Life Hackers Talk to New York Times
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Written By Reprise Media | October 19, 2005 | Share This
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When was the last time you were able to work on a single task, without interruption, for more than an hour at a time? How about a half hour? How about 15 minutes?
Technologies like email and mobile phones have made our work lives easier but there have also been some downsides in the form of decreased produtivity and diluted attention spans.
NY Times reporter Clive Thompson takes a look at the “interrupt-driven” culture of the modern workplace and talks to a few of the people trying to change it in “Meet the Life Hackers”.
Here’s an excerpt:
“Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is. David Rose, a Cambridge, Mass.-based expert on computer interfaces, likes to point out that 20 years ago, an office worker had only two types of communication technology: a phone, which required an instant answer, and postal mail, which took days. “Now we have dozens of possibilities between those poles,” Rose says. How fast are you supposed to reply to an e-mail message? Or an instant message? Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself. Our software tools were essentially designed to compete with one another for our attention, like needy toddlers.”
Great article, though at times lapses into sounding like an ad for Microsoft. Stowe Boyd of Corante has more, including his rules of engagement for IM.
Check out this SearchViews story from a few months ago on Life Hacker Merlin Mann.
Topics: Technology |