IT, when used judiciously, is an indispensable asset. At the same time, it can be a forge of distractions and a time sink undermining our productivity."
— Gabriele Piccoli, Editor
Humans have always had a love-hate relationship with technology in general and IT in particular. A testament to this troubled relationship is the fact that to this day it is seemingly OK to loudly pronounce: "I don't do computers." Imagine the same person saying: "I don't do reading." The truth is that we don't quite know how to relate to IT. We like the potential that it offers in terms of productivity, research, improved quality of life, more responsive service, and its general association with progress. But at the same time we fear the risks of depersonalization, deskilling, and job loss associated with IT, and we react negatively — just like modern-day Luddites.
This troubled relationship is all the more evident with communication and personal productivity technologies. We like the convenience of the cell phone and BlackBerry, but we hate to be in meetings with people who don't know how to manage them (and, apparently, where the "off" button is located). We love e-mail and instant messaging and the fact that they are a free, near-instantaneous media to use to keep in touch with friends and coworkers all over the planet. But they often interrupt us at the least opportune times -- not to mention the schizophrenic relationship most people have with social networking communities. On the one hand, we resist signing on, fearing the depersonalization and cheapening of something so important and treasured as friendship. We finally relent with statements such as "Alright, I've finally broken down and gotten a Facebook page. You people with your blogs have worn me down -- dragged me out and forced me to socialize. It burns." (From my brother-in-law.) Or, "I'm finally joining the rest of the free world and creating my Facebook profile!" (From a former student.) These types of statements signal skepticism and doubt. Soon it is these very same people who start loading pictures from high school (or even worse!) and embark on the plethora of questionable quizzes and "causes" crowding the communities.
The truth is that IT, when used judiciously, is an indispensable asset. At the same time, it can be a forge of distractions and a time sink undermining our productivity. With this month's issue of Cutter Benchmark Review, we therefore focus on personal productivity and investigate how IT can serve as an instrument for fostering it, rather than another stressor in our business and personal lives. Knowledge workers are under a barrage of stimuli reaching them through a number of channels: from cell phones to instant messaging, from Facebook and LinkedIn to e-mail. The temptation to multitask and devote some attention to each of these -- like a time-sharing CPU -- is great, if nothing else because many of these channels seem to have a very high-interrupt priority. But as I tell my students when I ask them to close their laptop at the beginning of class, research has shown without a doubt that we are not nearly as good at multitasking as we think we are. Multitasking is insidious. A short interruption, we reason, cannot be that distracting. We are simply going to address the issue, rapidly and efficiently, to keep things moving and then we will quickly get back to business. The truth is that we all need a game plan to manage our time and organize proliferating stimuli. The good news is that there is a discipline and there are several emerging tools that can help. IT is the culprit, but IT can help in the solution.
For such solutions, we turn to our contributors in this issue of CBR. Our academic author is Joe Feller. Joe, whom many of you will remember from the Web 2.0 (Vol. 7, No. 2, 2007) and open innovation (Vol. 7, No. 12, 2007) issues, is a Senior Lecturer of Business Information Systems at University College Cork (Ireland). Beyond his depth of knowledge and engaging writing style, Joe is one of my favorite CBR authors because he is always at the forefront of emerging issues and has interesting ideas about them. Granted, time management is not an emerging issue, but some of the solutions being proposed are.
Providing our view from the trenches of business is Jared Goralnick. Jared is the founder of SET Consulting, a productivity training, development, and design firm. In 2008 he also launched AwayFind, a Web service that addresses the problem of e-mail overload. You can find him blogging online at Technotheory or speaking about workplace productivity and communication around the globe.
Joe starts his contribution with a very brief overview of research findings on productivity. He then dives right in to the survey results, organizing them around an evaluation of how respondents spend their time, how they prioritize tasks that need to be accomplished, and the role that e-mail plays in their workday. He also benchmarks the use of the many other tools that knowledge workers have at their disposal to manage their time and presents an understanding to the process respondents engage in as they try to improve their time management skills. On the basis of these results, Joe concludes his piece by offering four areas of focus that can contribute to our productivity and attention in spite of the proliferation of stimuli and interruptions we have to face.
Jared takes a different, but complementary, approach to Joe's in his contribution. Jared briefly evaluates the survey but then immediately focuses on providing tangible solutions and approaches that can help alleviate the threats to productivity and time management. He groups these solutions into prioritization strategies, organizing tools, e-mail strategies, and e-mail management (or as he puts it: "fighting") tools. His article is full of tricks and ideas you can immediately implement.
Some of my research is on multichannel customer service. Managing any multichannel environment is a challenge, and for individuals it is no different. We hope that the many ideas and tips in this issue of CBR will help you gain better control of your own time.
