This is a transcript of the video David Berman speaks at Nortel 2006: Expect the Unexpected.
(Text on screen: plan for interruptions)
(David Berman appears on camera in front of his presentation displaying on screen and faces the audience for the duration of this video. David is wearing a beige suit with a black shirt and tie.)
–answer your question there now about what we do about interruptions. Because you’re going– “David, you’re going to plan this perfect day, and we’ve got it all perfectly set up, all your due items and your not-due items and your scheduled meetings with yourself and–” He lives in the land of make-believe, right?
What kind of job does David have where, what… no one phones? No one sends you email? No one calls from the school to say your daughter is throwing up? None of that happens? No, it happens every day. And what we do is we plan for it. We plan for interruptions. And this is how we do it.
We have a formula. This is my interruption formula. N equals T minus I minus D. It requires a little arithmetic, but it’s worth the trouble. Basically it’s like this. In any given day, we know the total amount of hours we have for the not-due items.
So let’s say we take a typical day. Our total hours available on that day, let’s say, are eight hours. That’s the whole workday. I’m just thinking about the workday right now to keep it simple.
So we’ve got our workday of eight hours available. Now I want to find out what my total hours are available for not-due items. I want to know what my N is. So the way I figure that out is I take my total hours available and then I take something called an “interruption reserve”. That’s the I, and that’s what you’re looking for.
How much time do I have to put aside for people successfully interrupting me? I say successful because later today I want to talk about how we reduce the interruptions. But there will always be useful interruptions.
So we come up with a number. Now this is different for every person, and you have to learn– and if you keep a journal you’ll know very accurately how much it is– how much time do you have to put aside? I’m suggesting just try two hours, almost arbitrarily, for starters, if you don’t know what it is.
But you’ll learn how much time you spend every day reacting to new stuff.
Reviewed November 19, 2015