If you’re still sitting down at your desk and checking to see who is “Green” and ready to go.
You’re missing the point.
I wrote about this early in the Pandemic when everyone went remote – Forget the Green Icon – because immediately I saw people staring down that icon and using it as the primary barometer to see whether their teams were contributing.
The truth behind those icons, they are aggregates or estimates on what is happening on those devices. There are APIs and SDKs that let you program what state you want to be in and you as users can fool the system by extending timeouts.
A week doesn’t go by when I don’t have someone say – “I’m marking myself as Away today so I can get some work done” or “I’ll be on Do Not Disturb today to finish this sprint” – my answer is always the same – do what you need to do, I trust you.
If you are placing your trust into a Green Icon, you’re placing your trust in the wrong spot when so much more is available to you.
