Email, cell phones, instant messenger, etc are driving users to distraction. This new study shows that the typical office worker is interrupted every 3 minutes with an email, instant message or phone call. According to scientists, it takes about 8 minutes for our brains to enter that creative state where real thought is accomplished.
The result is obvious. Our mind races all day putting out the fires stoked by those instant messages, emails and phone calls. Add to that the occassional fax and your brain may just fizzle out.
This is exactly what happened to me. At one point I was getting absolutely no work done while sitting in front of the computer. In between checking away messages, logging in to check email or answering phone calls, I was completely unproductive.
I realized that I had to make a change. I had to decide which technology was the most disturbing and the most dispensible. Since my email is a condition of employment, that could not be dispensed with all together. I have no home telephone line, so I couldn't get rid of my cell phone. However, IM was not a work requirement and is certainly not a primary means of communication.
So, away it went. As soon as I freed myself from the burden of checking away messages and responding to IMs from friends, I felt more relaxed and regained my lost productivity. I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true. I felt so good that I didn't stop there.
I decided that I didn't have to be shackled to my email every minute of the day. I slowly started to limit the amount of time I spent checking and responding to email. First, I checked every 1/2 hour, then every hour and now I go hours without checking. So far nothing terrible has happened and I don't expect that it will.
This all reminds of the CNN advertisement that claims they provided 24 hours news before people even knew that it was necessary. The statement is incredibly misleading since CNN was the reason for people's fixation with the 24 hour newscycle, presidential body watch and fascination with celebrity news events. With the exception of the sporadic, true breaking news event, why couldn't people live happily without live news updates every 15 minutes between midnight and 6am?
I think self-imposed necessities, like 24 hour news and instant email responses, are a huge problem in our culture. We can send messages instantly, so we demand instant responses. We can contact anyone, anywhere, anytime and therefore expect that everyone should be reachable anytime and anywhere. But, what happens to that creative energy so many people are wasting as a result? Will America lose its role as inovator when our best and brightest are too busy responding to chain emails to think great thoughts?
Like some others, I am putting my foot down. You should do the same!
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I think self-imposed necessities . . . are a huge problem in our culture.
Ok, Will, how often do you post to you blog? Is there a bloggers-anonymous?
its a half-joke, I doubt you consider your blog a necessity, but it begs the question: what is necessity, and its inverse, independence. In this vein I have a story to tell.
Sometime around freshmen year of college, I had one goal in life: to become independent. The problem was, I didn't really know what that meant. There are a few core examples, of course, financial independence, emotional independence, social independence. But, what I learned was very quickly you started seeing everything as a dependence. I remember when I left the music program at UWEC, it was in not small part because I considered music an dependence -- I wasn't doing music for the music, but rather for the attention. So what is the result of this in the limit? a single body floating in a void dependent on nothing? It may seem silly, but it took me a significant amount to come to the conclusion that independence isn't want it cracked up to be. We do depend on things, and thats ok. The key here though, and its very important, is to remember that they are self-imposed necessities; meaning you are free to unimpose them at any time! That why all this technology has off buttons. Technology is here to save time overall, and once it stops doing that, it shouldn't be used. (I would go into my thoughts on whether technology can universally save time, and computers as time-banks, but those are rants of another day).
As for the "8 minutes to enter a creative state," I must be slow -- it takes me at least 20. Which is, of course, why I do my best programming at night.
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