Are you listening to me?
August 26, 2008 Office Insight, Trends
As I write this blog post, I am going to count how many times I am interrupted by co-workers, email, etc…..
According to Maggie Jackson, multi-tasking is costing the US Economy about $650 billion a year. Well, it’s actually the loss of productivity that she claims comes with multi-tasking that is the problem. Her book, Distracted, has been making the rounds and has been featured in Business Week, Fast Company, BuzzFlash, and several others.
There are some interesting stats to support Ms. Jackson’s claim:
- On average, an office worker when interrupted takes 25 minutes to get back on task, and one-third of the time, they never do {so if I get interrupted 20 times in a day, it may be better if I don’t even show up because at that point I will have negative productivity, right?}.
– A typical information worker’s day can be broken down as follows: 28% Unnecessary Distractions; 25% Productive Content; 20% In Meetings; 15% Searching Through Content (emails and web searching); 12% Thinking and Reflecting. {I’m wondering who gets to judge if a distraction is ‘unnecessary’}
– In a day, the typical information worker turns to email 50 times, instant messaging 77 times and visits 40 different websites. {40 websites…..that may be contributing to the productivity loss….not the multi-tasking}
– The average number of corporate emails sent and received per day is projected to rise from today’s 156 messages to 228 by the year 2011. One reason for the increase is “Spam,” junk email generated by social and business-networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook. {I know I am getting old, but ‘spam?’ I guess I don’t have my inbox overflowing with people wanting to be my Facebook friend. One day…}
There is actually a somewhat dark element to the book. Check this out: “Smitten with the virtual, split-split, and nomadic, we are corroding the three pillars of our focus (orienting), judgment (executive function), and awareness (alerting). The costs are steep: we begin to lose trust, depth and connection in our relations and our thought. Without a flourishing array of attentional skills, our world flattens and thins. And most alarmingly, we begin to lose our ability to collectively face the challenges of our time. Can a society without deep focus preserve and learn from its past? Does a culture of distraction evolve to meet the needs of the future?” Yikes.
Well, I had 2 important e-mails to answer and 3 conversations while taking care of this blog post. I’m at the point now where noise and interruptions are the norm and I don’t think I could think if everything was quiet………
Comments