Kevin's Weblog

As if phones and in-person interruptions were not enough, we now have a veritable plague of channels for interruptions, which OS and application developers apparently think we can’t live without.

These days it seems that whenever I’m in any sort of meeting where a Windows user is projecting their computer screen, every 30 seconds or so, the whole room is informed that they have a new mail message (complete with sender, subject, and first line), or that some person or another is on-line, off-line, idle, not idle, or that they could be using their spreadsheet or word processor or other program better. Honestly, I can’t figure out how anyone gets any work done. I have to quit Mail when I need to concentrate just so that the small red dot doesn’t tempt me away. Maybe they just all have more self-discipline than I do.

(Windows is, of course, not the sole offender. Currently, I’m hounded by Apple’s iCal, which insists on coming to the front of my screen whenever I dismiss a reminder, forcing me to re-minimize it before I can get back to whatever I was doing. Alternatively, if I ignore or kill the pop-up box, then the iCal icon sits in my dock bouncing for all eternity, or until I give in and pay attention to it.)

Update: D. Keith Robinson just posted a somewhat related pondering