Following from yesterdays blog post on distractions here are some more articles worth reading if you are interested in productivity:
Blunt the e-mail interruption assault
The average information worker — basically anyone at a desk — loses 2.1 hours of productivity every day to interruptions and distractions, according to Basex, an IT research and consulting firm.
Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows
But after putting about 100 students through a series of three tests, the researchers realized those heavy media multitaskers are paying a big mental price.
“They’re suckers for irrelevancy,” said communication Professor Clifford Nass, one of the researchers whose findings are published in the Aug. 24 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Everything distracts them”.
Booher’s surveys of clients have shown that 58% of workers spend up to three hours a day on e-mail. Though some of that e-mail time is undoubtedly related to getting their jobs done, she says, much of it is a waste because messages are either poorly written or have little or nothing to do with business.
So the more distractions you can eliminate the more work you’ll get done. Simple eh? But how many people are actually doing this? To me it seems like they are adding more and more distractions.
If you want to track your productivity I’d suggest you have a look at RescueTime, ManicTime or Wakoopa. They all have free options so there is no cost and if does at least allow you to better understand how you are spending your time that is still a good thing isn’t it?
CIAOPS 