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Eventually, our entire day will consist of interruptions
by Mike Langberg
San Jose Mercury News, 11/06/2005
Interruptions at work waste 28 percent of the day and cost U.S. businesses a staggering $588 billion a year, according to a report by . . .
Hold on a moment. The phone is ringing here in my home office. It's a recorded reminder that my wife has an appointment at the dentist tomorrow.
Anyway, that report comes from Basex, a research and consulting firm in New York.
Everything from colleagues barging in with the latest gossip, to incessant phone calls, never-ending e-mails and answer-me-now instant messages can leave the most dedicated workers a distracted mess.
Basex surveyed slightly more than 1,000 ``knowledge workers,'' loosely defined as people who spend most of their working life in front of a computer, from mid-2004 through early 2005.
When the results were tallied, Basex discovered 2.1 hours of productivity is lost daily to ``unimportant interruptions and distractions.'' That's 28 percent of the typical workday.
There are 56 million knowledge workers in the United States, according to government statistics cited by Basex, and they earn an average of . . .
Ping! It's an instant message. No, I don't want to participate in the office football pool.
. . . $21 an hour. So 2.1 hours times 56 million workers times 238 workdays in a year times $21 makes a total of $588 billion.
``Given the trend of the past two decades, we can project that the impact of interruptions will increase at a rate of 5 percent per year,'' the report continues. ``If the problem of interruptions is left unchecked, it will occupy the entirety of the workday by 2031.''
Hmmm. I'm not sure what to say next. Maybe I'll go to the kitchen and get myself a small snack.
Oh, I know. I need to note that Basex's report was released in early September. But I was interrupted by other column topics.
Last week, I finally got around to calling Basex boss Jonathan B. Spira. He was working in his home office, too, in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens.
``It's almost like people sit down at computers and acquire a quasi-attention deficit disorder,'' Spira said.
We jump around from one thing to another. We feel compelled to respond to incoming e-mail and IMs immediately, Spira explained, even if the subjects are trivial.
Then, in one of those perfectly ironic moments I couldn't invent, Spira's other phone line started ringing. The caller ID said it was his mother. Mom, of course, outranks business. So Spira interrupted our conversation and put me on hold for several minutes, as I tapped my foot unproductively on the floor.
When Spira got back on the line, he said companies need to train workers on how to avoid interruptions. The lessons can be as simple as showing how to turn off the audible beep sound for arriving e-mail, or using a separate IM identity that's limited to colleagues and excludes friends.
Speaking of friends reminds me: I promised to take my 5-year-old daughter, Sara, to story time in the park this weekend with her friend, Chloe. Let me just quickly check the local park department Web site for the time and exact place.
Where was I? Ah, now I remember. Spira also said a big problem with interruptions is recovery time. A two-minute phone call often breaks our train of thought, and we wander into other tasks. It may be hours before we get back to whatever urgent thing we were doing when the phone first rang.
Technology, of course, is greatly increasing interruptions.
``A mere 20 years ago, interruptions were far less of a problem because there were fewer ways of interrupting and these methods could be more directly addressed,'' the Basex report says. ``One could close the door, not answer the phone, and that would be it.''
There's the phone again. It's my editor. Yes, I'm almost done with my column and you'll have it on deadline.
But Spira said technology can also be our salvation.
In the next few years, he believes, forms of electronic communication -- regular phone, e-mail, IM and mobile phone -- will be integrated in ways that will make it easier to see when it's appropriate to interrupt your colleagues.
Let's hope we don't have to wait much longer for that perfect world in which we're interrupted only by things more important than what we're already doing.
Wow. Look at the time. I've been working for more than an hour straight. What if I've received some interesting new e-mail? I'd better go check . . .
by Mike Langberg
San Jose Mercury News, 11/06/2005
Interruptions at work waste 28 percent of the day and cost U.S. businesses a staggering $588 billion a year, according to a report by . . .
Hold on a moment. The phone is ringing here in my home office. It's a recorded reminder that my wife has an appointment at the dentist tomorrow.
Anyway, that report comes from Basex, a research and consulting firm in New York.
Everything from colleagues barging in with the latest gossip, to incessant phone calls, never-ending e-mails and answer-me-now instant messages can leave the most dedicated workers a distracted mess.
Basex surveyed slightly more than 1,000 ``knowledge workers,'' loosely defined as people who spend most of their working life in front of a computer, from mid-2004 through early 2005.
When the results were tallied, Basex discovered 2.1 hours of productivity is lost daily to ``unimportant interruptions and distractions.'' That's 28 percent of the typical workday.
There are 56 million knowledge workers in the United States, according to government statistics cited by Basex, and they earn an average of . . .
Ping! It's an instant message. No, I don't want to participate in the office football pool.
. . . $21 an hour. So 2.1 hours times 56 million workers times 238 workdays in a year times $21 makes a total of $588 billion.
``Given the trend of the past two decades, we can project that the impact of interruptions will increase at a rate of 5 percent per year,'' the report continues. ``If the problem of interruptions is left unchecked, it will occupy the entirety of the workday by 2031.''
Hmmm. I'm not sure what to say next. Maybe I'll go to the kitchen and get myself a small snack.
Oh, I know. I need to note that Basex's report was released in early September. But I was interrupted by other column topics.
Last week, I finally got around to calling Basex boss Jonathan B. Spira. He was working in his home office, too, in the Bayside neighborhood of Queens.
``It's almost like people sit down at computers and acquire a quasi-attention deficit disorder,'' Spira said.
We jump around from one thing to another. We feel compelled to respond to incoming e-mail and IMs immediately, Spira explained, even if the subjects are trivial.
Then, in one of those perfectly ironic moments I couldn't invent, Spira's other phone line started ringing. The caller ID said it was his mother. Mom, of course, outranks business. So Spira interrupted our conversation and put me on hold for several minutes, as I tapped my foot unproductively on the floor.
When Spira got back on the line, he said companies need to train workers on how to avoid interruptions. The lessons can be as simple as showing how to turn off the audible beep sound for arriving e-mail, or using a separate IM identity that's limited to colleagues and excludes friends.
Speaking of friends reminds me: I promised to take my 5-year-old daughter, Sara, to story time in the park this weekend with her friend, Chloe. Let me just quickly check the local park department Web site for the time and exact place.
Where was I? Ah, now I remember. Spira also said a big problem with interruptions is recovery time. A two-minute phone call often breaks our train of thought, and we wander into other tasks. It may be hours before we get back to whatever urgent thing we were doing when the phone first rang.
Technology, of course, is greatly increasing interruptions.
``A mere 20 years ago, interruptions were far less of a problem because there were fewer ways of interrupting and these methods could be more directly addressed,'' the Basex report says. ``One could close the door, not answer the phone, and that would be it.''
There's the phone again. It's my editor. Yes, I'm almost done with my column and you'll have it on deadline.
But Spira said technology can also be our salvation.
In the next few years, he believes, forms of electronic communication -- regular phone, e-mail, IM and mobile phone -- will be integrated in ways that will make it easier to see when it's appropriate to interrupt your colleagues.
Let's hope we don't have to wait much longer for that perfect world in which we're interrupted only by things more important than what we're already doing.
Wow. Look at the time. I've been working for more than an hour straight. What if I've received some interesting new e-mail? I'd better go check . . .
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