Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast - NYTimes.com - The Diigo Meta page

• 22 Jun 08
  

  Marco Díaz Calleja

  nytimes news overload information

• 20 Jun 08
  

  Michael Heintz

  The onslaught of cellphone calls and e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying to mop it up.

  @toRead email technology productivity communication Culture trends

• 15 Jun 08
  

  webmink

  I think it's shallow to blame this problem on technology. The fact is the corporate culture that drives the O/C behaviour is the root of the problem, and the various technologies are just its vector.

  Zeitgeist communication Technology Culture email

• 14 Jun 08
  

  Simon Doggett

  imported Bookmarks attention communication culture email productivity technology trends

• 

  Howard Rheingold

  The big chip maker Intel found in an eight-month internal study that some employees who were encouraged to limit digital interruptions said they were more productive and creative as a result.

  attention

  • Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload. Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — cope with the digital deluge.
  • The big chip maker Intel found in an eight-month internal study that some employees who were encouraged to limit digital interruptions said they were more productive and creative as a result.
  • Small units at some companies are encouraging workers to check e-mail messages less frequently, to send group messages more judiciously and to avoid letting the drumbeat of digital missives constantly shake up and reorder to-do lists.
  • Many people readily recognize that they face — or invite — continual interruption
  • A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits.
  • on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.
  • The fractured attention comes at a cost. In the United States, more than $650 billion a year in productivity is lost because of unnecessary interruptions, predominately mundane matters
  • Correction: June 18, 2008 
     An article on Saturday about efforts to cut down on information overload in the workplace, using data from the research firm Basex, gave an incorrect estimate in some editions for the annual cost of unnecessary interruptions at work. It is $650 billion — not million.

  6 more annotations...

Would you like to comment?

Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member.