Workstyles and the office, the 2011 way.

It’s a new year and I have spent loads of hours in confinement trying to make sure this year turns out much more productive than the last. This has included me refining my calendar entries, sorting out my emails appropriately, organizing my desktop, sorting papers and books.

I have even made new personal policies to help me curb the way I spend my time. Less time on bbm and the IMs, more time on political pieces, more time on tech blogs, more time on fashion-tip sites( thanks to @eminakan and @lajidwayem’s nagging at me to get a stylist).

But then, the key question for me right now is ‘how do I organize myself better for working?’. A lot of factors affected my productivity last year. That included going for loads and loads of meetings. Hence spending many hours in the Lagos traffic, working as a manager and also as a technical nut. The internet has made things much easier. Unlike before when you had to search for information, right now, information comes to you. But for me, sometimes, it has become a distraction. For instance, just a few minutes ago while looking for a keynote speech at Microsoft, I stumble upon a funny read ‘Microsoft, it’s shit like this that makes you look stupid‘. This type of indiscipline is what I need to deal with.

The environment we work in affects productivity. True! But then, when you are faced with the constant battles of PHCN and your neighbor’s power generator is humming in your ears, what do you do? Or when you are constantly disrupted by loads of phone calls just at the middle of the i-am-on-a-roll moment…productivity slides down.

I recently watched a TEDx video of Jason Fried where he talked about why the office is not a good place to work, Why Work Doesn’t Happen At Work.

I have known Jason Fried to be a man with different outlook on things. In fact, I had a little exchange of words(in a good way) with him on Twitter when he mentioned not using Lorem Ipsum as filler text for designs and using the actual texts. Next his speech, in the video, at first I accepted(and someone totally doesn’t accept). But then, I have come to understand myself better. I may not function perfectly from an office and ‘they’ know me not to. But then, I think like Jason Fried must really mean, it’s about finding that unbreakable/not-interruptible time with yourself.

I see myself getting a bunker in 2011.