I have my list of things to do. I’m right in the middle of wrapping one thing up, when *ping*. Â A blinking notification on the task bar of my Windows machine, and a pop-up preview of a “yt?” message.
Gah. Â I’d like to ignore the message, but then, that just means that Outlook will consider this a missed conversation and send it to me in an email. Either way, I’m marked away from my desk–unthinkable that that should happen at any point between 11am and 1pm. Â Apparently, for impromptu instant messages, this is the time range in which senders figure they’re most likely to get a response, much like telemarketers at dinner time.
Back to reality… Â I decide to respond, because it’s rude to not respond to a flashing notification and a “ding” noise.
The sender’s response is a simple question, which requires me to temporarily abandon the half-completed email that I was composing, and search my inbox for a message that answers the question. Â This takes 15 minutes, because I eventually have to resort to sorting by sender, by conversation, by date, by size to find what should have been fairly easy to conduct a simple search on. Â Question answered, and I forward the email that describes the answer in great detail.
I then take 5 minutes to regroup, and begin to focus on my next task. Â 20 minutes into that task, another impromptu instant message with similar results.
Fast forward to the end of the day: Â I have 3 half-completed documents and 5 draft emails composed, and now, I can’t shut down my computer without dealing with them.
I guess I could’ve went the day with “do not disturb” on, but then people not nearby in the office would have assumed that I was out of the office and not working, which is fine until people start assuming that I’m never in the office.
Ok, maybe instant messenger isn’t the devil, but a stalker or overbearing significant other.