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logo * Newsletters * Subscribe * account icon * Login * navigation logo Combined Shape STARTUP * Best Industries * Funding * Incubators * Business Plans * Naming * Home-Based Business * The UPS Store GROW * Strategy * Operations * Sales * Marketing * Customer Service * Franchises * Build LEAD * Black in Business * Your Next Move * Taking Care * FEMALE FOUNDERS * Best Workplaces * Company Culture * Public Speaking * Hiring * HR/Benefits * Productivity * All the Hats TECHNOLOGY * Leading Tech * Digital Transformation * Artificial Intelligence * Bringing Innovation to Market * Cloud Computing * Social Media * Security * Data Detectives INNOVATE * Creativity * Invent * Design * Pivot MONEY * Exit Interview * Bootstrapping * Crowdfunding * Venture Capital * Borrowing * Business Models * Personal Finance * Founder Friendly Investors EVENTS * Upcoming Events * Inc. 5000 Vision Conference * Become a Sponsor BRANDVIEW * Cox Business * Deloitte * Intel * PPG * The UPS Store * Principal * Verizon Business * Whoop * Branded Content INC. 5000 * Inc. 5000 * Inc. 5000 Regionals * Apply Inc. 5000 US INC. UNLIMITED * Subscribe INC. UNLIMITED * Subscribe * Watch * Guides Follow: * Group 5 * * Fill 1 * Group 3 * Group 3 INC. UNLIMITED * Subscribe * About * Staff * Columnists * Help Center Follow: * Group 5 * * Fill 1 * Group 3 * Group 3 Top Stories Top Videos Branding After Learning Tennis Great Venus Williams Was Her Company's No. 1 Fan, Stephanie Morimoto Put Her Branding Dreams ... Featured Videos 5 Ways to Maintain a Healthy Mindset, According to the Founder of Calm Artificial Intelligence How A.I. Fakes May Harm Your Business--and What This Founder Is Doing to Help Money Details Emerge on the SBA's New Small-Business Lending Advisory Committee: Entrepreneurs to Get a Seat at the Table Power of Purpose How to Build an Inclusive Workplace for People With Disabilities Artificial Intelligence How to Apply for OpenAI's $1 Million Investment Startup Program Non-Obvious Book Reviews Non-Obvious Book Review: 2023's Most Shareable Book logo * Newsletters * Subscribe * account icon * Login * navigation logo Combined Shape STARTUP * Best Industries * Funding * Incubators * Business Plans * Naming * Home-Based Business * The UPS Store GROW * Strategy * Operations * Sales * Marketing * Customer Service * Franchises * Build LEAD * Black in Business * Your Next Move * Taking Care * FEMALE FOUNDERS * Best Workplaces * Company Culture * Public Speaking * Hiring * HR/Benefits * Productivity * All the Hats TECHNOLOGY * Leading Tech * Digital Transformation * Artificial Intelligence * Bringing Innovation to Market * Cloud Computing * Social Media * Security * Data Detectives INNOVATE * Creativity * Invent * Design * Pivot MONEY * Exit Interview * Bootstrapping * Crowdfunding * Venture Capital * Borrowing * Business Models * Personal Finance * Founder Friendly Investors EVENTS * Upcoming Events * Inc. 5000 Vision Conference * Become a Sponsor BRANDVIEW * Cox Business * Deloitte * Intel * PPG * The UPS Store * Principal * Verizon Business * Whoop * Branded Content INC. 5000 * Inc. 5000 * Inc. 5000 Regionals * Apply Inc. 5000 US INC. UNLIMITED * Subscribe INC. UNLIMITED * Subscribe * Watch * Guides Follow: * Group 5 * * Fill 1 * Group 3 * Group 3 INC. UNLIMITED * Subscribe * About * Staff * Columnists * Help Center Follow: * Group 5 * * Fill 1 * Group 3 * Group 3 Productivity 24 YEARS AGO, A HARVARD RESEARCHER SHOWED HOW TO INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY AT WORK BY 65 PERCENT. WHY AREN'T WE ALL USING HER METHOD? IN 1999, WE ALREADY KNEW THE SOLUTION TO ENDLESS PRODUCTIVITY-KILLING INTERRUPTIONS. WHY DON'T MORE PEOPLE USE IT? * Shape * * By Jessica Stillman, Contributor, Inc.com@EntryLevelRebel Photo: Getty Images If you're old enough, think back to the year 1999. I was at college then and I had an email account, but no cellphone on which to constantly check it. I mostly used my boxy desktop computer to type out papers. Even Friendster wasn't out yet, and my primary experience of online life was playing around in AOL chatrooms in a high school friend's basement. The unplugged way I and many others lived back then may sound peaceful looking back. But -- and I hate to break it to you -- scientists were already worried that constant interruptions were robbing knowledge workers of their ability to be productive at work. The good news is even way back then, their research discovered a way to shut out distractions and radically increase how much we're able to get done at work -- and it's a simple protocol that could work in 2023 as well as 1999. The bad news is, most of us still aren't using it. SCIENCE FOUND THE SOLUTION TO "TIME CONFETTI" DECADES AGO Today, Leslie Perlow is a highly respected professor at Harvard Business School. But 25 years ago, she was a young researcher at the University of Michigan interested in the experience of "time famine," or feeling like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it. To figure out what was causing this experience, she minutely observed a team of 17 engineers working to develop a new printer over the course of nine months. The resulting paper was such a landmark that contemporary star business professor Adam Grant mentioned it just recently on the podcast of Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman. What did Perlow find? Nothing that would shock the average business owner or office worker circa 2023. The engineers felt, even back before the turn of the Millennium, that they never had time to do their "real work." Instead, they were constantly being pulled into impromptu conversations with colleagues, putting out minor fires, or giving status reports. I think it is safe to say that modern tools like Slack and Zoom have only supercharged this complaint. One study out of the University of California, Irvine, from before the pandemic shows that, even when presumably more of us were in the office for more hours, people were already checking their email an average of 77 times a day. Perlow didn't just document the problem of what has since been dubbed "time confetti." She also designed and tested a simple solution. I'll let Grant describe her "Quiet Protocol" and its effects on the work of the engineers she studied: "She takes engineers and she sets a quiet time policy -- no interruptions Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday before noon. Sixty-five percent above average productivity." Grant adds that he doesn't think there is anything magical about these particular times. Monday, Wednesday, Friday would work just as well as long as the whole team commits to whatever schedule is agreed on. Perlow's work just shows that blocking off teamwide, distraction-free time to concentrate on your most important tasks can yield huge gains in productivity. WHY HAVEN'T MORE OF US IMPLEMENTED IT? Most business leaders would agree that a 65 percent gain in productivity is nothing to sneeze at. So you might think that in the quarter century or so since Perlow's paper was published, tons and tons of organizations would have received the gospel of her "Quiet Protocol" and set up enforced team quiet times. Undoubtedly some enlightened organizations out there have, but not so many of them that researchers don't continue to feel compelled to repeat various versions of Perlow's experiment. Just last year, a study written up in MIT Sloan Management Review showed that companies that adopted three meeting-free days a week saw productivity climb an even more impressive 73 percent. Grant is still out there beating the drum for this research decades later. And the media is still full of everyone from Harvard professors to frontline workers bemoaning how impossible it is to get anything done in a workday diced into time confetti. Which raises one simple question: If someone figured out at least one meaningful and effective solution to this problem 25 years ago, why haven't more business leaders implemented it? Dec 13, 2023 The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com. logo Top Tech Sign up for our weekly roundup on the latest in tech * This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. SIGN UP This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the GooglePrivacy PolicyandTerms of Serviceapply. Privacy Policy Sponsored Business Content * Privacy policy * Notice of collection * do not sell my data * Ad vendor policy * terms of use * Advertise * help Center * sitemap COPYRIGHT 2023 MANSUETO VENTURES search by queryly Advanced Search We use cookies on our websites to support technical features that enhance your user experience and help us improve our website. By continuing to use this website you accept our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. 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