Many folks work in large offices in densely packed shared spaces, often affectionately refered to as “Cube farms.”
I don’t work in one of those. I work at home. But there’s something that we have in common, and that’s worker distraction. Especially for those of us that actually have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) which can be utterly debilitating for your productivity.
Like many “Knowledge workers” much of what I do involves heavy email as well as intense voice communication — specifically on long conference calls using unified communications (UC) technologies, such as Microsoft’s Lync which is built into Office 365.
Other popular UC technologies include Cisco’s UC/WebEx and Citrix GoToMeeting, as well as consumer grade VOIP/video conferencing technologies such as Skype, Apple’s Facetime and Google Hangouts.
It’s not uncommon for me to be on these calls for hours at a time. Because I work from home there is always some element of distraction — my wife may walk into the room to ask me a question, not realizing I am working, particularly if my microphone is muted and I am just listening.
