low productivity friday.

I need to explain some stuff about my job for you to understand this post.

When you spend a lot of time working on a specific program on a computer, you start using the keyboard more than the mouse. The mouse, while convenient and often better-suited to many uses, is slower if you do a lot of typing. So if you are editing a bunch of text, for instance, code, you would rather keep your fingers on the keyboard as much as possible. If you have to take the time to get the mouse and move it around, you might lose your train of thought.

Most applications have keyboard shortcuts for mouse functions. I don't mean just ways to cut and paste or save a file, but ways to capitalize a word or jump around from file to file (and lots of ca-razy other things). You can bind different commands (Cut, Paste, etc) to difference keys. So if you didn't like using Control + X to cut, you could change it to Control + Q or Alt + 7 or Control + Alt + Shift + Tab, if you really wanted to. At my job, a set of those bindings is called an emulation. We have lots of emulations in our product, and we're supposed to test them all, even though most of us use the same one.

It's a pain to use a different emulation than what you're used to. Most of the time, when you use one of these commands, it's completely unconcious. I know that I want to cut, so I just Control + X without a thought. But if Control + X does something different, say, changes everything to uppercase, I have to go back and fix it. It's frustrating, particularly when you can't seem to remember what keys are bound to "undo." It's like if you are used to using a QWERTY keyboard, but then someone switched it on you. Sure, you would relearn it, but for the first bit, you'd be in a state of constant frustration.

Got all that?

A few weeks ago, in a development meeting, my boss suggested a way for us all to test our assigned emulations: Low Productivity Friday. This suggestion was met with silence, because our office, like probably most offices, already sees productivity decline on the week's last day. Was he suggesting that we slack off even more or just that our slacking was officially management sanctioned now?

He meant that we would do our work while using the assigned test emulation, rather than the one we were used to. We would be terribly unproductive, constantly hitting the wrong keystroke and then undoing, or at least pressing the key that used to mean "undo."

I don't think anyone has done this. I tried to have a "low productivity" day the way he meant on Tuesday, and I could have pulled my hair out with frustration. However, Low Productivity Friday lives on. Not in the form of unfamiliar emulations, but instead as a Mario Kart tournament in the conference room.