It's Official: Multi-tasking Sucks

Jordan Grafman, chief of the cognitive neuroscience section of the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, quoted in Time Magazine: "Decades of research, not to mention common sense, indicate that the quality of one's output and depth of thought deteriorate as one attends to ever more tasks.”

Terminated for Email Violations

What type of information are you sending? In 2003, 22 percent of employers reported they had terminated an employee for violating e-mail rules, according to an e-mail survey from the ePolicy Institute and American Management Association.

Info Overload to Max

This appeared in today’s news and is either an indication of capitalism run amok or simply the inability of management to contribute to passengers’ sense of breathing space.:

“US Airways to place ads on barf bags”

PHOENIX, Arizona (AP) -- US Airways wants to make the most out of a nauseating situation. The Tempe, Arizona-based airline plans to sell advertisements on its air-sickness bags -- those pint-sized expandable envelopes tucked between the in-flight magazines and safety cards.

"They're in every back seat pocket," said spokesman Phil Gee. "We figure while it's there, why don't we make it multipurpose?

– what’s next? Toilet paper rolls with ads on each sheet?

Cell Phones set for Subway!

This appeared on the Reuters News Wire on Febuary 3, 2006:

Welcome or not, cell phones set for subway, by Ellen Wulfhorst

One of life's ironic oases of solitude – the peace people find amid the roar of a New York City subway – could soon be gone. As New York plans to make cell phones work in subway stations, experts say Americans eventually could be connected everywhere, underground or in the air.

"It's technically feasible, both for airplanes and subways," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. "It's the social aspect that's really the most intractable."

People fall into two camps, one that defends the right to make calls no matter the inconvenience to others and the other that likes an undisturbed atmosphere, he said. Business people tend to belong to first camp, and leisure travelers to the second, he added.

And this was Before 9-11

“Biggest U.S. spy agency choking on too much information”

By Correspondent David Ensor, 07/01

FORT MEADE, Maryland (CNN) -- The largest U.S. spy agency, the National Security Agency, is in crisis, overwhelmed by too many targets, too much information and the challenges created by increasingly sophisticated technologies.

The NSA is headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, about halfway between Washington and Baltimore. With its 38,000 employees, it is more than twice the size of the CIA, and at least twice as secretive.

"It produces, probably produces, 80 percent of the intelligence the United States uses," said James Bamford, author of "The Puzzle Palace." The agency's mission is to listen for threats to U.S. national security and it faces an increasingly daunting task.

Antidotes to Racing the Clock

A read says, “No matter how conscious I am of saving time throughout the day, I still find myself racing the clock. What, if anything, am I doing wrong?

Answer: Consider the following example: any one-hour activity that you undertake in the course of the day will consume one solid year out of the next 24 years of your life. One hour is to 24 hours as one year is to 24 years. With this realization, consider the cumulative effects of reading junk mail for only 30 minutes a day, or of spending 15 minutes a day in line at the bank which could be avoided if you judiciously used mail, phone, or email services. Make each 30 or even 15 minute segment count.

E-Mail: Something's Gotta Give

Each day, wordwide, 50 billion e-mail messages are sent. This is equal to seven messages for everyone on the planet, although the vast majority of people are not online. In 2001, e-mail traffic was less than 12 billion.

More than 88% cent of e-mails are spam including about 1 per cent which are virus-infected. So that means at least 44 billion spam messages are sent EACH day and 4.4 billion of them contain viruses. Has junk email become an issue for you? You’re not alone!

E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot'

“Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows. The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and xommissioned by Hewlett Packard.” The survey of 1,100 Britons showed:

* Almost two out three people check their electronic messages out of office hours and when on holiday
* Half of all workers respond to an e-mail within 60 minutes of receiving one
* One in five will break off from a business or social engagement to respond to a message.
* Nine out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude, while three out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.

“The mental impact of trying to balance a steady inflow of messages with getting on with normal work took its toll, the UK's Press Association reported. In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day. He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.”

How Much New Info Annually?

“How much new information is created each year?” Researchers at Berkeley University say that “Newly created information is stored in four physical media: print, film, magnetic and optical, and seen or heard in four information flows through electronic channels, telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet.” The executive summary is provided at http://www2.sims.berkeley.edu/research/projects/how-much-info-2003/execsum.htm

Focusing on the Wrong Things?

I couldn’t help but be amused when I came across this Forbes article on the dangers to a company when top executives are distracted by opportunities for “adulation.”

“Cancel That Cover Shoot”
by Dana Wechsler Linden, Forbes, January, 31, 2005

Everyone knows about the Sports Illustrated cover jinx. Does the same misfortune happen to executives who become celebrities? Anecdotally, to be sure. FORBES picked the Charles Schwab Corp. as the company of the year in 2001. Within two years the stock dropped to $7 from $30, and 35% of the employees were on the street.

Now two economists--Ulrike Malmendier of Stanford and Geoffrey Tate of Wharton--have gone beyond anecdotes. As specialists in "behavioral corporate finance," they studied the performance of more than 500 chief executives from 1975 to 2002. Half won media awards, such as best manager or
entrepreneur of the year, and became pseudo-celebrities. The other half didn't win awards but had company performances and profiles remarkably similar to the ones who did.

Guess what? Celebrity leads to hubris--and lower returns for shareholders. Malmendier and Tate don't name names, but here's some of what they found.

* Return on assets at companies with "celebrity" executives deteriorated steadily for at least three years after a big award, while those without did consistently better than the superstars.

* Award-winners write more books than nonwinners--autobiographies, collections of self-help advice and homespun philosophy. Ghostwritten or not, they're distractions from the bottom line.

* The more awards chief executives win, the more likely they are to sit on three or more boards, leaving less time for their own directors.

None of this surprises Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, head of the Yale School of Management's Chief Executive Leadership Institute. "The truth is, people do get distracted. You can almost see them start to grow weary of the business and thrilled with the adulation."