My Writings. My Thoughts.
Can Google innovate our way out of email overload?
// September 6th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // BlackBerry, Information Overload
There has been lots of coverage of Google’s new filters for G-mail which use algorithms to establish which emails are high priority and which aren’t – see the BBC online coverage here. If you believe that the Clay Shirky “it’s-not-information-overload- it’s filter-failure” premise applies to the issue of email overload, then you will welcome this innovation. Most of the expert commentators I have seen are unimpressed by this and make the point that this is about human behaviour rather than technology.
For my own part, I believe there are two aspects of human behaviour that mean email filtering – already available in a variety of forms – is not the solution: these are a) the compulsion to check all new messages, however trivial and b) the organisational tendency to use email for pieces of communication best suited to another medium. The first aspect of human behaviour is most apparent among users of BlackBerry and other devices – what another news item suggests to me is that the piece of innovation we really need is a better thumb. This is the first news coverage I have seen of “BlackBerry Thumb” - a US woman is recovering from surgery on her thumb after too much activity on her iPhone (I know, but “iPhone Thumb” doesn’t have the same ring, does it?). When humans first evolved reversible thumbs, it was a huge step forward when it came to handling tools, food etc. and helped set us apart from other primates. But it now looks as if the human thumb is no longer adequate for our 21st century environment. Are Google working on this also?
BlackBerrys on holiday – where do you stand?
// August 23rd, 2010 // Comments Off // BlackBerry
It being August, there’s been a fair bit of coverage lately of the pros and cons of keeping up to date with your emails while on holiday. No prizes for guessing where I stand.
The FT recently asked a panel what they thought with Sir Martin Sorrell weighing in heavily in favour since clients don’t switch off so why should we? I agree that the pressure is greater in a service business but do we really serve clients better by being on top of our emails even on holiday? I don’t believe so and there was a persuasive experiment by Perlow and Porter written up in the Harvard Business Review of October 2009 titled “Making Time Off Predictable & Required.” This showed that a management consultancy was regarded by its clients as delivering a superior service when its consultants spent some quality time outside the office and not checking emails.
I think it’s a real pity if organisations are now putting pressure on staff to stay on top of their emails while on holiday. It really diminishes the benefit of getting away and for the family it should be a precious period without the intrusion of ubiquitous email devices. When I have run training sessions on managing email, people always make the point that they feel less stressed when they stay on top of emails when on holiday. They pour themselves a glass of wine, they tell me, and spend no more than an hour keeping on top of things. It strikes me that there is always a glass of wine as if to convince ourselves we aren’t working. Of course, we are and the likelihoold is that most of the messages are mundane. The fact is, the anxiety caused by our awareness of an overflowing inbox is greater than the aggravation of dealing with them while away or the disapproval of partner and kids.
We are starting to see more scientific research into the impact on our cognitive ability of constantly checking for messages – and the benefits to our deep thinking capacity of simply unplugging for a while. There was a timely item on Fox News in the US this week in which some neuroscientists went off into the outdoors without their BlackBerrys – watch it here. It’s only 3 minutes long – see if you can get through it without checking for messages….
How to be Productive: Stop Working
// August 12th, 2010 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
This excellent post on BNET by Margaret Hefferman asserts what some of us have been saying for a while – that there are limits to our working hours beyond which we start to become less productive. I noticed this in the 1980s when working for my first employer, a strategy consulting house with a bizarre over-the-top work ethic. We were contracted to work 50 hour weeks but the norm was to do much more with many people in the office late at night and through the weekend. I noticed at the time that every hour above the 50 was increasingly likely to produce a mistake of some sort that would take me ages to correct later…
Chicago cop sues for overtime on BlackBerry
// August 5th, 2010 // Comments Off // BlackBerry
I spotted this article in the Chicago Sun-Times earlier this week. A “superstar” cop has sued over two years of overtime on his BlackBerry. An arbitrator specilaising in employee relations describes the BlackBerry issue as an “uncharted, undefined area” for many employers.
The irony of this is that sustained email checking via BlackBerry is not great from either employee or employer perspectives: if anything, it reduces productivity, is detrimental to work-life balance and crowds out deep thinking.
I expect we will see more of this in the US with the UK following suit a couple of years from now….
ILM research shows one third of UK workers work while on holiday
// July 29th, 2010 // Comments Off // BlackBerry
The Institute of Leadership & Management’s recent press release is very revealing about the state of UK workers’ relationships with holiday and leisure. A third work in some way while on holiday while 80% frequently respond to emails. 40% feel more stressed when they get back.
A lot of this is because of the normalised behavour of keeping on top of your emails via BlackBerry even during your holiday. The reseach says that two thirds check emails at least once a day. For some, this is less stressful than facing an inbox running into four figures when you get back. For others, it will be the unbreakable habit of compulsive checking and the anxiety of not knowing what messages are careering around the company.
The end result of all this is that people are not getting the benefit of being on holiday and their families’ scarce time away is diminished by the pull of emails. In the US, they are inevitably a couple of years ahead of us and the phrase “Shrinking Vacation Syndrome” has already entered the lexicon to reflect the trend towards missing holidays altogether. This has to be a damaging trend for personal resilience, work life balance and family life.
Speaking of research, I am conducting my own study as part of my MSc into the relationship between BlackBerry use and workplace stress, something that has not been done as a quantitative academic study before. I welcome indivdual respondents to the brief online survey which can be found here. I am also keen to recruit organisations for whom I am prepared to do a complimentary bespoke version of the survey. Please get in touch separately if you’s like to pursue this
Take Part in Info Overload Survey and Win Dilbert CubeGuard Blockers
// July 13th, 2010 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
I have been working for a few months now with the magnificent Information Overload Research Group whose members and steering group are mostly in the US. They pull together a wealth of great information about info overload. One of the sponsoring organisations, Basex, has set up a survey about what happens during the knowledge worker’s day – the results will be published on Information Overload Day in September.
Read more about the survey on the Basex blog and take the survey here.
“The Cult of Busyness” and the lonely society
// July 6th, 2010 // Comments Off // Uncategorized
The Mental Health Foundation recently published its report “The Lonely Society”, available here. It is well worth a read as it is a really good analysis of the combined impacts of the way we work today and the way we socialise via electronic means. It appears that – both at home and at work – we are all to busy contacting one another to actually communicate.
One paragraph struck a chord with me particularly so I quote it in full:
“…socialising and investing time in social ties are generally seen as less important than “productive” activities like work. Writing about loneliness in 21st century America, Harvard professors of psychiatry Jacqueline Olds and Richard Schwartz refer to the ‘cult of busyness’ that has become a modern badge of honour. They suggest that we face so much pressure to be ‘productive’ that we neglect ‘unnecessary’ relationships that are as vital as food and water. Long working hours are frequently cited as having a negative impact on family life. For many people, working long hours is a necessity to support their families, rather than a choice. “
Why is it irritating to hear one half of a mobile conversation?
// June 2nd, 2010 // 2 Comments » // Uncategorized
Some research just published in Psychological Science suggests we find it harder to screen out someone’s conversation when we can only hear one side. The team at Cornell University got teams to do a number of conversation tasks while listening to both two-sided and one-sided conversations. They made more errors when listening to one-sided conversations. So, if you’ve ever felt irritated by the conversation on the tube home about someone’s plans to have Marks and Spencer lasagne and a bottle of wine in front of a DVD when they get home, it’s because your brain is trying to fill in the missing part of the conversation. Even if it’s as mundane as whether the DVD should be Mama Mia or Sex in the City…
What the research does not offer any explanation for is this natural curiosity that the brain has for “information” just beyond its reach. My feeling is that it’s the same impulse that makes us want to check each email as it comes in. It’s “gossip” which in our ancestral environment might have been a crucial nugget of information about something fundamental to our survival. Our brain has not yet caught up with the idea that it might just be about someone else’s frozen lasagne.
Sync my BlackBerry with my BMW?
// May 27th, 2010 // Comments Off // BlackBerry
Such is the demand from customers to eliminate all remaining aspects of life where it is not possible to receive email messages, BMW and RIM have joined forces to allow BMW drivers to see their inbox from the iDrive panel in their car. It’s a clever use of Bluetooth and you can see a demo of it on the Information Week blog here.
If you’re at all concerned about road safety, fear not as email messages are only displayed in full when the car is stationary. Once you are on the move, you can only see “From” and “Subject” – you then get the email read to you by a computerised voice. I for one think this is still a bit worrying from a road safety perspective – people taking their eyes off the road to look at their sat nav or radio generally do so at moments of their choosing. If you are overtaking on the fast lane of a motorway and, out of the corner of your eye, you see a new email from your boss with “URGENT!!!” as the subject, you may be fatally distracted as you reach for the “read” button.
Would you be happy about your child being given a lift in a car of which the driver was checking their email in this way?
30% of Employees in the US Feel the Need to Stay Connected 24/7
// April 22nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Uncategorized
This survey by conferencing firm InterCall was covered in the New York Times yesterday. Among the other interesting findings were: that 25% of workers think their supervisors expect them to be online and connected after hours; that 15% expect to attend at least one work-related call or web meeting during their next vacation; and 17% say that it is frowned upon if they don’t connect to work during their vacations.
I wonder what a similar survey would find in the UK. As for the requirement to be connected 24/7 being driven by bosses, my experience is that it is more multi-faceted than that. People I know that stay connected on holiday often say they do so as it is less stressful than wondering about the thousands of emails building up for their return. So the relationship between email and stress has become double-edged since people are often more stressed when on holiday and without access to email – hence, the rationalisation of tackling them before returning to work.
For me, the trend here is worrying – I doubt anybody achieves anything particularly impactful from their holiday. All they are doing is hindering their work-life balance and their resilience to stress with ultimate consequences for them, their familay and their employer.
