Saved by the bell

Recently I’ve been thinking about how productive I was at school compared to the current day. I am still amazed at the amount of different subjects I was juggling back during my GCSEs, carrying a backpack crammed with a bunch of textbooks and file blocks. Somehow I still managed to study, play computer games, play Gaelic and football for for 3 different teams and still find time for some telly (and the odd date!). Ok maybe I didn’t study as much as I should have but I still did well enough.

So what were the main factors of my productivity? Well certainly the energy of youth was a big factor. Also not have any other major responsibilities or bills to pay. The one big factor for me though was organisation, and in particular the school timetable. Each day of the week, you knew exactly where you would be and what you would be doing at any given point during the day.  On a Monday morning you’d have a double maths followed by English Lit. This also meant you could switch context at the drop of a hat, just by walking from one classroom to another.

OK. So what is my point? Well once you leave school and start work, you loose that organisation. Your day job consists of long periods with no defined objective (other than to do whatever your job entails). This means it is easy to get sidetracked by other things such as emails, phone calls, office banter, blogging (ahem!)  etc and before you know it, its lunch time.  What if your work day was scheduled like a timetable (and no I don’t just mean all your meetings in your calendar). For example:

09:00 - Assembly (chance for CEO to talk about latest news, pressing issues etc).
09:15 - Form Class (Team get together to discuss tasks, issues etc - similar to Scrum)
09:30 - Communication (Spend period reading email and responding if necessary, checking relevant news and tech articles).
10:05 - Design (A chance to plan your work and design new features etc)
10:40 - Break (Time for a coffee and chat with colleagues)
10:55 - Work (A period of actual uninterrupted work)
11:30 - Communication
11:45 - Support (Time dedicated to resolving issues and fixing bugs
12:30 - Lunch
13:30 - Communication
13:45 - Work
14:20 - Study (A chance to learn about new developments or enhance your knowledge)
14:55 - Support
15:30 - Communication
15:45 - Work
16:20 - Peer Review (A chance for you to get input on what you have done as well as give others input)
16:55 - Build/Checkin (Time to ensure you code compiles and check it in to your repository)
17:30 - Home

What if each task was done in a different room and you had a different manager/teacher? Would something like this make us more productive, or are our jobs too chaotic to be organised? There will always be production issues whereby you need to drop everything and solve asap, but could the rest of the emails wait until those defined Communication periods to be answered? Are adults too mature to be held to such a tight schedule? Do you already do something like this informally anyway? Am i talking complete nonsense? Probably!