Interpretation of Adams' Work

My interpretation of types of tasks generally expected to be part of a project effort is given in CAPS above. The above chart clearly indicates that Adams' readers are not bothered as much by their actual projects as they are by everything else that comes with their environment. This result is consistent with the descriptions of workplace frustration aired by Usenet readers and other engineers I have interviewed, and with my own work experience as well.

Nevertheless, a note about "project-related distractions" -- in nearly every case lampooned by Adams, the problem is that the engineer is expected to do something over again that's already been done once and thought to have been done properly:

• Drawings based on incorrect information
• Drawings or e-mails lost
• Instructions ignored or misunderstood
• Engineer "on a roll" is told to
• lead the annual charitable drive
• chair an unrelated meeting (moaning "don't stop me now" all the way)
• Meetings missed with no attempt to "catch up."

The Usenet readers I interviewed were emotionally charged on this issue.

That's one thing that a simple classification of Dilbert cartoons won't reveal: the level of emotion, or the number of responses, associated with any given subject matter. You not only have to be aware of the frequency of a certain distraction, but also of the emotional investment you put into it. Engineers feel that that portion of work life (if no other) ought to be under their control, yet they find themselves victimized by a lack of focus on the part of others on whose focus they depend. Good management (if there is such a thing -- when you read Dilbert enough, you begin to wonder) should be able and willing to help out.

As for the other distractions, they also are subject to emotional investment, but I believe that the numbers in the table above therefore reflect emotional investment fairly well. They have a certain "universality" about them -- a freedom from discipline-specific jargon -- that makes it easier for Adams (and for us) to see ourselves in them. The numbers show that his readers are most frustrated because they can BE distracted at any time, for any reason; and that these distractions are most often supported by corporate culture, if not by explicit policy; and that there isn't a darn thing we can do about it.

Drop-ins from co-workers will be something for an office worker to contend with as long as there are offices. Telecommuters will face analogous drop-ins: from family members, pets, household systems needing repair, and telemarketers. But what appears to be happening with many office drop-ins is that workers need a chance to vent their frustration at OTHER distractions to SOMEONE likely to understand. (Never mind that if wasted time is to be avoided, venting just makes the problem worse.) Management won't understand, and may even try to explain how an engineer is at fault for being frustrated in the first place. If you remove Adams' illustrations of collections for gifts, sales of cookies, and card-signings, what you are left with is a certain amount of apparently unavoidable socialization.

We see office socialization in other comic strips (e.g. Dagwood, the Born Loser, Jump Start), but those pictures are different: sharing baby pictures or baseball box scores around the water cooler. You have office socialization because workers are obliged to be in the office for a certain period of time each day. Even if an engineer would never think of having social relationships outside of the office with the other employees, well, those the engineer LOVES aren't exactly THERE, are they?

Adams makes it clear that the three things that engineers say bother them most about their office environments are

1. My organization and management not only don't know what it takes to keep me happy and productive, but if they did know they'd avoid it deliberately.
2. My coworkers are either so clueless or so frustrated because of (1) that the benefits of not being clueless are no longer important to them.
3. I wish things were different, but they can't be, so I'm just going to try to watch out for my own ass.

These three statements can be taken to embody the entire list above.

My Personal Effort

If I am indeed watching out for my own ass, and if I’ve decided that distractions are there to stay, then it seems practical for me to take whatever reasonable steps can be taken to keep the distractions from getting between myself and the attainment of my goals.

I reviewed the list above and selected the most common distractions -- 75% of all of those given fell into 16 different classifications. I made the assumption that during a 2000-hour working year I would face each of these 16 types of distraction proportionally as often as Adams illustrated them. This means that I would invest twice as much time on drop-ins from my co-workers as I would on being frustrated with my compensation or on being frustrated with the company's governance of my personal workspace. (My own behavior is not exactly like an amalgam of Adams' readers, but the numbers should even out in the end.) Then I established a benchmark: it was clear to me that I spent about 2.5 hours/week in 1995 on meetings that were neither directly related to the projects I worked on nor conveyed information that made me more useful to my customers. So that's 75 hours a year on useless meetings. From these assumptions the following model of behavior emerges:

Type of Distraction

Estimated 1995 Hours

focus on employee powerlessness 90 management drop-ins, management by walking around, etc. 40 displeasure with lack of management support/cluelessness 35 governance of personal workspace, dress codes, etc. 30 displeasure with compensation & benefits 30 reorganizations, reassignments, and related rumours 30 bad news & rumours: downsizing, layoffs, budget cuts, etc. 30 non-project meetings (organizational, recognition, etc. -- especially non-essential information) 75 learning about your computer; net surfing, etc. 30 mandatory training (including preparation) 30 coworker drop-ins: questions, gripes, collections 75 mentoring: new hires, interns, temps, contractors, consultants 50 maintaining office etiquette/corporate culture 50 doing for others what they can do for themselves (PCs, etc.) 40 performance appraisals & preparation 55 human resources policies 30 redirection to non-critical tasks not specified elsewhere 75 supporting consultants (e.g. ISO 9000, etc.) 30

This is a total of 825 hours, or about 40% of my working year in 1995. My heart tells me this is true, though in actually looking at the numbers for the first time I feel just like the engineers who disregard distractions as a question of morality. If I consider vacation, sick leave, and actual project-related distractions, than what’s left is (maybe) one-half of a productive working year. The result of looking at this is to me a sense of outrage. Somebody ought to do something. In my workplace in 1995, what was generally done was the imposition of more policies, more restrictions, more status reports -- more distractions.

A Strategic Plan for Dealing with Distractions

The first thing engineers who want to deal with distractions must do is to recognize what they're up against. If you don't like the model I have made of my own behavior, modify it to suit what you perceive to be your own -- but if you change Adams' proportions, remember that they are already based on the composite experiences of thousands of engineers. Change those proportions only on your best estimates of where your workplace is actually different from his vision.

Then find out how much of your distracted time can reasonably be billed to a customer. If you can't bill some of it to the customer, then determine the categories of overhead to which it can reasonably be billed. When your management sees a sharp rise in overhead, it's a foregone conclusion that they will intervene. The only question then will be whether they will try to help remove the sources of distraction or try to compel your customers to continue to eat the cost.

Then target your own patterns of behavior. Specifically, the times of day where you feel most inclined to do your best work; and the environment which makes you most comfortable working. That's where we start to constrain distractions. (Notice I don't say "eliminate.") You don't want to waste your best hours doing your most meaningless tasks. Consider the following:

• Turn off the ringer on your phone for a couple of hours each day. Let your co-workers be interrupted by your phone calls when they drop in.
• If drop-ins are a significant issue, try doing your quiet work in a conference room or cafeteria. After a few days of this, your co-workers may recognize you're not available at certain times of day and stop walking in on your best hours.
• Try sometimes using the computer in the shared work area instead of the one on your desk. Those computers generally can do less, but are generally less occupied. But if you can get a laptop for working in the cafeteria, do it.
• Take games, decks of cards, toys, radios, etc. off your desk if you're working there during your best hours. Hide your computer icons for Solitaire, Minesweeper, Tetris, and Usenet.

Some distractions can be contained. Others can be controlled:

• Never return the phone calls you don't take when you're being productive immediately after listening to the message. Give yourself time to do other things and come back to it later.
• Never answer e-mail immediately after reading it. Give yourself time to do other things and come back to it later.
• If you can use a "do not disturb" sign without offending anyone, then do it.
• Every time you help someone learn how to do something, try to write it down for them so they won't come back and ask again later.
• When you send e-mail, always make sure you're only sending it to people who need it. Always make sure it contains the right information and ALL of it, so you don't have to resend it.
• Take a couple moments, even hours if necessary, to make sure your reports and drawings are based on the right information and that when they're distributed, their receipt is acknowledged.

Distractions that can't be contained or controlled should be documented as best you can. You don't want to spend a lot of time documenting this, because then even that becomes a distraction. But it is possible that a journal of wasted time resulting from things over which you have no personal control will prompt positive actions from your coworkers and management (that is, if you can make the information available without being ostracized or even shot at). At the very least, you can bring up the worst ones during your performance appraisal.

Management can do two very simple things to help engineers to be more productive. First, strategic planning should be aimed at the worker and not simply at senior management. By this I mean that selecting people to chair the "Quality Faire" or the annual charitable drive should be done MONTHS in advance rather than DAYS. Anything that could ultimately cause a fire should be placed on a central calendar. Even if management can't predict a fire in advance of assigning an engineer to fight it, the central calendar could enable the engineer to predict it instead. Second, management must STOP replacing job satisfaction with meaningless carrots (incentive awards, certificates, attaboys, etc.) and with sticks (extra status reports, micromanagement, etc.). If allowed to be productive and given the tools to be productive, engineers will for the most part BE productive.

Acknowledgements

The following Usenet readers contributed significantly to this study: Jonathan Barnes, Paul E. Bennett, Jake Brodsky, William Browning, Patrick Crummie, Richard A. Daniel, Lee Dickinson, "dode," Mark Folsom, Geoffrey H. Goldberg, Glen Hadley, Bernhard Michael Jatzeck, Colin R. Leech, W. Letendre, Paul Milligan, Robert Moore, "GlennS4250," Marc W. Wachter. I’m profoundly grateful for their shared experiences.

Logic Flaws and other Disclaimers

The flaw in the above analysis is that I assume that the individual engineer is subject to the same sources of distraction, proportionally, as Dilbert. The reasons this isn't necessarily so are

• Not all of us work in office buildings, much less within cubicles in those buildings.
• Not all of us have the same number (or types) of coworkers.

Those of us who have environments a LOT different from Dilbert may find we have our own unique sources of distraction (e.g. travel, customer service on-site, exposure to the elements, etc.), so there's a possibility that we have just as many problems -- but no guarantee.

The idea behind the (admittedly non-scientific) analysis is to demonstrate the necessity of strategic planning to minimize the impact of distractions on a project. Anyone who doesn't account for a reasonable percentage of time spent at least the distracting activities common to most of us (e.g. time-keeping, equipment unavailability, administrative paperwork, indecision, etc.) is simply inviting cost overruns.

References

Adams, S. It's Obvious You Won't Survive By Your Wits Alone. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1995.
Adams, S. The Dilbert Principle. New York: HarperBusiness, 1996.
Adams, S. Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook. New York: HarperBusiness, 1996.
Adams, S. Casual Day Has Gone Too Far. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1997.
Adams, S. Shave the Whales. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1994.
Adams, S. Still Pumped From Using the Mouse. Kansas City: Andrews & McMeel, 1996.