[PRL] Help! My interruptions are getting interruped!

[Mitchell Wand]

Here's the beginning of the sequel to the previous item.  You'll have to
read through it to understand the subject line.  It should take you all of 2
minutes, if that.

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/
Sensemaking 3:The search for a representation

I promised a story about a sensemaking episode from my work, and here's one.
It's a bit long, but I think you'll find it amusing. It's really a voyage of
discovery as I try to figure out how to make sense of what people do… which
is ultimately what my scientific life is all about:  What do people do?  How
do they do it?  And why do they act that way?

*How do people manage interruptions?*

A few years ago I became very interested in how people manage their
interruptions. We've talked a lot about this in the CPU blog over the
years.  See:   The Asymptotic Twitter
Curve<http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/12/httpwww37signal.html>and
Multitasking
makes us stupid?<http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/03/multitasking_ma.html>and
it's still an area of active interest in the research community and
here
at Creating Passionate Users.

But back in 1996 I was still at Apple and very much curious about how people
did to *actually manage *their time and attention resources. So, being a
good research guy, I went out and did a field study of some experts in
attention management—our administrative assistants. After all, they somehow
manage to simultaneously answer the phone, respond to email, process
paperwork, deal with visitors and answer questions shouted out down the
hall. If you watch a good assistant for any time, it's clear that they're
masters at interrupt handling.  The ones that are good, are REALLY good.


So, how do they do it?
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