originally posted on one of my several now defunct blogs, called On Engineering, under my persona The Canny Engineer, on the 31st of May 2013
Yesterday, Thursday, being a bank holiday (at least in my state of Baden-Württemberg), today was a classic German “bridging day”. One day’s holiday resulting in a four-day weekend is simply too good a ratio to miss for most Germans, and I had also planned to take advantage of the bridge.
But with so much going on in so many frantic ways, with so much on my plate and buzzing in my head, I felt it was better to ensconce myself in a quiet, colleague-free office and get some work done.
I was disappointed to to see upon my arrival an office full of colleagues who had had similar thoughts, all chatting away about a colleague’s house-build project, architects and unreliable builders. I skulked off and found an empty manager’s office nearby, docked my laptop there with my own peripherals, left my cordless phone on its station and closed the doors. I spent the morning trudging through drudgery (hello, PPAPs) and then the afternoon working on DFMEAs and updating my presentations for the training I’ll be giving in Detroit in a few weeks' time.
It was great. I didn’t need to plug in my headphones, nor did I end up continuously distracting myself with the internet. I simply worked, ticking off my “Big Three” tasks for the day, plus a few “Notable Nuisances” as the hours ticked comfortably by.
It all comes back to environment. As I hinted in my post about Engineering Things Done, I cannot work effectively in an open plan office. There are always people on telephones, colleagues discussing work or debating which is the cheaper internet provider. Sometimes it’s good to get involved in the community aspect of work, that’s certain - they’re decent people, and I’ll need their support at times, too, so I daren’t become a recluse - but I need peace and quiet to work properly.
I suspect that most engineers would be better with flexible environments. We’re knowledge workers, so need time and space to think. Even when we’re dragged into quality mud-fights and validation testing, our minds should be at peace so that we can maintain our “switchability” between big picture and detail.
So - individual offices for engineers? That would be impractical. But the ability, both physically and culturally, to switch environment and context is important and needs to be cultivated.
