Workplace Distractions Quotes

I'm working on the Star Wars script today and the people in my office have covered up all my windows with black paper. I guess they wanted to make sure no one could see what I was doing. It seems rather extreme.

I wasn't prepared for this big room with clattering typewriters and teletype printers. You could hardly hear yourself think.

Before I became a full-time writer, I worked in tech support in those giant cubicle farms you see. I was surrounded by people who played video games all the time - sometimes actually in the call centers, playing online multiplayer games. I saw friends of mine who began to feel that going online was more compelling to them than real life.

My house in Connecticut is very quiet, and when I'm trying to concentrate, I don't even allow the cat inside my second-floor study.

It's a noisy environment we all live in, whether it's traffic or the workplace, so it's very difficult to think about your life in general. A lot of people are afraid to do that. They like to hide behind their work and not face up to a big problem in their life.

She probably gave up and started playing Minesweeper." [...] We reached the cafe and found Sydney bent over her laptop, with a barely eaten Danish and what was probably her fourth cup of coffee. We slid into seats beside her. "How's it—hey! You ARE playing Minesweeper!

How can you expect someone to get a good day's work if they are interrupted all day?

I think it's better to have your personal life and your work life separate. That way they don't corrupt each other, so to speak.

some of my happiest funniest times have been spent in offices. Perhaps because the work was mudane, even the tiniest of distractions become wildly hilarious and wonderful. Actually, I'd say that 90 per cent of my doubled-over-gasping-with-laughther-laughing-so-much-that-you-can't-breathe-and-you-think-you-might-die laughing has occurred during slow days in offices.

I've worked in an office. People are sitting down doing their stuff, or pretending to do their stuff, and they're bored. I've heard a car tire screech and 30 people went to the window. That was a piece of excitement in their day, that a car might have had to stop quickly, you know. You don't need dinosaurs, you know.

When I'm at work, I'm remembering what I forgot to do for the kids, and when I'm with the kids, I'm remembering what I forgot to do at work.

Possibly I am difficult to live with, but I don't bring my work home much. I'm either busy or not busy. And I don't work from home. I have an office here which has a white wall. No view. I did try working in a room with a view but it was too interesting. Too distracting.

When the typewriter stops in a New York office everybody's embarrassed; men start to quarrel or to make love to the stenographer or drop lighted cigarettes in the wastebasket.

Open office plans, cell phones, constant notifications: these are all things that fight against sustained attention on a task. For some people and some tasks, that doesn’t matter. But for a lot of important work, it matters a lot.

I wasn't very good about juggling family and my career. I was interested in who was coming to the children's birthday party, what my son was writing. I was thinking about Legos.

The center will not hold if it has been spot-welded by an operator whose deepest concern is not with the weld but with his lottery ticket.

It’s really very hard to tell people to think at work but not at home.

I play games on-set at work. Sometimes I can't remember people's names, so I start throwing out clues. Like if I can't think of George Clooney, I'll say, 'You know, drop-dead gorgeous, was on a big TV show... ' Until someone says his name, I can't finish my story!

When you do bigger jobs there's more attention and when you film in New York you get loads of paparazzi everywhere. It affects your work because you're trying to think about the person you're acting with and you've got 20 other lenses taking pictures of you at the same time, and it throws you.

Hewlett Packard at one point had only three private offices. One belonged to Hewlett, one to Packard, and the third to a guy named Paul Ely who annoyed so many coworkers with his bellowing on the phone that the company finally extended his cubicle walls to the ceiling.

People put on their earphones, they lay out their phones, they put - open up their computers, and they convince themselves that they're most productive when they're focused on their e-mail, when, really, they're ignoring the cafeteria, the watercooler, the meetings with colleagues, the times when really the creativity, collaboration happens.

I realized I wasn't a good employee because I was too busy listening to people's personal problems to do work.

Anybody can have a birthday. It requires nothing. Murderers have birthdays. It's the opposite of anything that I believe in. And I don't like at work where you stop everything to sing 'Happy Birthday' to someone. I feel like that's for children.

I think just getting up and getting to the desk is a big thing. If you can do that, you're in the zone because there're so many distractions that can stop you. From my bedroom to my office isn't really that far, but I have to go via the kitchen and there's so many things that can stop me and interrupt me.

It's doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.