Eventually, our entire day will consist of interruptions
Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News wrote an interesting article about how interruptions are taking over the workday. This couldn’t be more true! According to the article:
Interruptions at work waste 28 percent of the day and cost U.S. businesses a staggering $588 billion a year.
Besides meetings, it seems like 80 - 90% of my time spent at my actual desk consists of dealing with interruptions. Do I answer the phone or just let the voice-mail kick in? What about the 3-5 blinking IMs sitting in my taskbar? Wait a minute… I thought technology was supposed to give me more time to do actual productive work. Instead, it’s increasing interruptions — according to the article, by 5 percent per year. Buzzzzzzzz. Must be important, my pager just went off. Lets see what it is.
What’s the answer, then??
Technology, of course. As the regular phone, e-mail, IM clients, and mobile phones become more integrated, they will start to understand each other. If you’re busy typing that important document, your computer will tell your phone not to ring — instead, it would thwart that would-be interruption by going directly to voice-mail. As soon as your computer detects you’ve paused, (or you simply asked it), it could alert you with any new e-mail, voice messages, or IMs. Ding! Ahhh.. I must have some new e-mail. Lets go check.