The hourglass experiment (forty-five minutes of nobody bothering me)
Last December we ran a small office experiment. Twelve people, four weeks, one SoboFocus hourglass per desk. Rules: when the glass is running, you are inside the work and nobody — boss included — interrupts unless something is on fire.
We did not really expect it to do much. Productivity rituals come and go in offices. The Pomodoro Technique, standing meetings, no-meeting Wednesdays — most of them last two weeks and die. The Focus is just a piece of glass with sand in it. A timer app could, in theory, do the same thing.
Except a timer app cannot do the one thing the hourglass does. It cannot be seen by other people.
What we measured
We asked everyone to keep a tally of unscheduled interruptions per day, for two weeks before the hourglasses arrived and two weeks after. The before number was twenty-eight per person per day, which is roughly what other studies on knowledge work report. The after number was eleven.
We asked everyone how often they finished their planned 45-minute focus block without breaking it. Before: 14% of the time. After: 71%.
We asked them whether they felt the work was better. Twelve out of twelve said yes.
What the object actually is
A forty-five-minute hand-blown borosilicate glass with a turned walnut frame. No batteries. No notification. When the sand runs out, there is a small absence of the falling sound — which, weirdly, you start to notice because you had stopped noticing it. That absence is the signal.
The colleague who walks past your desk and sees the sand running does not interrupt. The colleague who walks past your desk and sees the sand stopped will. This is the whole technology.
We still run the experiment, except now it is not an experiment, just how the office works. Six hundred and fifty rupees of sand and walnut has done more for our team's output than any project-management tool we have bought in five years. Make of that what you will.