So / a company or a charity or an organization of any kind, / they typically, / unless you're working in Africa if you're really lucky to do that, but most people have to go to an office every day. // And so / these companies, / they build offices. // They go out and they buy a building / or they rent a building / or they lease some space / and they fill the space with stuff. // They fill it with / tables or desks, / chairs, / computer equipment, / software, / internet access, / maybe a fridge, / maybe a few other things, / and they expect their employees or their volunteers to come to that location every day to do great work. // It seems like it's perfectly reasonable to / to ask that. // However, if you actually talk to people / and even question yourself and you ask yourself, / where do you really want to go when you really need to get something done? // You'll find out that people don't say what businesses think they would say. // If you ask people the question, where do you really need to go when you need to get something done, / you typically get three different kinds of answers. // One is kind of a place or a location or a room. // Another one is a moving object. // And a third is a time. // So here's some examples. // When I ask people, I've been asking people this question for about 10 years, I ask them, / where do you go when you really need to get something done? // I'll hear things like the porch, / the deck, / the kitchen. / I'll hear things like an extra room in the house, / the basement, / the coffee shop, / the library. // And then you'll hear things like the train, / a plane, / a car, / so the commute. // And then you'll hear people say, well, / it doesn't really matter where I am as long as it's really early in the morning or really late at night / or on the weekends. // You almost never hear someone say the office, / but businesses are spending all this money on this place called the office and they're making people go to it all the time, yet people don't / do work in the office. // What is that about? // Why is that? / Why is that happening? // And what you find out is if you dig a little bit deeper, you find out that people, / this is what happens. // People go to work / and they're basically trading in their work day / for a series of work moments. // That's what happens at the office. // You don't have a work day anymore. // You have work moments. / It's like the front door of the office is like a Cuisinart / and you walk in and your day is shredded to bits / because you have 15 minutes here / and 30 minutes there / and then something else happens and you're pulled off your work and you've got to do something else and you have 20 minutes and it's lunch / and you have something else to do / and you got 15 minutes and someone pulls you aside and asks you this question and / before you know it, it's like it's 5 p.m., right? / And you look back on your day / and you realize that / you didn't get anything done. // Right? / I mean we've all been through this. We probably went through it, / we probably went through it yesterday or the day before or the day before that. / Do you look back on your day and you're like, / I got nothing done today. // I was at work. / I sat at my desk. / I used my expensive computer. / I used the software they told me to use. / I went to these meetings I was asked to go to. / I did these conference calls. / I did all this stuff, / but I didn't actually do anything. / I just did tasks. / I didn't actually get meaningful work done. // And what you.. what you find is that, especially with creative people, // designers, / programmers, / writers, / engineers, / thinkers, / that people really need long stretches of uninterrupted time to get something done. // You cannot ask somebody / to be creative in 15 minutes and really think about a problem. // You might have a quick idea, but to be // in deep thought about a problem and really consider a problem carefully, / you need long stretches of uninterrupted time.