Dust off your TI-83 calculators, friends, it’s time for a throwback math lesson. The title of this post isn’t hyperbole, and we can prove it.
A textbook story problem for you to consider:
- Jimmy works at a 200 person company.
- When distracted, it takes Jimmy 23 minutes to regain his focus and return to his task at hand.
- On any given day, Jimmy is distracted for 86 minutes of his 8 hour shift.
- That’s 18% of Jimmy’s time being wasted.
- But Jimmy isn’t alone! His distraction level is the same as his entire 200 person company. So Jimmy’s 18% of wasted time is equivalent to saying 18% of the company is wasting their time at any given moment. Which is equivalent to saying 36 of the 200 employees are being paid to do nothing in a day.
- If these 36 employees make the national average income, Jimmy’s company is paying out $2.1 million annually for employees to sit around distracted!
This isn’t just a problem, it’s an epidemic. The average footprint per knowledge worker (fancy term for someone who works at a desk) has decreased from 175 square feet in the 1990’s to a miniscule 52 square feet this decade. We’re losing space and gaining distractions. The open office is beautiful and has plenty of benefits, but one of the casualties is privacy.
That’s why we get out of bed in the morning (well, that and a nice, warm toaster strudel) – we want to make space work better. Very often, that means solving privacy problems that get overlooked in the design process.
But it’s not just noisy offices we’re talking about. We wrote an entire post about the different types of privacy (we know that can sound a bit nerdy, but trust us).
At the end of the day, we want to equip offices and people in them to do their best work. We’re engineering privacy, one space at a time. If you think you’ve got a serious privacy issue where you live or work, let us know! And if you want to get your hands dirty building some sweet stuff, check out our builder tools.
Alright, the bell has rung, this math class is adjourned!