Why Email Has Become Dangerous 255
mikkl666 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald runs an interesting story dealing with a study about email user behavior, explaining how and why email can be a terrible distraction: 'It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.' Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: 'So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful — an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip — and I get a reward.' There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted."
Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like this.. (Score:5, Funny)
Now, WTF was I doing....
Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi (Score:5, Insightful)
The best/worst part of TFA (and I couldn't really keep myself reading after this pile of crap) is this:
Mr Reynolds has even begun to think of email as rude and invasive, preferring to use tools such as Twitter and Flickr. He also uses social networking sites such as Dopplr, which tracks people's travel, to find out if they are away before he contacts them, and status alerts from instant messenger or Twitter to help him decide if now is a good time to interrupt them. Other tools, such as blogs and wikis, have decreased the amount of email that he sends and receives, while RSS feeds and recommendations from friends and colleagues allow him to keep abreast of the most important news.
How the heck is checking multiple social networking sites, blogs and RSS feeds going to be any less distracting or addictive than having one place to check all your messages? Using multiple sites in such a manner means that every single message you send then becomes a mini adventure in itself, which is a surefire way to lose your train of thought. And since when was sending someone an email 'interrupting' them? Email will only interrupt you if you have a client open and set to alert you, or have been stupid enough to leave email enabled on your phone while doing whatever it is that requires you not to be interrupted.
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Fair point. I've managed to put some distance between myself and my email by connecting all my email accounts to Thunderbird, and just firing up the client two or three times a day. I don't really care if anyone hates me for it, they can always call me if the matter is urgent.
Slashdot is my major distraction, I waste WAY too much tim
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Reading the bit you quoted, I'd say that Mr Reynolds has only recently discovered that Outlook isn't a Web browser. The next step is the realization that you don't have to open the message as soon as it arrives.
I especially liked:
which tracks people's travel, to find out if they are away before he contacts them, and status alerts from instant messenger or Twitter to help him decide if now is a good time to interrupt them
My IM client is almost always set to busy. However, if you need to contact me, please send me an e-mail and I will respond as soon as I am able.
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Great point, but perhaps an even bigger one is this: How is having twitter (and IM programs, for that matter) constantly popping up status alerts going to be less intrusive? Not only do you now have multiple programs popping up alerts, instead of just your email client, you also have moved from email to programs that are by their nature
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Personally I agree with the texts being less invasive - similar to email. You can check them whenever you have time, or send someone a message in a lecture where they wouldn't be able to talk.
I would still consider it rude to text in a formal meeting, or if you're always texting while sitting around with your friends. Occasional texting is fine.
Funnily enough, one of my friends used to always complain at people for texting when they were with him, but since he got his own mobile a few years ago he was the p
Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi (Score:5, Funny)
My sentiments regarding slashdot!
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Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: "So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful."
Obligatory xkcd reference [xkcd.com]
(don't forget to mouse over)
I always get my reward (Score:2)
But then I'm a geek and have set up a random-futurama-quote autoresponder for when I get *that* bored.
Re:I always get my reward (Score:5, Interesting)
Nice thing with email, it is asynchronous, you can leave a conversation hanging if you have to do something else which is more difficult to do conversing in person or on the phone.
While I know that supposedly only old people in korea use email, I find it one of my best tools for conversing with people, often multiple ones at the same time. And since nowhere I've ever worked allowed IMs due to security reasons, I've never really used them. But, pretty much everywhere has email...
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"Stop Reading Slashdot and Get Back to Work"
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Don't forget that there are other kinds of interruptions too - like IM clients that has the same effect.
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Getting a marketing call is the worst. How the fark did they get my direct dial number? It's not just bad because it's directly distracting, it's bad because afterwards I get pissed off that I was distracted.
At least if I choose to check my email (or IM) messages it's because I want to [know if I have any replies on /.]. Also if I'm busy I can just not check my email. Since I use Outlook for my work mail I can just check the system try to see if there's a mail icon anyway (but this only works for the main i
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And other humans just in general.
I always keep all of the communication apps I have running on a different desktop from than the actual work I am doing. And turn off all automatic beeping and rectangle blitting to the active desktop. That lets me prioritize messages rather than someone else.
Hey (Score:5, Funny)
I check my e-mail more often than every five minutes and I
What? What was I doing?
Re:Hey (Score:5, Funny)
Email is the best (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as not interrupting work, email is better than any other medium because I can choose when to read the message. That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Quite. I usually check my email at the start of work, before and after lunch and at the end of the day. I used to get phone calls asking why I didn't respond to an email 10 minutes earlier, although I seem to have managed to train my co-workers that email is not an immediate means of communication (and that the "high priority" flag is their priority, not mine).
Re:Email is the best (Score:5, Insightful)
I am one of those people that insist on communicating via email. Here are my reasons:
1) Workflow and queueing: everything I work on MUST be listed and prioritized in our request database. It is part of my job description. I have been instructed by my direct supervisor to only work on projects that have an official request in the database, period. Any updates to the work being done are also entered into the database as running comments. If a person sends me an email about a project I can enter that information into the database just as it was sent and not have to try to remember every detail of a telephone conversation. This method makes it easier for me to make sure that what the user wants is what they will actually get.
2) Time Savings: I have found that if a user is forced to type out their requests via email or directly into a database of some sort that they will be far more succinct than if they are involved in a conversation. I don't ever remember receiving an email request where the first 4 paragraphs are "how's it going?" or "this is what has been going on in my life recently" or "did you hear about the new person in Accounting? I heard they came here from blah blah blah."
3) Historical record: again, trying to remember details of telephone conversations over the span of a project, even if decent notes are taken, will almost certainly lead to something getting missed. I have had the experience several times in my career of having a user insist that they told me a certain tidbit of information when in fact they had not. I have also had the experience where the user actually DID tell me something and I just plain forgot. Having a reference record in the form of saved emails makes this much less likely to occur. There is also the "Cover Your Backside" benefit. Like it or not, at some time in your career you WILL have to defend something you did or did not do, and having the email trail to back you up helps tremendously.
So, you can call me a grumpy old codger, or whatever the current vernacular requires, but I will continue to insist that business communications occur via email. Now you kids get off my lawn!
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I guess the only people actually working is IT to keep the mail server up and running.
Which is why I spend ALL day e-mailing...just to make sure it's working... And I get paid to do this? What a country!
Re:Email is the best (Score:4, Funny)
People call me telling they are going to send a mail.
People call me asking me if I got a memo, then I politely say I got it already, that I just forgot to put the cover sheet on it. But they insist on sending me the memo again just in case.
Then my other boss walks in my cubicle, and asks if I got the memo, as I politely respond I just forgot to put the cover sheet on. But he insists that he's "gonna have to go ahead and send me the memo again".
I can't wait for the meeting with "The Bobs" to explain how I only get about an hour of actual work done a day.
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Your client checking for new mail and yourself checking your client for new mail are two different things.
Any business person relying on email will most likely have their client being updated at least once a minute if they are using an Exchange with Outlook. That's how often my Outlook seems to update anyway.
Phones with DirectPUSH capability or a crackberry don't even do the once a minute thing, they just send you the message immediately.
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Why? If it's urgent then they'll phone. An advantage of email is that I deal with it at my convenience. Having the client pop up with "You've got mail" is an unnecessary distraction.
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My Outlook only pulls new e-mails every 5 minutes, but that tends to lead to the situation where someone will call me or IM me and ask if I have had a chance to respond to their e-mail yet, even thought I haven't received it yet.
Of course you have to understand that i work at a company where I have 10 standing meetings on my calendar, and if I show up, I find out that they moved it to another day or time, and I also regularly get asked
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Same here, I need to focus and often do not check my email for an hour or two.
Any phone call complelty kills my focus.
Stupid studies like this that do not consider the impact of alternatives just make my bosses encourage others to call me instead of writing me a well structured Email.
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At our company there's always talk about how "email is so impersonal and such an inefficient communication method" and "wouldn't it be much better to just pick up the phone or walk over to someone's desk", and every time it comes up I try to raise this very point.
How am I supposed to concentrate on what I'm doing if someone actually walks up to me and asks me something, or buzzes me on my phone? These things are interruptions that REQUIRE an immediate response. It's not like an email, where if I see one com
I get dinged on that at every "review". (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, I don't care about reviews any more.
I use email because:
#1. It is self-documenting. If you ask me the same question next week, I'll forward you the email I sent you last week.
#2. It is self-documenting. If you want to claim that you didn't agree with something next week, I'll forward you the email where you did agree with it last week.
#3. It requires a LOT more thought than talking. That means that people have to THINK about what they want to say rather than calling me and uh, well, I was, uh, that thing, it, uh, was, uh ....... Why waste MY time for YOU to get YOUR thoughts in order?
#4. It allows me to send you lists like this. I can identify each point and if you have points to add, you can add them. You can reply to my points, by number.
#5. All of the above WHEN IT IS CONVENIENT FOR ME. (and when you consider it convenient for you). You have a RECORD that YOU involved me. Now the ball is in my court. I will get to it as soon as I deal with the issues that are more important. And I expect the same from you.
FUCK "immediate human contact". The people I've encountered are (generally) not pre-disposed to clear communication. They are easily distracted and LOVE personal anecdotes and trivia. That's fine when I'm at lunch or grabbing coffee or whatever. NOT when I'm trying to fix a problem before it impacts the entire company.
When I'm working, I am WORKING. I expect the same from you.
Put it in email. That way we'll have documentation for who was involved in the decision, what the decision was, why we decided that way, what criteria we considered and what options we discarded.
If we have a "face to face" meeting, then SOMEONE is going to have to take notes about that and THEN write up those notes and get everyone's sign-off on them so they can be used as documentation.
My current CIO hates the way I use email. I believe it is because he hates having a papertrail of his decisions.
Twitter? ROFL (Score:5, Insightful)
Mr Reynolds has even begun to think of email as rude and invasive, preferring to use tools such as Twitter
Yeah, right! And did you know that heroin was invented because doctors in the 19th century thought morphine was too addictive?
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You should try this just to watch what happens. When one of those people that wants your time visits your cube, and while they are talking the phone rings, ignore it while they look at you like they are waiting for you to answer it. I treat the phone like email in that regard. If it's important, they'll leave a message and I'll get to them when MY schedule permits. Depending on caller ID, I might answer, might not. It's not the medium that is distracting, it is whether a person will let themselves be distra
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The things is, the barrier to entry for other people to send you an e-mail is lower than to phone you and much, much lower than to walk to you cube.
So you're a lot less likely to get e-mails for unimportant things.
Then there's the fact that many e-mails are pieces of conversations that spread over multiple e-mails (e.g. question e-mail, answer e-mail, thanks e-mail)
On top of this there are things like mailing lists and automated e-mails that pretty much mean you're pretty much being spammed by your colleagu
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If you just let everything pile up in your inbox.
If yo
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Space to store filter definitions in Outlook is limited. Where I am now I long ago used all available memory for filters in Outlook....
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That's why I built and internapault. It works on employees at levels higher than interns with the correct shielding. And, yes, Dilbert is my hero.
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As far as not interrupting work, email is better than any other medium because I can choose when to read the message. That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.
Exactly. That's the entire problem with e-mail. I wonder how many times someone receives an e-mail to do something, or accomplish a task and says to themselves, "Well...I'll work on this later." Then, they wait, waste time, etc. If I want something done, I call the person or walk right into their cube.
Additionally, e-mailing someone does not count as contacting them. Until you hear their voice on the phone or see them face to face, you have not made contact with that person.
/rant
//e-mail is pretty us
You were already wasting time.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only e-mail I read immediately is any e-mail from my boss, or someone on my current team. Otherwise I just ignore it until later... or delete it. E-mail really isn't much of a distraction if you proactively manage it.
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Exactly! But beyond even that, the idea that checking one's email repeatedly means they're "interrupted from doing constructive work" is flawed.
I know in my own situation, whether I'm reading/posting on Slashdot or repeatedly checking my email, it's because I have some free time to kill in the first place! When I'm given tasks to do, I'm going to focus on them first and the other stuff can all wait.
The fact is, though, when you work in systems administration or computer support roles, your time isn't real
Dot dot dot. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lets just throw in that distracting "talking" thing which many people are utterly addicted to. They waste hours every day talking or being talked at. Many love to exchange lots of gossip and when they hear something juicy or tell a joke and their reward center is triggered by another talker reacting positively they get a buzz like with a slot machine and it can be terrible for your concentration.
Like Slashdot itself (Score:4, Insightful)
usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful
This describes Slashdot exactly.
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This describes Slashdot exactly.
Speak for yourself. I'm still waiting on the something wonderful... ;)
I would have been first (Score:2)
On a more serious note, does anyone else feel this article is a bit on the flimsy side. To me, it reads like a bad self-help book in search of a gullible audience.
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I find the same thing, but on a more specific level. I get popups that I can easily ignore when I get new messages. If it's from my manager, and the subject starts with "Re:" and it isn't a message that I've sent, I tend to ignore it for hours. This is precisely because my manager sends lots of inane emails in response (usually copying multiple departments thanking someone for completely some simple task).
However, if I get an email from one of the other developers on the team, I read it as soon as I h
gmail (Score:2, Interesting)
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Slashdot (Score:2)
Auto-notification? (Score:2)
I check my email maybe a few times a day. When I get a message Thunderbird shows a nice little box telling me who it's from and a bit of the subject. If I miss that there's an icon in the system tray. Why on earth should I bother to keep opening my email client window?
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Maybe I should add that the summary shown when mail arrives it also good for evaluating if I should open the email client window or just do it later and avoid a context switch...
Sorry, not waste (Score:5, Insightful)
This argument is essentially flawed: It does not take into account the time *saved* by checking the email every five minutes.
If I get an email from my boss he might need an immediate answer, otherwise it is *his* time (more expensive) that is wasted if he needs an answer before he can do something.
And this also applies for my colleagues.
Plus since I don't have to idle while they answer, I make up for that 'wasted' time the article mentions.
Please don't listen to this crap, if you don't want to waste time on email just ignore those powerpoints with music and flowers, but do read the work emails as soon as possible.
Re:Sorry, not waste (Score:4, Insightful)
No, this is a case of folks needing to use the right medium for the right purpose. EMail is intended to be asynchronous. If your boss needs an immediate answer, he should walk over and talk to you, or pick up the phone. Sometimes, something is too complicated or will take a lot of back and forth, but is not urgent. I will schedule a brief meeting so as to presume the recipient needs to drop everything to attend to what I need. If something is urgent, I get my butt out of my chair and walk over to the person who has the info.
Iit ain't really complicated/
Re:Sorry, not waste (Score:5, Insightful)
Work email should have decent round-trip times.
Yes, because a phone call is less of an interruption than a quick email. In fact a phone call is likely to interrupt if not annoy other people as well, and anyway if my boss calls me I'm going to say 'I'll check it and get back to you' anyway (my boss doesn't call to ask the time).
There's a difference between 'urgent' and 'as soon as you can'. I don't expect people to get out from a meeting to answer an email, and I think everyone's entitled to take a piss without being called on their cell. However, if they are on their desk and not doing something really urgent, I appreciate that they don't have long email checking cycles.
By the way, I never email non work stuff to work addresses. I do have friends at work of course but if I send them something that is not related to work I use their personal addresses.
Push Email! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why push email is so good. You don't (or don't need to) be hovering around your inbox like a dog wanting to get a treat. On my Blackberry, I setup filters and blocks so only the important emails come through, while the regular 'crap' stays on my inbox. It's still distracting (unless you turn on silent), but it still distracts a LOT less than checking your email every few minutes...
Minor - very minor. (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, so what about all the other interruptions in the day (mandatory meetings that don't involve what you're doing but you have to go to it anyway, emergencies that pop up which you're required to jump after, the Boss stopping by to get your input on something he/she just saw somewhere, folks stopping by to tell you some joke they heard on TV last night, vendors(!) wanting to get a word in edge-wise with you, phone calls, etc)?
Trust me, there's far worse than email out there (and I can always minimize my email client until I decide to go look at it).
64 seconds? (Score:3, Interesting)
In corporations, you have to react to e-mail fast. That's why people check it often.
I'd say working in large companies is more dangerous (and distracting) than e-mail itself.
Working for smaller companies, I never had problems writing 1000+ lines of code per day. Working in large companies, I have to stay after 6pm to be able to concentrate at all. And e-mail, believe me, is least of the distractions.
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In corporations, you have to react to e-mail fast. That's why people check it often.
Educate your co-workers! I tell everyone that I do not read my email continuously. Use emails for non-urgent stuff, big reports, stuff that needs to be filed or tracked, and quick questions that don't require an immediate response. For urgent stuff, I ask people to use the phone or IM. And if I need to concentrate, the phone goes to voicemail. If something comes up that is urgent enough to interrupt me while I do not want to be interrupted, drop by my desk.
I don't like being interrupted by email, so
Are you guys serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA and some comments keep mentioning "checking email every 5 minutes".
Don't you use email clients that check for new email automatically every 5 minutes and tells you if a new email has arrived? If you need to manually click a "get new emails" button every 5 minutes then I suggest you find a better program.
In fact I've never seen an email client that couldn't do this, so what gives?
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http://www.poppeeper.com/ [poppeeper.com]
It's gratis and works with POP3, IMAP, and a lot of webmail clients. (Windows only, but very small)
But there are more than enough other tray applications that have similar features.
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"Turn off intrusive alerts. Anything that pops up, flashes, or goes "ding!" will interrupt you when you're trying to focus and will trigger a response to check your email."
That seems like a really bad idea to me. Without alerts, I would be checking for new emails a lot more often than I already do.
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And if the title of the email is precise enough, a simple alt-tab to the email client, reading the email title, deciding that it can wait and an additional alt-tab shouldn't break your train of thought that badly.
If email has become dangerous, it's become of spam. I wonder how much ressources (electrical power, cpu cycles, bandwidth) is wasted by it.
Re:Are you guys serious? (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, I spend less time checking for mail if I have alerts turned off. The alerts are a distraction more than anything else, every time I get one it triggers me to go look at my inbox.
The key is SMART alerts. Only have it pop up an alert if something that needs immediate attention pops up. I've done this in the past, and it lets me work for hours on end without being distracted by non-priority emails.
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I have to use Outlook at work, and the first thing I did was shut the volume off and turn off those fargin' toaster alerts. The icon in the taskbar will do just fine.
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Never used Lotus Notes. And if takes 30 minutes or more to know if you have new emails, then either Lotus Notes is a POS or it's not configured properly.
If it's set at 30 minutes, then complain to IT and your boss that you need it set at 5 minutes. If you get in trouble for a late email reply, tell your boss why.
I don't understand the problem unless Lotus Notes is a POS, in which case you should either fix it or replace it ASAP.
Is this new? (Score:2)
The bain of instant messaging (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in a corporate culture where if you are not available via
instant messaging, many perceive is that you are not really working at
the time. I know several people who wake up in the morning and the
first thing they do is connect via the VPN to get their instant
messaging client running so that their bosses and coworkers think
they are working diligently. I work best by batching tasks via email
messages, so I make it clear to people to just send me an email and I
will get back to them within a day or so. This does not work for some
people; one person in my organization will try instant messaging me
and calling my office phone, but he will not bother to send me an
email, and then he will later complain that he cannot communicate with
me.
As a software engineer, I remain productive by having several hours of
uninterrupted time to focus on a particular task at hand. When the
code builds, installs, tests, and is in the repo ready for the next
release, then I am ready to move on to the next task, like check my
email, which I do maybe two or three times a day. I am able to give my
code the due attention it deserves, and I can concentrate on not
making coding mistakes by keeping the entire code context "swapped in"
my head while I am working on it. During that time, invariably some
project manager somewhere is panicking about a status report or some
other overhead and is trying to get me to update a bug ticket or
something. Usually, by the time I read his frantic email about the
status report, I have already fixed the problem that he wants status
on because I was able to focus on it without interruption.
Most people eventually figure out that they get good consistent work
from me regardless of the fact that they cannot interrupt me freely at
any time, like most other employees in my organization. I do wish that
more of my coworkers would take a more proactive stance on not letting
themselves get interrupted all the time, since I see first-hand the
negative impact it has on their ability to function. I get annoyed
when I am trying to talk to my boss during a meeting and he stammers
right in the middle of an important discussion with, "Uh, wait, I just
got am IM, I, uh, need to, uh, just a second, let me think..."
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Go figure.
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There are definitely things worse than email distraction.
Safe Sex (Score:2)
It only takes me 3 seconds to recover my train of thought after thinking about sex. Which is why I'm able to think about sex far more often than I read emails.
Actually it is a huge boost to productivity (Score:2)
Instead of a distraction, I find email a productivity enhancement. I always know what is going on with my staff or my customers, and I can handle situations immediately. My inbox - and I just got in to work - has 35 items in it. After I resume work (away from
It takes me less than 64 second for my next move (Score:2, Funny)
Close the inbox and phones on do not disturb (Score:2)
I switch -- I answer the phone for two hours and then put it on do not disturb for two. I only check e-mail about once every 30 minutes and make sure my inbox has 0 items. If I am not responding to something immediately, it gets flagged for follow up, categorized, and moved. I delete 90% of e-mail -- most of it is useless. Anything that won't be taken care of within a day or two gets put on a TODO/task list or delegated out.
Works great for me.
Very context-dependent (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the study's results are extremely age-, habit-, and context-dependent.
1) I'm a freight forwarder, dealing with time-sensitive issues all the time, and receiving around 150 emails a day (not counting junk/spam/personal). If it took me a minute or more to return to the context of what I was doing every time I answer an email, I'd never leave work. Perhaps for people in fields where email isn't a constant thing, it would be more distracting, but certainly not for people where email IS their job.
2) I'm 41. I've been 'on the internet' since at least the mid 90's (cred: I had a 5-digit slashdot ID at one time but forgot the login/pw....) so for me email is a very usual way to communicate, I prefer it. Even I have to admit that I'm baffled by how well younger people (teens or 20-somethings) can multitask through 8 different chat threads simultaneous. Yes, like many my age, I try to tell myself that they aren't able to think 'as deeply' in that experience, but in honesty that's a rationalization and they may simply be much better at that 'style' of comunication. For someone like my parents, I'd say yes, an email may be very jarring but for my generation and younger, not so much.
So while I can accept that a lawyer or researcher in his or her mid fifties or 60's, on hearing the 'ding' of email and breaking out of what they were doing to read it may indeed take over a minute to get back into the groove of what they were doing, I don't believe this result is average for most computer-literate people today.
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Even I have to admit that I'm baffled by how well younger people (teens or 20-somethings) can multitask through 8 different chat threads simultaneous. Yes, like many my age, I try to tell myself that they aren't able to think 'as deeply' in that experience, but in honesty that's a rationalization and they may simply be much better at that 'style' of comunication.
I think your rationalisation is fully justified and "multi-tasking", to the extent it doesn't relate to the differences between the sexes, is a fra
True story (Score:3, Interesting)
People (Score:4, Interesting)
Desktop Alert (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to say; I think the most absolute distracting thing is a phone ringing, beit mine or someone in the cube farm. When I recieve a call, my thought processes are rattled for several minutes and most of the time when I hang up I find I get up to get coffee, etc. Even hearing someone elses phone is is enough to break a train of thought.
I would give anything if there were some way to have a silent, maybe on screen or vibrating FOB or something, notification to pick up the phone; and the office made everyone use them.
At my last gig the helpdesk phone rang to our area incase the HD (2 people) were out or busy and it drove me absolutely nuts; and I am sure it cost me literally weeks worth of productivity.
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Oh brother (Score:5, Interesting)
Dangerous? (Score:5, Insightful)
Visiting slashdot is now dangerous, too. Luckily, it is only sometimes lame.
Oh shit! (Score:2)
Thanks for reminding me - I was suppose to be checking my email.
Only true for the common mind (Score:4, Interesting)
1) business as usual (we're still getting things done and may even be more productive when our minds get these wonderful little rabbit trails), or
2) we get absolutely nothing important done (so that 8.5 hour figure would actually refer to weekly productive time.
Then again, for a minority of the ADD crowd (myself included), Slashdot takes the place of email in serving as that uber-stimulus that actually helps keep me running at peak efficiency.
Good Grief (Score:2)
Every 5 minutes? Must be some alien life form. I can barely drag myself to check my email once every 2 days or so. (And that's almost my only contact with the outside world -- no cell phone, no IM, either.)
MailTrust Add (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
Good to see news that's only 6 years old re-posted (Score:5, Informative)
The study that talks about the 64 second recovery time was published in *2002*. How is this news today??!
Oh, and it included an astounding 16 subjects that worked at one company.
Yeah, that's good data to base generalized conclusions on about all email usage and behavior.
I'm always getting interrupted by email (Score:2)
I'll be sitting at my work desk reading /. when MS OutHouse pops a message saying that my boss sent an email telling me to get back to work. I hate email.
So don't check it constantly (Score:2)
Have some self-control. Don't enable email notification features or applications. Don't have your Blackberry set to vibrate or beep when you get an email. When you're at a natural break in what you're doing (need a bio-break, have to talk to someone, just need to take a minute and stretch) check it at that point. Log out of your IM client or set your status to "away" or "busy" when needed.
Ya, right. And when I was a kid.... (Score:2)
some 60 years ago I remember a study which proved that Pepsi Cola caused Polio. It was a statistical study correlating the consumption of Pepsi with the rise of Polio. Statistics -- the currently favorite method of lying.
I only check my email every few weeks (Score:2)
... and so I've missed quite many opportunities to refinance my house, to save big money on male enhancement products, and help an ailing Nigerian prince transfer his inheritance to my bank account.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Could you implement a policy to require someone to actually call you or use some other contact method for that?
Re: (Score:2)
If your company has an emergency (or something perceived as an emergency by the PHB) every ten minutes, you're right, calls wouldn't help.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I think I sometimes plan out what I'm going to do better out of work hours, and then forget when I get back to work and find 23 slashdot replies waiting for me - though usually I've already checked some of those replies the night before or just after I wake up. I've got a lot more work done on the days where I leave slashdot replies for after lunch :s The trouble is, you sometimes actually get articles on /. that are relevant to your job, so you feel justified in reading the comments!
Re: (Score:2)
That's because there's a person waiting for a reply right now behind that flashing IM icon.
In person / phone call = requires immediate attention /send me an IM.
IM = requires a reply ASAP
email = should be able to wait about 30 minutes before a reply. If it's more urgent, come see me / call me
I think companies would be wise to have such policies in place (method X of communicating = xyz delay).
Re:load of BS (Score:5, Funny)
Four years ago I didn't even know how to SPELL engeneer and now I ARE one!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Not if you're married. Or at least, not if you want to stay married...