Reduce workplace interruptions

Editor's Notes

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• #3: Inc. \nWorkers in small and medium-sized businesses spend half the work day on "necessary, yet unproductive tasks, including routine communications and filtering incoming information and correspondence\n\nWe found that reducing a Worker's unproductive time by 25 percent can yield an extra six weeks in productivity each year, per employee\n
• #4: Multitasking - It may seem counter-intuitive but multitasking actually slows people down. It takes longer to get things done. A mundane example comes from an experiment in which people were asked to perform two tasks: the first, count to 10 as fast a possible, the second, recite the alphabet from “A” to “J” as quickly as possible. Each task typically requires about two seconds. So, a person can perform both tasks in about four seconds. Next, they were asked to switch between tasks (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc.)\n\nInterruptions\nUniversity of California, the typical worker can be interrupted every 11 minutes\n\nIn a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites\n\nMeetings\nMost professionals attend a total of 61.8 meetings per month2 and research indicates that over 50 percent of this meeting time is wasted. (Robert B. Nelson and Peter Economy, Better Business Meetings)\nMost professionals who meet on a regular basis admit to \ndaydreaming (91%)\nmissing meetings (96%)\nmissing parts of meetings (95%)\n(73%) say they have brought other work to meetings\n(39%) say they have dozed during meetings\n\nEmail\nA typical business user sent and received about 110 email messages daily, according to The Radicati Group.\nInternal email at the information technology services giant, Atos by 2014 (Atos is an 75,000 employee, 8.5 billion Euro, IT service company)\nCEO Terry Brenton found that each employee received about 100 emails a day. 15% of them were useful, the rest were lost time\n\n\n\n\n\n
• #5: Multitasking - It may seem counter-intuitive but multitasking actually slows people down. It takes longer to get things done. A mundane example comes from an experiment in which people were asked to perform two tasks: the first, count to 10 as fast a possible, the second, recite the alphabet from “A” to “J” as quickly as possible. Each task typically requires about two seconds. So, a person can perform both tasks in about four seconds. Next, they were asked to switch between tasks (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc.)\n\nAmerican Psychological Association's web site describes how so-called multitasking is neither effective nor efficient. These findings have demonstrated that when you shift focus from one task to another, that transition is neither fast nor smooth.\n\nThree Stanford University researchers offers perhaps the most surprising result: those who consider themselves to be great multitaskers are in fact the worst multitaskers. Those who rated themselves as chronic multitaskers made more mistakes, could remember fewer items, and took longer to complete a variety of focusing tasks analogous to multitasking than those self-rated as infrequent multitaskers.\n\n\n
• #6: Multitasking - It may seem counter-intuitive but multitasking actually slows people down. It takes longer to get things done. A mundane example comes from an experiment in which people were asked to perform two tasks: the first, count to 10 as fast a possible, the second, recite the alphabet from “A” to “J” as quickly as possible. Each task typically requires about two seconds. So, a person can perform both tasks in about four seconds. Next, they were asked to switch between tasks (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc.)\n\nAmerican Psychological Association's web site describes how so-called multitasking is neither effective nor efficient. These findings have demonstrated that when you shift focus from one task to another, that transition is neither fast nor smooth.\n\nThree Stanford University researchers offers perhaps the most surprising result: those who consider themselves to be great multitaskers are in fact the worst multitaskers. Those who rated themselves as chronic multitaskers made more mistakes, could remember fewer items, and took longer to complete a variety of focusing tasks analogous to multitasking than those self-rated as infrequent multitaskers.\n\n\n
• #7: Multitasking - It may seem counter-intuitive but multitasking actually slows people down. It takes longer to get things done. A mundane example comes from an experiment in which people were asked to perform two tasks: the first, count to 10 as fast a possible, the second, recite the alphabet from “A” to “J” as quickly as possible. Each task typically requires about two seconds. So, a person can perform both tasks in about four seconds. Next, they were asked to switch between tasks (A1, B2, C3, D4, etc.)\n\nAmerican Psychological Association's web site describes how so-called multitasking is neither effective nor efficient. These findings have demonstrated that when you shift focus from one task to another, that transition is neither fast nor smooth.\n\nThree Stanford University researchers offers perhaps the most surprising result: those who consider themselves to be great multitaskers are in fact the worst multitaskers. Those who rated themselves as chronic multitaskers made more mistakes, could remember fewer items, and took longer to complete a variety of focusing tasks analogous to multitasking than those self-rated as infrequent multitaskers.\n\n\n
• #8: Interruptions\nUniversity of California, the typical worker can be interrupted every 11 minutes\n\nit can take more than five minutes for them to get back into their task.\n\nIn a recent study, a group of Microsoft workers took, on average, 15 minutes to return to serious mental tasks, like writing reports or computer code, after responding to incoming e-mail or instant messages. They strayed off to reply to other messages or browse news, sports or entertainment Web sites\n\n
• #9: Meetings\nMost professionals attend a total of 61.8 meetings per month2 and research indicates that over 50 percent of this meeting time is wasted. (Robert B. Nelson and Peter Economy, Better Business Meetings)\nMost professionals who meet on a regular basis admit to \ndaydreaming (91%)\nmissing meetings (96%)\nmissing parts of meetings (95%)\n(73%) say they have brought other work to meetings\n(39%) say they have dozed during meetings\n\n
• #10: Email\nA typical business user sent and received about 110 email messages daily, according to The Radicati Group.\nInternal email at the information technology services giant, Atos by 2014 (Atos is an 75,000 employee, 8.5 billion Euro, IT service company)\nCEO Terry Brenton found that each employee received about 100 emails a day. 15% of them were useful, the rest were lost time\n\nABC News - A new study finds that with managing e-mail taking up more than an hour of many workers' days, at least 34 percent of messages do not contain any information employees need to do their jobs properly.\n
• #11: The number of lines is n(n-1)/2, where n= the number of people on the team. A team of eight, therefore, has 28 lines of communication, while a team of 120 has an astounding 7,140. That's 255 times more complex! No wonder the probability of success falls as team size grows.\n\nOptimum size for project teams has been the object of conjecture for decades. Even the experts cannot agree. But they do agree it is not big. According to Fortune Magazine in 2006, it was 4.6. According to Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon, it is the number of people who can be fed with just two pizzas.\n\nAs Evan Wittenberg, director of the Wharton Graduate Leadership Program, so aptly states, "It does tend to fall into the five to 12 range, though some say five to nine is best, and the number six has come up a few times.\n\n\n\n\n
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