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Office Productivity and the Linear Nature of Time
Mister Tweedie 
It was hard for me to write an article referring to the linear nature of time. The reason is simple, my favorite book is titled, "Time, Space & Knowledge: A New Vision of Reality" (By Tarthang Tulku) that book gives exactly the opposite view; that neither time or space is fixed nor linear as we normally perceive it.
As much as I would like to make a different argument, I am going to say that in the workplace you need to strictly adhere to the concept of time being linear. That should be an easy task, as it is simply common knowledge and common sense the nature of time.
Work (and most of our lives, actually) is spent on a variety of tasks. Some tasks have to be done every day, some on certain day(s) of the week or month, some before others, some after others. We could easily draw a time line of the tasks we've done in the past and those we need to do in the future. One right after the next.
We could plan our workday for tomorrow and it would be a neat line of tasks to be completed. A checklist, basically. It might be difficult to precisely schedule all the tasks as we don't know how long each may take ahead of time. Now with that checklist in hand we can start the day and proceed with the ultimate vision of productivity and before long everything will go haywire!
We may not have a little monkey in the corner throwing wrenches, but something much worse! Interruptions! How far can you get into your list of tasks before the interruptions start? Maybe the outside interruptions can be held off for a little while. Phone ringer down, cell phone off, office door closed, etc.
Even worse than the outside interruptions may be another concept that is becoming commonplace: multi-tasking. Being "more productive" but doing several things at one time. The concept of multi-tasking might even bring us into the abstract ideas of time we discovered in that great book!
Before we delve into that let's have a look at how computers multi-task. Your computer's operating system is designed to run many different programs and tasks at the same time, or so it appears. You can have plenty of windows open all doing different things apparently simultaneously.
However, inside the operating system it is really interrupting the first program, saving exactly what it was doing, restarting the next program, and then its interrupted and everything is saved and so on. The computer is actually processing exactly 1 thing at a given time. Because these interruptions may occur 1,000 times a second, program 1 would run for 1,000 of a second, then program 2, then program 1, each would get 500, 1,000th's of a seconds of the CPU time every second.
For all practical purposes it would appear that both programs were running simultaneously. However, each is stopped completely every 1000th of a second. This process operates very smoothly (most of the time) with computers because they are so adept at saving everything and switching to something else. Everything the computer "knows" is data that can be stored, stopped, started, and interrupted with affecting the process or memory.
Now, compare that computer operating system to the human mind. For example, as I write this article, I have the concept I want to present in mind, a quiet emotional that that is conducive to writing, and the words are following.
Suddenly I am interrupted by a phone call and someone is angry about something and I spend 10 minutes calming them down. Now what?
I may try to write a few words as I am on the phone, but they come out garbled and don't flow. After the call I am unable to get the focus back and the concept I had so clearly in the front of my mind has drifted away. I even start expressing a bit of that anger I picked up on the phone call.
That outside interruption was poorly processed by my human brain. The result being not a sharing of time in a productive manner between two tasks, but rather spending more time to accomplish two tasks less well. A completely different result than a computer's ability to save and switch completely and accurately when multi-tasking.
The interruptions may not be external things like phone calls, knocks on the door but self-inspired interruptions as well. I have 50+ windows open on my computer, so the temptation to have a peek at something while I write this is overwhelming. Has something happened on facebook or twitter I need to see? Has some idle thought crossed my mind that inspired me to do a Google search?
Are these self-inspired interruptions any less disruptive than an outside interruption? I think not. After I return to my writing, my mind is unfocused and has taken a big Y on the path to someplace else! I am no longer focused on what I was doing and my emotion state may well be impacted as well.
That I think is the big difference between aspect concepts of time not being linear in nature and the common concept of multi-tasking! Multi-tasking not some abstract theory of time but rather an attempt to justify interruptions.
In fact, you might find that multi-tasking, intentional or unintentional is one of the largest causes of stress and lack of productivity in your workplace. See if you can organize your workplace and computer to organize your tasks in a linear process and leave the multi-tasking to those who want to be stressed out.
You can talk about... Productivity and the Linear Nature of Time Tags: • stress • emotion • temptation • ideas • knowledge • time • productivity • human brain • human mind • multi tasking • common sense •
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Productivity and the Linear Nature of Time
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