A whole lot has been written (and said) about the use of technology as a productivity booster.
Let’s be honest here – technology can be a HUGE drain on productivity – and would argue that in most cases it IS.
Most of the folks we deal with on a day-to-day basis are information workers – using a PC to get their job done (or NOT) and servicing customers by using the PC as their primary means of communication and production.
So why is technology such a productivity waster? Well, you have the obvious and the not so obvious drains, both of which can easily be addressed with, you guessed it, more technology.
I divide productivity into two categories, Time Wasters and Time Drainers.
Time Wasters
Time Wasters are purposeful and really point to larger issues of with lack of motivation or lack of proper management structure.
The biggest Time Waster we see is not work-related web browsing – there is a TON of it going on right now in your business.
A user get’s a little bored, decides to check their personal email, sees an email from a friend which contains a link to some on-line joke or news article, which contains other links, and before you know it, 45 minutes have passed.
There is one way and one way only to knock this out completely – use technology to prevent non-work related Internet usage.
For more information about this topic I also suggest you download our free report How The Internet Is Ruining Your Business and What You MUST Do To Regain Control! This report will outline in plain, non-technical English the treat the the Internet poses to the health and security of your network, how it erode productivity and what you need to do to regain control.
Time Drainers
Time Drainers are accidental and can easily be solved by a little intentional focus and re-organization of HOW person works.
Take for example Email. Email is an interruption, it is viewed like a phone call – the minute an email comes in the user feels like they must drop everything and attend to that email right away.
Chances are you have the ‘email alert’ feature turned on in Outlook right now (the one that has a little popup in the lower right of your screen each and every time you get an email). This immediately draws your eye to the sender and subject to ‘see what’s up.’ In reality this distracts you from what you were doing!
This has happend to me many, many times. I am deep in thought, hammering away on a priority project and I catch the little alert on the screen (which pops up over TOP of what I was doing). I instinctively click on the alert to bring up the email, take a few minutes to read it, respond, etc., AND FORGET WHAT IT WAS I WAS ORIGINALLY DOING.
At first I just thought, “I’m getting old” but this is just a result of interrupting your thought train and wasting time and effort getting it back on track. When this happens it normally takes me several minutes to figure out where I was and get back up to productive speed. Lump all the interruptions together in a day and you have a HUGE waste of time.
A MUCH better and more productive way to handle email is to periodically check and respond to emails. This way your priority issues are not interrupted AND you give responding to email the full attention it deserves. I normally check and respond to emails once per hour. Take a quick look, respond to the stuff that needs to get done right away and schedule the rest by grouping. For example: when I post a job offer, I don’t look at every single submission as it comes in, I create a folder and just move these items into the folder and schedule productive time to review each submission.
Do your self a quick favor and turn off the mail arrival alert right now – in Outlook 2007 you can disable this feature by going to the following location: To Tools | Options | Email Options | Advanced Email Options | When New Options Arrive in My Inbox – deselect all options.
Are there other time drainers, A TON. So what can you do about it, first – document the problem. Use a tool such as RescueTime (http://www.rescuetime.com) to see where your time is going first, then tackle the biggest time waster first, working you way down the list.
Good Networking!
Eric Hobbs
Technology Associates
ehobbs@technologyassociates.net
919-459-0109 – Direct
Things to Think About…
- Plan Your Day. At the end of each day, cross off the stuff you did get done, look at what you did not and plan the following day – decide on the 3 or 4 priority items that you WILL get done and put them on the list.
- Allow for unproductive time. Understand up front that you are not 100% productive, planning a day and packing it full with 10 hours of priority items does not leave time for the unavoidable interruptions that you KNOW will occur. Plan for a 6-hour productive day – the remaining hours will fill in with stuff!
- Keep your to-do List Handy. I use a plain old notebook for this – quick and easy – it stays on my desk and as issues arise, they get added to the list (so I don’t feel the need to jump right on them and disrupt the day)
- Chunk your time. Try to organize your time in ‘blocks’ that allow you to make significant progress on an item, don’t just nibble away at something – the time it takes you to get back on track when you get back around to an incomplete item is a HUGE time waster that can be easily avoided.
- Leverage Technology. Use a tool like RescueTime to help you understand where your time is going – and do something about it!
