FYI: Your voice in the video is very quiet. You really need to normalize / boost / compress it.
One thing that's easy to forget is that technology does not solve political / social problems. The big problem is that far too many people think they can run around and interrupt people at any time for any reason, and no piece of technology will solve this. If you send them to a tool that breaks their ability to interrupt, then they will figure out a way to bypass the tool.
I think it's more important to advocate publicly to be conscious of how we interrupt each other. It's very important that interrupters recognize their behavior.
On your point about tech not solving social problems: I fully agree. Moreover, I think that tech _aggravates_ some of these problems. Case in point: why do some people think they can run around and interrupt others at any time for any reason? I think it could be related to having tech in our pockets constantly interrupting us throughout the day, which makes us operate in a new normal, where attention span a shorter, and where it's ok to just quickly check the notifications or just send a quick message while in a personal live conversation with someone.
A Faraday cage may become an important component to taking time for relaxing.
Thanks! We'll boost the voice and re-upload the video. Agreed that technology doesn't solve the social issues at play and unfortunately policing behavior is hard. We think Patchwork can at least help the problem by having an alternative form of communicating rather than just chat. Then at least people can point interruptors to the tool and nudge them to use it.
They claim they can't work any more, unless they get this one piece of crucial information from you. And your boss must ensure that you reply to them, when they need to. Ultimately, if done cleverly enough, you will look like a bad employee long term, unless you give in.
Again, tools can help modulate the above behavior and even build norms. But ultimately, they only work if everyone agrees to the same set of social norms.
Enforcing said appropriate social norms is a big part of the reason there is management in the first place. However it means that
1) Management has to be technically competent enough to understand the things being communicated about.
2) Management has to be motivated to enforce appropriate social norms.
These are both pretty difficult to achieve in practice.
I feel this is a key thing that makes chat work really well for some remote workers and terribly for others: what's the expectation of responsiveness to chat?
For example, if you feel you need to respond to any DM (either implicitly due to company culture or explicitly because your boss has brought it up as a complaint about you), then slack is a huge interruption. You probably feel the need to have intrusive notifications enabled and/or a bouncing dock icon indicating new messages.
On the other hand, if the norm at your company is "slack is async so expect a response in 2-3 business hours," then yeah - it's rarely, if ever, interrupting.
One thing that's easy to forget is that technology does not solve political / social problems. The big problem is that far too many people think they can run around and interrupt people at any time for any reason, and no piece of technology will solve this. If you send them to a tool that breaks their ability to interrupt, then they will figure out a way to bypass the tool.
I think it's more important to advocate publicly to be conscious of how we interrupt each other. It's very important that interrupters recognize their behavior.