"The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work"
About this Quote
Deming distills a hard truth about productivity: the chief enemy is not laziness but a system that shatters attention. Fifty daily disruptions, most irrelevant to the task at hand, point to a workplace designed for constant availability rather than meaningful flow. He is quantifying wasted motion in the realm of thought, where the costs are invisible yet devastating.
As a statistician, Deming focused on variation, the thief of quality. Interruptions inject uncontrolled variation into any process. They make outcomes unpredictable, increase defects, and force rework. The number itself is less important than the mechanism. If it takes minutes to regain a deep cognitive state, even a handful of needless pings or drop-by questions can vaporize a morning. Multiply that across teams and months, and the waste dwarfs what most organizations argue about in budgets.
The remark reflects his larger philosophy: most performance problems arise from the system, not from individual effort. Exhortations to concentrate more are hollow if the system floods people with meetings, alerts, and ad hoc requests. It is managements job to design conditions where good work is possible: clear priorities, stable processes, visible queues, and norms that protect uninterrupted time. Without that, measuring and rewarding outputs becomes a game of chance.
There is also a cultural critique. Many interruptions serve busyness theater, status displays, or the comfort of feeling in the loop. Deming challenges that culture and reframes attention as a scarce raw material of quality. Though forged in the era of factories and early office automation, the insight anticipates the realities of email, chat, and open offices. Whether on a shop floor or in a digital channel, the lesson endures: reduce the noise, stabilize the process, and both quality and dignity at work will rise. Reducing interruptions is not asceticism; it is respect for people and their craft.
As a statistician, Deming focused on variation, the thief of quality. Interruptions inject uncontrolled variation into any process. They make outcomes unpredictable, increase defects, and force rework. The number itself is less important than the mechanism. If it takes minutes to regain a deep cognitive state, even a handful of needless pings or drop-by questions can vaporize a morning. Multiply that across teams and months, and the waste dwarfs what most organizations argue about in budgets.
The remark reflects his larger philosophy: most performance problems arise from the system, not from individual effort. Exhortations to concentrate more are hollow if the system floods people with meetings, alerts, and ad hoc requests. It is managements job to design conditions where good work is possible: clear priorities, stable processes, visible queues, and norms that protect uninterrupted time. Without that, measuring and rewarding outputs becomes a game of chance.
There is also a cultural critique. Many interruptions serve busyness theater, status displays, or the comfort of feeling in the loop. Deming challenges that culture and reframes attention as a scarce raw material of quality. Though forged in the era of factories and early office automation, the insight anticipates the realities of email, chat, and open offices. Whether on a shop floor or in a digital channel, the lesson endures: reduce the noise, stabilize the process, and both quality and dignity at work will rise. Reducing interruptions is not asceticism; it is respect for people and their craft.
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| Topic | Work |
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