Here is one of those video essays that really makes you think about the state of the world:

Why You Can’t Work at Work

The modern workplace is structured completely wrong. It’s really optimized for interruptions, and interruptions are the enemy of work, the enemy of productivity, the enemy of creativity, they are the enemy of everything. But that’s really what the moden workplace is all about: Interruptions.

So the goal of work, presumably, is to get work done. But the workplace is full of interruptions that prevent work. It is very odd. And it is especially problematic for people who have to keep a train of thought going to get the job done: programmers, writers, designers, etc.

He offers three suggestions to help cut back on interruptions:

1) Make use of things like voice mail (turn off the ringer and let everything go to voicemail) and email (turn off the email client so email stacks up), etc. to buffer things so you can create big blocks of uninterrupted time. Then schedule times to deal with voice mail and email.

2) Try to cut back on meetings.

3) As a company, recognize that interruptions prevent work, and collectively try to cut back on them.

These two videos offer additional suggestions:

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