Busyness vs. Burst: Why Corporate Web Workers Look Unproductive
April 19, 2007 by John in Web Design
Finally, something to backup my style of working, the old school “Busy” mindset vs. the new school “Burst” mindset (although, there’s got to be a better name for it than “Burst”):
Busy: Always available during working hours.
Burst: Declarative availability.The busy wouldn’t dream of announcing on Twitter that they were headed to the mall to stock up on underwear — because that would ruin the carefully constructed illusion that they’re always working from 8 am to 6 pm.
Bursters don’t hesitate to declare what they’re doing whether it’s personal or professional, because this makes it easier for colleagues to connect, collaborate, and coordinate with them — it makes teams more productive and binds them together on a human level. Of course, this is yet another way that bursters look to the busy like irresponsible, unproductive goof-offs.
Busy: Web surfing is bad.
Burst: Web surfing fertilizes and seeds the soil of the mind.Bursters spend some working time each day surfing the Web, so they can understand the present and see the future. To the busy, that’s just wasting time.
At the day job they’re finally making some motions towards the Burst philosophy - there’s talk of flexible schedules and “hoteling,” not to be confused with telecommuting. It remains to be seen if they follow through.
April 19th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
[…] John Bedard suggested that “burst” might not be the best way of characterizing the new way of doing things. Agreed — I think that terminology may have misled the commenter who called my argument oversimplified, because it leads to a very pedestrian understanding and interpretation. That is, that there are people who work steadily and there are those who work in bursts. That leads to the obvious cry: “but I do both!” […]