Slashdot Mirror
Meet The Life Hackers
Rick Zeman writes "The New York Times Magazine has a fascinating article dissecting all of the myriad ways that people are distracted from their computers in the workplace, and 'how hi-tech devices affect our behavior.' From the article: 'Information is no longer a scarce resource - attention is. David Rose, a Cambridge, Mass.-based expert on computer interfaces, likes to point out that 20 years ago, an office worker had only two types of communication technology: a phone, which required an instant answer, and postal mail, which took days. "Now we have dozens of possibilities between those poles," Rose says. How fast are you supposed to reply to an e-mail message? Or an instant message? Computer-based interruptions fall into a sort of Heisenbergian uncertainty trap: it is difficult to know whether an e-mail message is worth interrupting your work for unless you open and read it - at which point you have, of course, interrupted yourself.' What could be done to change computing to help mitigate this multitasking?"
*Dilbert walks into his cubicle, presses button on his answering machine* Machine: You have 2,804 messages. 2,804 are marked "urgent". First urgent message: *beep* Todd: Hey Dilbert, this is Todd. I just called you to tell you that I sent you an email. Okay, bye. *Dilbert hits button* Machine: Messages deleted.
Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can't wear grey trousers.
..sorry but i got distracted by an email. What was your question?
There's also an ex-colleague's tactic of not bathing. Visitors really fall off when you reek. Unfortunately he took it too far and let the miasma stray outside the boundaries of his cubicle. We had a mini-revolt and got our manager to transfer him elsewhere.
if a collegue is asking a question about the current project you're working on, prioritise it a little higher than a message asking if you're up for a game of pool later.
Don't wanna be nit-picky here, but I guess you messed up the order.
Back in the day companies had these incredibly useful devices called *secretaries*. These devices would open your mail and screen calls and visitors, there was even a voice recognition function! An incredible time saver they allowed even mid level professionals to concentrate on their jobs! Due to spiraling cost inflation even high level executives now must share the few remaining devices.
Seriously though, bring back the secretary. With high speed internet, VPNs, and so forth, the Remote (Outsourced) Secretary could be an intermediate solution to the attention defecit problem.