Tag: Productivity

Brain overload

Here’s an interesting article “Warning: Brain overload” which suggest that our obsession with digital content may in fact be affecting our poor little brain. It says:

 

“the sense of mind-lag and unease that result from info-overload may be causing significant levels of anxiety and depression.”

 

which means that more and more people feel they are falling further and further behind, in some way missing out. The article continues that:

 

“One fear is that habitual rapid media-browsing can, ironically, block our ability to develop wisdom”

 

because we are having to deal which volumes of information we simply do not have time to process what we receive deeply enough so we merely ignore it. We all apparently are born with the ability to empathize with others yet because we are now processing so much information we are actually caring less. In many ways this is making us less human. As the article says:

 

“Constant bombardment by outside high-intensity stimuli is not likely be healthy”

 

because our brains are now reaching capacity in the their ability to digest and make sense of all the information. The problem is probably not too much information simply that we have not taught ourselves how to effectively filter that information. It’s the old Pareto 80/20 rule. You have to work out how to get through the 80% of the junk to find the 20% that has real value. That is the trick, and it is something that most people do not appear to be improving. As the article says:

 

“The irony of high-speed modern mass communication is that no one is actually communicating.”

 

It seems like that more and more each day. The more everyone carries on about how much better we are with Twitter, Facebook, Web 2.0, You Tube and the like it would appear that we are losing our humanity. We are fast becoming like unfeeling machines. As the article concludes:

 

“Either you control your technology or it will control you”

 

Which is just like a recent article I’ve been working on call “How we’ve surrendered to technology” that I’m looking for feedback on, so if you have some time I’d appreciate any opinions.

Dead tired

I’m always interested in things that can improve personal productivity and well being. That’s why I was fascinated by a TV documentary (in 2 Episodes) called Dead Tired. You can view the first episode online by simply clicking here.

 

It examines the effects of sleep deprivation and how that contributes to a whole range of aliments including obesity, high blood pressure and so on. It also demonstrates that you are twice as likely to make mistakes when you miss out on even a small amount of sleep.

 

One of the most interesting experiments they ran was with putting someone with sleep deprivation behind a wheel of a car for 2 two hours while monitoring them. They found that for 25 minutes in that 2 hours the driver was actually asleep! In some cases their brain was asleep even if their eyes were open. Scary stuff.

 

The show demonstrates how chronic lack of sleep has a direct impact on the physiology of the body including reduced heart function and increased chance of diabetes. Another interesting statistic is that 20% of the worlds workforce is composed of shift workers and these people generally fail to get enough sleep. This has direct impact on their lives AND the work they perform, which potentially affects a lot more people.

 

In many cases these days we generally overlook the effects of sleep deprivation and consider it weak to need ‘sleep’. However, studies show that individuals who have better sleep patterns are much more productive and far less error prone. So stop and think about it. If you don’t feel 100% maybe you aren’t getting enough sleep? If you want to see if more does make a difference try getting at least 7-8 hours of good sleep for a week. I guarantee you’ll notice the difference.

Amazonian

I just got an email from Lulu.com, where my Overcoming Email Frustrations with Outlook 2007 book is listed, telling me:

 Wow, on Amazon you say! So I checked it out and sure enough there it is:
 
Pretty cool eh? Who would have ever thought? Not me certainly.

Hmmm, maybe I should get around to uploading one of my other creations. I’ve got plenty about SharePoint but I’m really keen to do something about OneNote. If you have any ideas or suggestions please let me know (director@ciaops.com).

The next trick is to see whether it actually sells more now that it is on Amazon. This I think will be a much harder task but hey it’s a start!

Distractions

Just read “In Defense of Distraction” from the New York Magazine, which although 8 pages in length,is a very good article on how distractions are a real problem and how human beings are programmed to respond to distractions. Clearly, we will always have to cope with distractions but learning how to control them is the biggest secret we need to learn as we encounter more and more every day.

 

Here are some pertinent quotes from the article:

 

“Q. Are we living through a crisis of attention?

“Yes,” he says. “And I think it’s going to get a lot worse than people expect.” He sees our distraction as a full-blown epidemic—a cognitive plague that has the potential to wipe out an entire generation of focused and productive thought. He compares it, in fact, to smoking. “People aren’t aware what’s happening to their mental processes,” he says, “in the same way that people years ago couldn’t look into their lungs and see the residual deposits.”

 

“Over the last twenty years, Meyer and a host of other researchers have proved again and again that multitasking, at least as our culture has come to know and love and institutionalize it, is a myth.”

 

“The only time multitasking does work efficiently, Meyer says, is when multiple simple tasks operate on entirely separate channels—for example, folding laundry (a visual-manual task) while listening to a stock report (a verbal task). But real-world scenarios that fit those specifications are very rare.”

 

“Since every interruption costs around 25 minutes of productivity, we spend nearly a third of our day recovering from them. We keep an average of eight windows open on our computer screens at one time and skip between them every twenty seconds.”

 

It is interesting how distraction is compared with smoking, in that, we as yet don’t full comprehend the impact it maybe having not only in our jobs but also in other areas of our lives. The worry is that everyday we face more and more distractions that are being targeted more effectively to the way our brain’s process information. So not only are we facing a greater number of distraction but we are also facing distractions that are more effectively targeted to distract us. What chance do we have?

 

We can clearly take numerous steps to tame our technology and prevent it from distracting us but in the end only you can make that change. Only you can configure the technology the way you wish to operate. Only you can take steps to discipline yourself to avoid distraction. As the article says:

 

“if you allow that to be squandered by other people who are as bored as you are, it’s gonna say a lot about who you are as a person.”

 

Our brain’s are programmed to enjoy all the benefits of distraction but, left to it’s own devices (like overeating) there can be serious consequences that may not at first be all that obvious. Read the article and have a think about whether you are letting distractions, especially from technology, control your life. If you are honest you may find they are more in control that you thought.

Productivity without email

When you read “When the inbox is on the outer” you again get the sense that email is doing our productivity far more harm than good. Quotes from the article like:

 

“One study from Hewlett-Packard, for instance, found that workers constantly distracted by email and phone calls suffer a temporary 10-point fall in their IQ – more than twice that found in studies of the impact of smoking a joint.”

 

“A recent study from AOL suggested that many people are increasingly addicted to email, with researchers reporting that 10-50 per cent of work time is spent using email, which is having a huge impact on productivity.”

 

“Another study, cited in Gail Fann Thomas’ 2006 article “Re-conceptualising email Overload” in the Journal of Business and Technical Communication, found that the average worker had 2483 inbox messages and 858 filed ones.”

 

demonstrate the worrying trend that we have become consumed by our emails. I ask however, why this is so? As “When the inbox is on the outer” illustrates tools such as wikis are a very effective method of providing team collaboration. This means rather than having all you ideas bouncing around in email they are stored on a shared space that people contribute to.

 

Wiki’s are one of the major new features in Windows SharePoint v3 and although not the greatest example of a wiki on the market it does make a great starting place to start accumulating business information. With a SharePoint wiki you can create and edit documents online without anything but a browser. You can track changes, check in/out items as well as link to other items quickly and easily.

 

A major use of SharePoint wiki’s is to store technical knowledge. Things like how to’s, procedures, policies and more are great examples of where a wiki can reduce email. Rather than having ideas bounce between different parties they can all be stored and updated in one central location for all to see. The great thing about SharePoint is that all the information entered into the wiki is automatically indexed making it simple to search for the information required.

 

Another fantastic tool for sharing information is Microsoft OneNote. It’s simple yet powerful features allow you to save just about any sort of digital information. You can easily create additional pages if required, share with people remotely, search the contents and more. If you are collaborating with a number of people using OneNote you can quickly and easily see the changes they have made in last day, week, month and so on. If you haven’t had a good look at OneNote I recommend you take some time and have a look at what is possible.

 

Inside the information age in which we live it is amazing to find people not implement more productive methods inside their business. Do they want to work longer? Do they want less free time? It really doesn’t make sense to me when tools like SharePoint and OneNote are available so cheaply (if not free the case of Windows SharePoint). If you could save just 1 hour a day being more productive, that’s 240 hours a year which is about 30 working days a year (assuming 8 hours a work day). That’s almost an extra month a year! What sort of advantage could you obtain by doing things in 11 months where everyone else takes 12?

 

Remember time is our most precious commodity, because we can never create more. The best we can do is use what we have effectively and efficiently. The technology is available. The price is right. Just because we do something the same way every day doesn’t mean it can’t be done better, we just need to take the time to find out whether it can. You’d always want to invest your money in the highest rate of return you could right? Why don’t you do the same with your time?

Future of email

Came across an interesting forecast on email. “Email Statistics Report, 2009-2013” from the Radicati Group contains some interesting numbers:

 

The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013.

 

a 36% increase in users but

 

Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day. 

 

So the amount of email you receive, on average is going to double in the next four years. What will that mean for your productivity? If you haven’t taken steps to limit the interruptions that emails can cause then you are going to get interrupted twice as much and only get half as much work done logic would seem to dictate.

 

The message is that if your emails are out of control now they are only going to get worse so it’s never too late to start looking at you system of email processing. The first is to configure your email program to prevent interruptions by turning off all alarms that activate when a new email arrives. From there you should spend time learning the feature of your email program like using message rules, categorizing and search. The more time you invest in learning your email program the better you can make it work for you. Too many people simply use their email program with its default configuration which may be fine for some IT programming guru somewhere but isn’t for ‘normal’ people.

 

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that ‘you will’ get around to dealing with all those email in your inbox one day. Unless you decide to take control of your email then you are never going to get to the bottom of you inbox and the situation will only get worse as email volumes increase. For more information about working effectively with emails see www.doemailless.com.

All about attention

Just been reading a nice article,”Taking control of e-mail”, that provides a good summary of the issues around information overload. What I liked was the following quote:

 

“Attention is the bedrock to learning, memory, social connection and happiness”

 

So if you are allowing yourself to be constantly distracted by incoming emails then your attention is very low and chances are it is affecting more than just your productivity.

 

The article covers some of the basic steps to help remove the distractions of email and is therefore well worth a read. I’d also recommend you take a look at www.doemailless.com where you find additional resources if you are looking to improve your productivity.

 

At the very least I’d commend you to try some of the steps mentioned in the article and see whether it does help. I’m confident that after a few day you’d agree that even a small change can reap significant benefits.

Challenge the norm

One of the best ways to improve your productivity is to do email less. Yes, that’s right do email less. This means setting aside dedicated times to check and respond to email. Now many people would say that is totally impossible for them to do but my response is, have you actually challenged that way of thinking? Have you actually tried rather than just saying you can’t?

 

Here’s a great video (4 mins) from Tim Ferris the author of the Four Hour Work Week on how he manages email.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDhfaIbstIY&rel=0&border=1&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1

You’ll notice in there he actually briefly mentions this topic of challenging the norm when it comes to email. Interestingly, the person Tim speaks of who did this found that their boss actually commended them on improving their productivity and recommended the idea to other managers.

 

At the end of the day email is a tool, it shouldn’t rule your life. As Tim says, if you have a system that isn’t working you need to try something to improve it. In short, I encourage you to challenge the norm with email. Try looking at you inbox less and see how much more work you get done. All I ask is you give it a try.

 

For more help with improved technology productivity please see www.doemailless.com.