09:12, 25 August 2009
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Stanford University has published
a study that
the AP has called "surprising":
people who multitask are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking. In other words,
multitaskers can't concentrate on a single task and do it well; instead, they do a lot of things not very well.
"The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked," Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford's communications department, said in the AP article.
Huh? Shocked? Really? Are Stanford researchers THAT out of touch and naive?
I wasn't AT ALL shocked. It's confirmation of something I've known for a long, long time! Just look around! Take your eyes off your computer or the text screen on your cell phone or whatever and LOOK AROUND YOU. At work. In a restaurant. At a stop light. On the street. At a conference. In a staff meeting. In a room full of friends. In a class. Wherever!
People are crashing their cars while texting. You call a colleague on the phone to discuss something or deliver information and know they are not really listening to you, as they are trying to IM or fill out a form at the same time. You visit that colleague in his or her office and know little of what you say is being heard, as the colleague looks at his computer or PDA more than you. At conferences, it's impossible to strike up conversations with people around you -- something essential to make a conference valuable -- as they all have their heads buried in their lap tops, talking to people elsewhere instead of the people right there next to them, eager to connect. At workshops, people are texting on their cell phone or IMing on their laptop rather than listening to the presenter, showing their inattention when they "wake up" and ask a question that was answered long ago. In staff meetings, they ask questions all answered in the two-page briefing document they never got around to reading.
And even worse: people are making up their minds about world events, government policies, candidates running for office and proposed activities by various organizations based on snippets they've glanced at online or on comments heard by a pundit on the radio or TV as they are doing two or three other things at the same time. Debates have become easy for me to win these days because I actually still READ and have more than sound bites to refer to.
Multi-tasking muddles minds -- no surprise here!
The
ability to concentrate on a single task, to get it done properly and completely, or
to concentrate on a single content source, reading or listening thoroughly to the information provided, is rapidly becoming a lost skill, and the workplace, public discourse and even every day community life is suffering for it. We're not becoming more efficient and productive: we're becoming more distracted, less inclined to complete tasks on time, less likely to do a quality job, and less likely to really, substantially connect with new people. It also affects our quality of life: there are generations who seem to not know how to become engrossed in a movie, how to sit and people-watch, how to just be in the moment, and that means they aren't really satisfied with anything.
My
tag line on Yahoo for a few years now has been "
Read More Books." The world would be a better place if more people did, not only because knowledge is a wonderful, empowering, enlightening thing, but also because it would teach people
the power of "single-tasking", or the power of concentration, of focus.
Take just 10 minutes every other hour to read something related to work -- memos from colleagues, abstracts from journal articles, an executive summary -- without doing anything else. Don't answer your phone while a colleague is in your office. Turn away from your computer when you are on the phone. Sit and listen intently to a presenter for even just the first 10 minutes, without doing anything else. Introduce yourself to two people sitting near you at a workshop. Never ever write emails while trying to listen to a phone call, a presenter or a colleague. These are little things. And if you do them, you will LOVE the results!
And speaking of reading, you can see
what books I've read, what I'm reading, and what I want to read.
08:50, 16 June 2009
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We live in a world now (and maybe it was really always this way?) where, to stay employable,
you must continually grow your skills. You have to always be learning. But even if you didn't have to do it to stay employable, I hope you would still do it: setting goals for yourself, and then achieving those goals, gives you a great sense of personal accomplishment, and helps life become even just a little bit richer every day. And studies have shown that
people who constantly learn new skills and engage in new experiences have better health later in life.
My learning goals are a mix of personal and professional goals. I've had small ones, like learning to drive a stick shift (and Dad was right -- once I learned, it's the only kind of car I liked to drive), to large ones, like getting a
Master's Degree.
My learning goals that I hope to achieve by the end of the year:
It's a hefty learning load, I know! I may not get to do them all in 2009. I've tried S802_1 before, and had to abandon it twice when things got busy. But I'm determined to try again. If anyone would like to study with me on any of the above online courses -- we go through the course together and keep each other motivated --
contact me.
A learning goal I'm on track to meet for the summer: to get my
motorcycle license and get more comfortable riding a motorcycle.
What are your learning goals for the rest of 2009, or for 2010?
Share them here.
08:28, 7 April 2009
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Just as volunteers are never free -- it takes time and resources to engage them effectively -- telecommuting, or online collaboration among staff or volunteers, doesn't just magically happen when everyone has Internet access. Instead, it takes a lot of preparation and clearly-defined expectations in order for it to be successful, e.g., for work to be completed in the time frame needed, in the way that's needed, for staff to be supported in completing assignments, for staff to interact frequently with each other, for staff -- including supervisors -- to be satisfied with the experience, etc.
When I started researching to write materials for the
Virtual Volunteering Project back in 1996, I used two sources:
traditional volunteer management resources and
telecommuting manuals. The former had all the proven quality standards needed by any program to involve volunteers, regardless of where the volunteers were performing their service. The latter had suggested practices for working with remote staff and dispersed teams. Together, they formed the basis for the information on the Virtual Volunteering Project, at a time when it was hard to find large numbers of organizations involving online volunteers (my, how times have changed!).
I've kept an eye on resources related to telecommuting and virtual teams in the for-profit world, both to continue to mine resources for virtual volunteering, and also for my own professional work telecommuting and in virtual teams, two things I am required to do regularly. I
list these resources here, and update them regularly. There are also tips
on this page regarding how to introduce telecommuting to your organization (whether you are at a nonprofit or for-profit).
08:21, 2 October 2008
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"Everything that affects workforce productivity should be addressed by a truly strategic HR function. Rather than waiting for national gas prices to top out this sum, HR leaders should act now by enabling more remote work options that help inflation-battered employees save on energy costs. Employees will not be the only ones to benefit. Studies show that telecommuters are often more productive than office-bound employees doing the same work... In addition, the secondary benefits of leveraging more remote work stack up quick. Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems and IBM have saved millions on real estate costs; Deloitte estimates a $40 million savings in reduced employee turnover costs; and Google has found that you can often hire higher-quality talent by taking the work to the talent... There are many things that HR can do, but the first option should be to re-assess which jobs can be done remotely—at least one day a week. Next, invest in technologies that support or enable workforce collaboration independent of the workers’ locations, including conference phone lines, wikis, online forums, videoconferencing and other Web-based meeting platforms that keep dispersed workers connected." Read
Time To Telecommute, in
Workforce.com (subscription needed, but subscription is free).
08:42, 4 December 2006
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This is a list of links to my favorite resources relating to telecommuting and working with remote teams (virtual teams), two practices in which I have a great deal of experience, and would like to see more nonprofit organizations adopt. These resources are compiled for various audiences: workers who want to convince management to allow telecommuting, managers who are skeptical of telecommuting, workers and managers about to embark in a telecommuting relationship, and people who want to work with others (whether paid staff or volunteer) in remote locations.
