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He is not alone in his thinking. Similarly, In July of 2008 IBM, Intel, Microsoft and Xerox announced that they were joining forces with Information Overload Research Group(http://www.iorgforum.org/) to combat one of the greatest productivity challenges of our time, information overload.
In a study done by the group's research arm, Basex:
- Less than 37% of an average office workers time is spent doing productive work.
- 15% is spent on information searching
- 20% is spent in meetings
- 28% is spent in unnecessary distractions from phone calls, e-mails and instant messages
Another study done by Seattle-based RescueTime concluded that a typical office worker:
- Accesses their e-mail program more than 50 times a day
- Uses instant messaging 77 times a day.
According to Basex, these interruptions result in 28 billion hours of lost productivity every year. With an average wage of $21 per hour for knowledge workers, it could end up costing the U.S economy over $588 billion dollars a year.
While it's not possible to avoid all our workplace distractions. There are things we can do to have a more meaningful and productive workday.
Ten Tips to Help Manage Information Overload
1) Define a workspace
Choose a workspace and only do work in that area. Avoid communicating, browsing or searching in that space. Paul Graham uses this method, by using a separate computer workstation for browsing and communication.
2) Centralize communications
Use one means of communication instead of subscribing to multiple communication channels such as IM, Email, Phone, Facebook or twitter. It's easy to manage your distractions from communication when it comes from one place.
3) Avoid Immediate responses
Get rid of instant notifications and avoid responding to IM's and e-mails immediately. Set aside specific time to address these messages during the day and limit the number of times you address them. People will eventually figure out when you are most likely to respond.
4) Spend time with people
Go to lunch with your colleagues that you are working with. Spend 10-15 minutes at the end or beginning of the day to talk to your team. If you set aside some time everyday to catch up with people, you will less likely be interrupted during your work time.
5) Take a break
Your mind needs a break ever once in a while to unwind and realign your focus. Get up, stretch, go for a walk. Though remember not to distract your other workers by interrupting their work.
6) Try disconnecting
Silence the blackberry, turn of the IM and e-mail and kill the internet connection. Some of your work will make it impossible to completely disconnect. If you can't, limit the applications and sites you connect to.
7) Cut the news
While you can't cut off keeping up to date on recent activity related to your life or work, it wouldn't be a bad idea limiting it. Limit the amount of time you spend browsing news and also limit the number of times you do it. Start out by spending only 1hr every 3-4 days and adjust according to your needs. It's more important to get the work done than it is to know about everything around you.
8) Most important tasks first, everyday
Most of us have lots of tasks every day, it's not easy to narrow it down. Though we should prioritize and a good method is to pick 3 important tasks at the begining and get started on them. If you get through them move on to other less important tasks. This way you are finishing the most important stuff first.
9) Why am I doing this?
With all the work we have to do sometimes we forget why we are doing it. Every once in a while step back and ask yourself why are you doing what you're doing? Having a good reason will keep you motivated and inspired. This only works if you spend some time to come up with some good meaningful reasons.
10) Keep a consistent schedule
Keeping a daily schedule that is consistent will help you break some of your distractions. Take a break at a 10am and 2pm. Talk to your coworkers at a 9am and 4pm. Check your emails at 8:30, 11:30 and 3:30. Come in at 8:15am and leave at 5pm. Once you have a set daily schedule those events turn into markers for your day and you can quickly view if you are spending your day effectively.
Being aware of how your time is being spent at work can have great long-term benefits for your career. While these solutions won't work for everyone, using just a few can be a good start towards optimizing your output. The key is to become more aware of what task is beneficial to helping your maximize your output and what tasks take away from that. While you can't avoid doing unncessary tasks, you can minimize their effects by being aware of them.
