Training Your IM Puppy
Posted by Steve Munroe | Under Work, productivity Saturday May 3, 2008
A tale of one man’s heroic attempts to open a spreadsheet
“Joe is heading into work on a grey and rainy Monday morning. He’s had a great weekend; but now it’s Monday, and there’s a mountain of stuff to get through at work. Joe thinks about the tasks he has today and by the time he reaches the office he’s ready to hit the ground running. Joe’s to-do list is longer than Gisele’s over-insured legs, so he really has to get moving and start ticking off the tasks one-by-one. Joe logs in on his office workstation and is ready to go… But wait! Someone has just IM’d him. That little orange rectangle at the bottom of Joe’s screen is flashing furiously, demanding Joe’s attention. So he clicks on it…It’s Bill, with a question about some work they did last week. Joe answers Bill and waits a few seconds to see if Bill is going to reply….It appears not, so Joe closes the chat screen and goes to open Excel. But wait! The little orange rectangle is back again. Joe’s peripheral vision has been hijacked and all he can do is click it open again. Once again it’s Bill. He’s replying to Joe’s comments. Joe waits while Bill types in a few words followed by some ellipses, suggesting more is to come. Joe sits and looks at the screen, waiting; the IM window is telling him that Bill is writing a message. Impatiently, Joe sits and waits. Finally Bill’s message pops up. Joe reads it, types in his reply and presses send; but is he done? Since its likely that Bill will respond, Joe is having to sit and wait…again He considers opening Excel, but the hassle of having to start that and then have to task switch back to Bill keeps him in limbo. So he waits…and waits..and waits some more. Joe wants to start work, but maybe he should wait just a little longer. Surely Bill will reply? So he waits a bit more - still nothing. Joe is IM paralysed! He glances at the clock, decides enough is enough and, minimising the chat window, goes to click on Excel. But wait! The damn thing starts flashing again…Arghhh!!!”
Sound familiar? If so, then it’s time to get IM organised! I’ve used IM for a long time, all the way through university, where it was a way to keep in touch with friends, right up until now where I use it in my day job. These days, many large organisations use IM as a productivity tool intended for collaboration between remote colleagues. Too bad its rarely used that way, huh? Unfortunately, IM is most often used as a) a chat application b) a task stream, and c) a way to get non-urgent information. This is bad! “Bad IM puppy!”, so bad in fact it leads to something that deserves its own acronym: IM-BADD (IM-Based Attention Deficit Disorder 
). This unholy trinity represents the worst abuses of a very good tool. You see, I’m not against IM at all, but I am against its misuse. So what is IM for? I hear you ask. Well, let me say it again and I’ll make no apologies for shouting “IM IS A TOOL FOR REMOTE COLLABORATION”. There, I feel better now.
“But hold on a minute!”, you say looking uneasy, “You sound like my boss and the shifty IM police (often rumoured to peek down from ventilator shafts at us poor, overworked and in-need-of-a-chat wage slaves”). Well, I agree, IM is a good tool for a bit of chatty decompression, and I have, and do, use it for such. However, if you want to house train your IM Puppy so it doesn’t poop all over your day, you must train other people to engage you on it for the right reasons, and train them not to give you work or ask for non-urgent information through it. There are other tools far better suited for task streams (email) and urgent information (phone)!
In fact, here’s a handy flowchart to help you house train your IM puppy.
Ok, so now we know when to use IM, but how can we train others to do the same? Try setting up your IM client in the following manner:
- Always set it to away
- Have your away message say something along the lines “Please email me or if urgent call me on 01273…”
Or, if you want to go really hardcore, simply leave it turned off until you want to use it!
This way, IM becomes a tool that you control, rather than a tool that controls you (like poor old Joe). It may take some time to train those on your contact list, but once you have, your IM application will help increase your productivity, not hinder it.
