBay, it's not unheard of that the buyer will send me an email within an hour, asking me "When will you be shipping that out?" even though my terms clearly state "within 48 hours."

I'm often tempted to shoot back a snarky note along the lines of "I'm sorry your shipment is delayed because I'm wasting time answering your email, rather than packing and shipping purchases." 

But of course, I refrain...

But it still interrupts my flow... as do a million other things because nobody's willing to wait for the natural time of anything. OR they wait too long...

The Sign on the Wall

When I had my art gallery and gift store many years ago, we had a prominent sign on the wall that read "Bad Planning on Your Behalf Does Not Constitute an Emergency for ME!" 

Of course, nobody ever read it... and we still had a steady stream of people come in the store on December 23rd, wanting to know if we could mail something halfway across the world "by Christmas." 

Well, whaddaya think?

Last time I checked, this particular holiday has happened on the same date every year for hundreds of years, so unless you were raised by wolves, it can't be a huge surprise to you that it's still on the same date this year... which you have known all year long.

Oh well...

In the meantime... it has now been three hours since I started this post...

What do YOU think? Do you live a life that feels like one long interruption? Or is your work schedule more settled? Do interruptions feel they get in the way of productivity? Do you think a lot of time is "wasted" while we are AT work, but not actually working? Leave a comment-- share your experiences and feedback-- join the conversation!

(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Published 20170712 15:10 PDT