Other people

Some great links about working with others in this morning's email from Unlimited's Best Places to Work.

First, a Fast Company story about how having a best friend at work makes work more engaging.

When people leave an organization after a short time, they often talk about how they weren't able to connect with someone. On the flip side, there is something about those relationships that keeps people in jobs, too. We talked to a woman who was an executive at a nonprofit. She decided she was going to quit. That Sunday, her best friend from work called and talked about how much he valued her friendship. She ended up staying there several more years.

We crave connection; that's why MySpace, YouTube and Blogger exist.

The other story, from the Sydney Morning Herald, quotes research that shows we lose two hours of productive time each day because of technological and people annoyances.

Once your attention span is disrupted, it takes time to recouple yourself to your previous train of thought. If you are interrupted while trying to remember what it was you were meant to be doing, you might as well call it quits. The University of California study found that more than 20 per cent of interrupted tasks were not resumed the same day.

Holy crap. That's terrible.

While the first story makes me maybe wish I had a "normal" job, the second story gives me hope that - if I can stop distracting myself! - I'll be much more productive working here from home.