World Sojourner : 3760

Today marks my second full year with Infosys Consulting.  A banner day for lots of reasons.  First, things are going pretty well with Infy thanks to my change of practices.  Now, I’m in our Change Management group – a better fit.

And second, any financial commitments I have to Infosys cease to exist as of today.  My sign-on bonus had a two years, or pay us some part of it back clause.

I’ve learned a lot over the last couple years and look forward to continuing the trend as I head into my third year.

Multi-switching is the concept of balancing two or more projects at one time.  Some call it multi-tasking but since it’s mentally impossible to multi-task (go ahead work through two things in your mind at a time – say what you’re having for dinner and your weekend plans), the best we can hope for is to multi-switch.  That is, work on one project for a while with our full concentration and then move to another project to do the same thing. 

I’ve been there most of this week thanks to a couple projects at work.  They’re interesting projects and I’m currently able to do them in my pajamas but thanks to their relative difference (one is research and development while the other one is some industry analysis) my mind feels like a stick shift that’s had its gears grinded too many times.  I find it takes around 10-15 minutes to re-orient myself to a new task.  My poor performance in a call last week showed that less than 10 minutes isn’t good.

So, how’s that mind game going?  Dinner vs weekend plans … let me guess, your mind plows through one without doing much on the other until you literally switch your focus.  I’m not a genius – I’ve just read Getting Things Done.

One of my birthday presents from Mrs. M was noise canceling headphones from Bose.  It is really an amazing piece of technology – the sound quality for music is so good that I actually thought someone was behind me when an unexpected voice occurred in my Master and Commander sound track and the sound reduction is pretty nifty too.  It’s not total silence but pretty good.

Currently I’m working in an open office, which is damn noisy most times.  Whether it be people talking to hear themselves or legitimate conversations its hard to concentrate on writing or various work items without either some type of white noise (classical music for instance) or the new headphones.  As expected, the Bose headphones have been great, but wearing them has brought unexpected benefits.

I’m not certain just yet why it occurs, but people seem to think a second time before bothering me with a question if I’m wearing them. It’s as if wearing headphones causes them to analyze their question one more time before not only interrupting my work but also causing me to remove my headphones.  Once I noticed it happening, I started to watch people out of the corner of my eye if they started toward me with the I have a question it’s time to bother Al look and walk. And, surprisingly about 1 out of 3 starts were aborted.  33% more productivity from just wearing a piece of equipment – yeha!

Lots of take-aways:

1. For everyone when deciding to ask a question, imagine that person is wearing headphones – and then make your decision

2. The Bose equipment is pretty amazing, to misquote Ferris Bueller – if you have the means, I highly recommend them

3. This trick doesn’t require Bose technology, it only needs you wearing headphones at work

This rif has been a service of the SADFQ Institute

I know this email forward has been around for a while, but thanks to my current assignment I have a deeper appreciation for it

Two engineering students were walking across a university campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?”

The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.”

The first engineer nodded approvingly and said, “Good choice; the clothes probably wouldn’t have fitted you anyway.”

Thanks Stuart!