Cool Down (10 page)

If this intellectual argument in favor of lunch breaks away from the desk hasn't grabbed you thus far, how about some purely biological facts? Studies have shown that eating over the keyboard is a health hazard, pure and simple. It has been proven that a computer keyboard and mouse contain 100 times more bacteria on their surfaces, nooks, and crannies than a kitchen table, and 400 times more than a toilet seat.
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Their surfaces are constantly touched, often by many people, either directly or indirectly (think about shaking hands with someone and then returning to your computer). Germs and other nasty things can survive for hours, sometimes days, on dry surfaces such as computer equipment. Consequently, an employee might be able to squeeze 15 minutes more out of the day by working through her lunch, taking a bite of her sandwich, then working a little on her computer, then taking another bite, but when she then has to spend the next few days sick at home, or sick at work, her forehead tachometer will drop and stay dropped for a long time. And once the tachometer drops below 50 percent, all tasks, from the simplest phone calls to the most challenging knowledge work will take at least twice as long.

The same goes for bathroom breaks. We need only recall the economic impact that disease outbreaks such as SARS and influenza had, and still have, on business. These illnesses are transmitted through contact with surfaces of all kinds. Following the SARS outbreak, a great number of organizations worldwide took the initiative and posted hand-washing instructions on the walls and mirrors of washrooms. The problem is, if people do not feel they have time to follow the posted procedures, the signs are pointless. The urgency of speed follows an employee right to the washroom basin. People who have to work too fast and think too fast will inevitably wash their hands too fast (far more quickly than the 15 seconds recommended by health authorities). And although that may seem like a personal thing, when it's your people who do this, who then interact with other people and with common tools and areas of the office, physical contamination will spread with the same efficiency and rapidity as a computer virus. Many companies have already calculated the financial cost of network-borne viruses to their IT infrastructure. But what will it take for them to create an environment in which human beings are afforded the same opportunity for health and safety? It's not soap and water that's missing; it's the attitude.

We did some analysis to see if this whole washroom thing was actually a real problem. We chose four companies at random, and posted an interviewer outside the door of selected staff washrooms (both men's and women's) at random times of the day. We asked the following simple questions:

 

The results were interesting to say the least. Although most participants, 83%, said they washed their hands, few did so for 15 seconds with lathered soap. When asked why, the answer was “not enough time.”

The reason for the fourth question—the one about which hand they used to open the door—is because regardless of the amount of time any individual spends washing his hands, once he touches the taps to turn them off and then grasps the inside door handle of the washroom in order to leave, he re-infects himself with the traces of all those who used the facilities before him.

This, then, is an example of how speed eventually reduces productivity, in this case through illness caused by insufficient hygiene. Busy individuals tend to neglect proper and complete hygiene procedures due to lack of time. Their minds are preoccupied with work, and therefore they don't take the time to consider the importance of this simple task.

Hagerty Classic Insurance, a provider of classic car insurance, used data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to identify the 10 most dangerous foods to eat while driving, since up to that point this data was largely unavailable to insurance companies.
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They discovered that two of the biggest offenders are chocolate and coffee. You're most likely to spill or burn yourself with coffee, and chocolate will most likely get you into a swerving situation, or worse. Chocolate is sticky, it gets onto the steering wheel, and even worse things happen when it falls into your lap and starts to melt. With chocolate it's not the eating that's dangerous, it's the cleaning up. The other eight members of Hagerty's top-10 list are: hot soup, tacos, chili, hamburgers, barbecued food, fried chicken, jelly-filled or cream-filled donuts, and soft drinks. None of these foods, with the possible exception of soup, are particularly healthy to begin with, and since cars were never designed to be steered with the knees, they are simply dangerous, as are all other foods that are eaten while driving. They negatively impact safety, productivity, alertness, and health.

But people need to get where they're going. And as long as we live and think “event to event,” lunch on the road becomes like lunch over the keyboard—a space of negligible personal time that can be sacrificed in the name of keeping up. A preoccupied mind, combined with an overloaded schedule, conspire to eliminate our awareness of how things could be done better.

I have spoken to many a road warrior who has learned, sometimes the hard way, that there is greater value in pulling over for 10 minutes to grab some lunch, rather than eating on the fly. Here are some of the comments they shared with me:

Later I asked the person who made the fourth statement above, what would happen if he realized his schedule was too tight and that he couldn't make all his appointments that day.

He answered, “That has happened to me, and it's not a problem. My customers like to know that I'm looking out for them. If I tell one that I can't see him today, but that I will be able to come by tomorrow, he's fine with that. He's busy, I'm busy, and we know that. He's actually grateful for the call. It shows that I respect him.”

This is a great example of how “high touch” wins out over “high speed.” The customer is happy. He feels looked after. The road warrior is happy. He feels in control. His health is better since he has eaten slowly and carefully, and he will be in a better position to drive safely and still make his other commitments in the afternoon.

Consider for a moment the deathbed anguishes of Robert Probst. As a designer, working for office furniture giant Herman Miller in the 1960s, Probst came up with the modular, three-walled work area that we now know as the cubicle. Seeking to create a high-productivity space for commercial innovation, Probst conceived the “Action Office,” whose surfaces, both horizontal and vertical, allowed for clear thought, freedom of movement, ample storage, and the ability to lay out plans and drawings (there were no personal computers back then), all in a semi-open, semi-private configuration. Sadly, as is the fate of many creative architects, he watched as his modular workplace morphed into an economic convenience for the companies for which they worked, in which creative space gave way to an ice-cube tray-like formation, and the priority shifted away from ergonomic needs to economic ones. As
Fortune
writer Julie Schlosser puts it, the cubicle “still claims the largest share of office furniture sales—$3 billion or so a year—and has outlived every “office of the future” meant to replace it.”
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There are at least two ways in which the modern cubicle existence has contributed to the issue of lost productivity through speed.

First is the idea of
ambient momentum
. The open-concept environment created by the cubicle provides sight barriers in three out of four directions, but it does nothing to lessen the distraction factor of ambient noise and activity. The atmosphere of the typical workplace delivers a host of distractions: conversations, phone calls, drop-in visitors, laughter, food aromas, mumblings, rustlings, arguments, gossip, and general busy-ness in a pretty constant fashion. There are some who can tune out this assault, but many cannot. Alongside distraction, which is costly enough, this activity creates its own momentum, a counterproductive speed of thought and action. When a person absorbs this ambient momentum, simply by sharing the same physical space, he ramps up to a higher, more frenetic level of thought and reaction without reaping similar levels of productivity or focus.

Ambient momentum, then, refers not to workplace noise itself but to the constant awareness of speed in the background, a subliminal presence that urges people on, beyond the pace at which the mind works best. The existence of ambient momentum is best proven by looking at the primary perk given to executives upon promotion: a corner office with a nice view and a closeable door—a refuge. Nothing contributes more to creativity and productivity than isolation and focus. It is a prize, a reward.

Examples of ambient momentum exist everywhere. Observe, for example, people's acceptance that meetings and events must be held back to back. In other words, the event-to-event mindset is nurtured by ambient momentum. So, too, is the act of over-booking schedules and over-committing to tasks. People who drive too fast are carrying over ambient momentum from the office. People who have trouble getting to sleep at night are taking ambient momentum to bed with them. Ways to combat ambient momentum are highlighted in the box on the following page, and are implicit in all of the other descriptions and solutions within this book. The idea is to understand that although ambient momentum can be disorienting, which does nothing for productivity or stress management, it can be controlled, quite simply, by
cooling down
.

The second danger of cubicle existence has to do with its isolationism—the very thing Robert Probst sought to eliminate. The irony here is that although the cubicle grid structure of the typical office allows many people to work closely together, it has done little to improve actual human-to-human contact skills. People feel more comfortable hiding behind email than they do talking issues through, face to face, in a well-structured, dynamic discussion.

One example of this erosion can be seen in the case study of Karen and Vern in the previous chapter, who were unaware that an option other than email ping-pong was possible. It wasn't that they'd never heard of face-to-face meetings. Of course they had. But ambient momentum blurred such alternatives and made them invisible. Let's now consider some other examples. How would you deal with these situations?