A Great New York Times article on Inactivity in the Office

Don't miss this great "Room for Debate" article in the NY Times today on the question of "Is All That Sitting Really Killing Us?" with opinions by five experts. The consensus seems to be, as I thought, that just a plain stand-up desk isn't good, as if you only use this, bad things start happening to your legs and feet, but that a desk that raises and lowers is good -- that what's best is what allows you to work in different positions. I was also heartened by a statement by James A. Levine, professor of medicine at Mayo Clinic that "a re-examination of our office culture is under way." Glad to know we're on the mark!

A couple of wonderful websites

While researching my blog post today, I discovered something fantastic. It's a website entitled The Early Office Museum. It's an online museum, a true work of art, filled with all sorts of wondrous photos and paintings of offices from ancient times to the twentieth century. I wish, wish, wish I had found this before I wrote the history part of my book. More on this later, but in the meantime, give yourself a treat and go take a look at it.

Also, visit the website for Take Back Your Time, a fantastic organization headed by John de Graaf, co-author of the popular book, Affluenza. This organization is working for changes in the laws that will guarantee workers a reasonable amount of paid vacation time and provide other protections to their right to have lives outside of work. Their latest newsletter is now online and talks about how shortening the work week will help to reduce unemployment, something I've been preaching about for a long time.

History of the Office 101: Scientific Management

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilberth Carey. It was about growing up in a family of twelve children and their parents, Frank, Sr. and Lillian Gilbreth, who were two of the original efficiency experts. Needless to say, the children lived highly regimented lives. They were required to fill out “process charts” on which they were supposed to check off boxes for washing their faces, brushing their teeth, etc. I still remember, in the fifth grade, making a chart like this for myself after reading about it, though I don’t think my own parents, who were not efficiency experts and had only two children, not twelve, ever looked at it.

The Gilbreths, along with Frederick Taylor, pioneered what was then a new field, which Taylor eventually called “scientific management.” It was all about figuring out the most efficient way to accomplish tasks so as to maximize production. To do this, they timed tasks with stopwatches and analyzed movies frame by frame. At first the tasks were mainly those done in factories, but eventually scientific management – also now known as “Taylorism” -- invaded offices as well as most other types of workplaces.

Its fundamental principles were as follows:

Dealing with E-mail Onslaughts

When you arrive in the morning, there are forty of them waiting for you. By the time you’ve answered two or three, six more are waiting, and all the time you’re trying to work, notices of new ones keep popping up on your screen. If there’s anything in the office that can make you feel as though you’re being attacked by armies of malicious elves, it’s e-mail. But it doesn't have to wreck your day. Managing e-mail is all a matter of triaging, the way medical staff in an overloaded ER triage patients. Once you’ve got a logical system of directories, some good SPAM software, and a few habits in place, you’ll be able to calmly contend with whatever passes through your in-box, no matter how excessive the quantity. Here are a few tips:

Crazymakers in the Office

As a psychotherapist who works part time as an administrative assistant, I’ve come to believe that many employees from CEO on down could have immensely happier workdays if someone taught them just a little bit about what most therapists call “personality disorders.” People with personality disorders have a life history of causing pain and misery to those around them while believing that they themselves are just fine. I call these people “crazymakers” because of the harmful effects they can have on the mental health of others.

What makes dealing with office crazymakers difficult is that most of us want to be good team players. When someone rubs us the wrong way, we assume that this is just because we have differences, and all we need to do is sit down and talk things out. Or we try to be extra nice to the person, telling ourselves that he or she is just having problems at home or under a lot of stress. With most people, these strategies work just fine. But not with crazymakers. The usual rules for building positive relationships will not work with them.

Empathy in the Office

Recently I started reading an extraordinary book called The Empathic Civilization by Jeremy Rifkin. It’s an ambitious 700-page volume that rethinks all of world history in terms of two concepts: empathy and entropy, both of which Rifkin claims have progressively increased over time. Rifkin shows how certain conditions – new sources of energy, new communications media, urbanization, increased contact between members of different groups – facilitate “empathy surges” – times when the overall progress of empathy, i.e., the ability of one human being to imagine what another human being feels, takes a giant leap forward. While these surges never last, as energy runs out due to entropy and civilizations decline, they leave traces to be reignited with the next surge, and thus, over time, Rifkin claims, the human race is becoming more and more empathic.

So far, I’ve only read about a third of this book, but already it’s made so many sparks go off in my head I feel like it’s the fourth of July. This guy is a fabulous big-picture thinker. And of course, his ideas have all sorts of implications for the office world, which I plan to spend the whole next year exploring.

Meanwhile, it’s set me thinking about empathy, a concept I first encountered when doing training at a crisis center where I volunteered for a couple of years before starting social work school. Trainings for volunteers in those days began with an “Empathy Weekend.” On Friday nights, volunteers were divided into small groups run by “empathy trainers.” The trainers explained to us what empathy was, and that empathizing with someone with a headache didn’t mean you had the headache yourself, which is sympathy, it meant being aware that the person was suffering, communicating your awareness to him or her and “validating feelings.”

Is Your Workload Unrealistic? How to Tell and What to Do

Do you regularly have a to-do list at the office that’s more than a page long? Has your in-box never, ever been empty? Do you spend the bulk of your time racing against the clock? Do you often stay late or take work home to try to catch up? Do you make more mistakes than you think you should? Does a technical breakdown or bureaucratic obstacle send you into a panic? If so, you may be struggling with an unrealistic workload.

Unrealistic workloads happen for a variety of different reasons. Here are some possibilities:

Your department is understaffed. This is probably the most common reason why workers may wind up overloaded. In today’s tight economy, it may be unavoidable for employers to cut staff and overload those who are left, but it’s a short-term solution that’s likely to lead to job turnover, absenteeism, and poor work quality, especially if the boss uses harsh management strategies to try to get more work out of people than is reasonable.