Today I 'accidentally' had the whole department to myself, AND the phone and most e-mails were dead. In fact, I had about 8 uninterrupted hours, to myself to complete a onerous reformatting of seventy pages of complex academic text into 13 pages. I do this every four months of so, as part of creating a course calendar. It normally takes me about a full day and a half to do. This time -- it took four hours.

AND another big thing: this is a task I don't really look forward to, but because I was able to do it uninterrupted, and 'out loud' I actually felt great at the end of it. I say 'out loud' because I have always been in the habit of talking to myself loudly as I design and work. Or singing. But, ever since they made us give up our offices for cubicles, I've obviously had to give up that approach. Today, though -- was a huge exception.

All this made me think of that Paul Graham essay about 'maker vs. manager' time. And also how productive mono-tasking can really be.

Where was everybody? Attending a 'Divisional Retreat' where everyone from the department, and all departments under our division, go off site for a kind of team-building, meet your co-worker kind of get together. Probably about sixty people or so would be there. In the afternoon they split up groups to discuss real problems and solutions. I went last year and enjoyed most of it -- except for the part where our department and another got together to discuss why (once again) our department rated the lowest in the organization for employee satisfaction on the survey they do. It turns out that everyone else knows that we're over-worked and under-staffed too. I didn't feel any better for discussing it though.

Oh... why didn't I go today? Um... they overbooked me and I couldn't spare losing a day from a critical design schedule. Hmm.

But it was great to rediscover how much better it is to work in peace and uninterrupted quiet. Mmmm.