Once upon a time, there was this newly hired software development team leader, named Joe, who wanted to organize the software development department of a company. He told the bosses they should really choose and buy a project management/issue tracking tool. The bosses were OK with that and let Joe buy that tool.
Joe, tried to persuade everyone to use that tool for any form of communication between all and the software department, ditching email. Most did that, but there were two occasions when that wasn’t the case:
- People who thought it was better to call Joe, describe a bunch of cases to him orally, and then hope Joe would remember everything and go and create the cases himself.
- People, who although were willing to write the case, they first needed to ran it by Joe orally.
In both scenarios, both types of people just interrupted Joe. They seemingly didn’t respect Joe’s time or concentration. Was this the case though? Was it they didn’t really care or was it they were ignorant and uneducated. After all, can you blame the ignorant?
Joe was trying not to get angry, but he couldn’t always succeed. Joe had a hard time explaining why he didn’t want to be interrupted. He couldn’t even find the right words to make other people aware of his situation. He thought that others thought he was a selfish bastard for not wanting to be interrupted.
Joe, really believed that even one interruption, that would also cause his nerves to stretch, could easily ruin the productivity of a whole day. Imagine that: A whole day’s worth of productivity down the toilet.
Joe thinks of a future where co-workers are not bored to write in detail what they want from him while he is able to get things done in a calm environment. He smiles thinking that having a dream is better than nothing.