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Tech Makes Working Harder
Ant wrote to mention a C|Net article exploring U.S. workers' productivity. People say they actually accomplish less now than they did a decade ago. Research blames technology as the culprit. From the article: "Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically ... We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing ... It's harder to feel like you're accomplishing something.'"
Well, without technology, I'd be unemployed, so in that sense, I guess I really am working harder because of it.
This sounds more like a self-discipline problem than a problem with technology to me. When I have an important task to work on, somehow, I manage to concentrate on it. It's called prioritization, and it's something that people have had to deal with since a naked ape was put in charge of making sure the fire stays lit.
The study surveys people. The people feel like they get a smaller percentage of their work done.
This is just the press being stupid again.
Or maybe it's the ear we live in. We're pushed so hard (must be ready 24 hours a day, while living three lives at once), that we're so tired/fed up with it we work less. Think of it like an army, if you march for a week without proper rest the last 3-4 days will be much slower than if you marched 6 days then took a rest on the 7th.
We push ourselvs untill our wills or body breaks. Theres no reason to care for typing in spread sheet numbers or carrying boxs, so we just do it and end up with half a job done.
Maybe if work was more rewarding (forget money, it's no real reward in this sense) and we weren't expected to be on call 24 hours a day, we would get a good rest and work three times as well (hence productive).
I like muppets.
If people get more communications (like email) about work, they will feel like there is more to be done. The article and summary both say that people feel like they are less productive, not that they actually are.
Its regulations.
Seems that anytime something high profile goes down all sorts of new regulations come piling on and those filter down very quickly.
the amount of paperwork I have to go through to move even simple projects through work is ridiculous. We estimate that the average developer spends almost 15% of their time on paperwork that was never needed or required before.
About the only way technology slows me down if it does is that there are more ways for colleagues to interrupt me.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
When you think back a few years, finding out something that took horribly long to compute was a task. Lots and lots of people with calculators and/or even "old" computers, who punched cards and fed it to huge machines, then they got a result and after lots of sweat, breakdowns and tears, they finally got a result. They then went ahead, recalculated it, formatted it, a team of statistics professionals were put to the task and finally, you had some revelation and you were proud. Mystified how you could even make it possible.
Today, you pick your sample, toss it into some kinda machine and go for lunch. You come back, your results are neatly printed and statistically perfectionized on your desk.
The result is probably the same. But which would make you feel more satisfied?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The tech part is entirely neutral in the equation.
The real issue here is management. Because information is available, management often believe they do need it.
Often, that's pretty far from the truth. People spend so much time now gathering useless figures, processing those, and presenting them that they often don't bother to take care of the issues that don't readily fit into numeric analysis, or worry about whether they're introducing noise into the signal (which only needs to be filtered out again later).
What people need to do is take a step back and determine what they really need to do their job, and get a process in place that'll automate delivery of the figures they actually need to them when they're needed.
That way, they'll likely find that the job does increase in efficiency.
Not to mention that tech has only added to the problem of employers thinking they rule your life...expecting you to stay late every night and work on weekends.
Its funny...but I'm sure I'm not the only one here who wishes for simpler times when life was a bit slower.
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"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it's slowed everything down, paradoxically ... We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little chip out of it, and then you're on to the next thing ... "
+1 true.
I had to post a reply to this even though I was right in the middl
There is virtually no way to make a rational and reasonable argument about this. Technology is not just about worker productivity it is about how transactions are done between businesses. Money flows electronically between banks; ERP systems help schedule work orders, raw materials purchase, plant employee scheduling; Databases track client interactions, purchases, bank transactions...the list is long. People are not disciplined in their use of time and waste it sending/replying to meaningless e-mails, reading ones that don't concern them. Some systems do hamstring employees by forcing them to work in ways that are counterproductive but these are few. Turn of your Blackberry vibrator so it doesn't break your concentration every time you get an e-mail. Kill that Outlook pop-up telling you there is a new mail message. Forward your phone two hours a day and concentrate on tasks that require it. There is a sense that more is expected and it is. Technology has made faster trade requiring faster decisions and task turn-around. People have decided to compete on that level. The market economy encourages work to the max and without limits. Globalization has increased this effect. Blame capitalism not technology. Stop blaming an individual casue for the resulting problems - it's a question of dynamics that involve the entire system and not just one or two parts. But that would require that people inform themselves and actually think instead of whine and complain.
Intelligence is no guarantee of wisdom
And furthermore, I think that society today ...
What? One billion songs? wow! I still gotta get that new Santana CD. Let me see if it hit Amazon yet. Oh, cool, there's a sale on Digital cameras!
Now, where was I?
Never ask for directions from a two-headed tourist! -Big Bird
I hate to sound like a fogey, but I'm in my mid-thirties, I grew up using computers, and trust me, it won't help.
The problem is not familiarity with computers. It's an overload of tasks. Productivity is expected to rise on a regular basis (heck, we measure the growth of our economy this way), which means we are expected to do more with the same resources. Automation of common tasks has helped immensely in keeping up with this curve, but eventuallly the edge cases (the things that don't fit in the automation) overwhelm your time.
I'm starting to see that regularly at my office: I've automated about as much as I can automate, and my job now consists of firefighting the systems that (for various technical and political reasons) I can't automate. It's not that I don't know how to use computers, it's that the task list is rising faster than I can finish them or automate them away.
... to slack off. Agreed that technology causes us to be distracted more often... but it also speeds up certain tasks in the process. Now if you don't want to work...
I remain skeptical. While this CNet article matches what researches have been studying for years, for example, this paper from MIT published originally in 1991, it's only measuring people's perceptions, rather than hard economic data. The economic indicators of the last 5 years have shown huge boosts in worker productivity in the US (ignoring last quarter's results). That directly contradicts the CNet article.
Yes, the paper from MIT makes the case that there are many factors which can increase a person's productivity, and our gains in productivity could have come from other sources than technology, but the question remains: is this true, or simply a matter of perception?
So true. Context switching wastes clock cycles, but pre-emptive scheduling is still a must. I have tried to learn to manage my own time from operating systems studies. I still have a lot to learn. Especially IRC is bad. Just have to check new messages frequently. These things can help to improve workflow:
- Use laptop, without network connection, so you can find a quiet and comfortable place
- If you listen to music, make sure it's pleasant
- Think about room's lightning and improve it if necessary
- There's on/off button on your cellphone
- Noisy computer distracts your mind
- Keep only tabs related to your work open in your browser
- Human mind takes ~15 minutes to concentrate on a subject, so that's a good minimum running time of a process
- Meditation and yoga can help on concentration
Who is John Galt?
Phone rings -- "yes, hello? .. no.. sorry.. yes.. i understand.. no i can't help you with that right now... ok.. i promise i'll look at it in a second."
[back to task]
Instant message -- "Dude!!! HRPROD22-NA01 is down, WTF?"
"I know, I know, but I'm working on something else right now, it's next in the queue, i promise you."
Look. I don't mean to be harsh, but either the person in charge of the servers has to be more competant (as in making sure they stay up) or they need to hire more staff.
If the IT desks phone is ringing off the hook and people are emailing you that stuff is going down, then either you need a better IT Admins or you need more of them.
That or better vendors...
If those IM, email, and phone technologies weren't available, it is safe to say those people would get up from their desk and come to your door and tell you those things are down or they need help with something. If they can't do their job, I'm pretty sure they are going to find some way of contacting you to try to find out why you aren't doing yours.
The fact, they could spend 60 or less seconds to do this instead of the 5 minutes required to go down to IT and back to their desk means more productivity for the company (which means the less chance they'll go out of business and you get to keep you server admin job).
Distraction is part of the 21st century corporate job.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
So the average soldier can carry about 100lbs on an ongoing basis. Once, many moons ago, the rifle, ammo, water, and a change of underwear added up to about that ammount. Then some egghead came up with plastics, nylon, and composite materials, and all of a sudden the same ammount of kit ended up weighing 80 lbs instead. So what happened? Well....someone somewhere said "wait a minute...the average soldier CAN carry 100lbs on an ongoing basis....". So on to his kit pile they threw a collapsable shovel, a high-speed whistle, two changes of underwear, and whatever else they could add to get up to the 100lb mark. Ofcourse, the proccess has been repeating itself over the centuries, with the result that today the average soldier has more items (and as a result, mpre pockets) than he knows what to do with, and ends up looking something like a gypsy caravan. Yet despite all the improvements in technology, the extra gizmos, the new training, etc, he's carrying the same weight, and still doing largely the same job. Moral of the story? Whatever sort of technology we come up with, we're going to keep pushing ourselves to OUR limit. The technology isn't there to make things easier, and in most cases it actually makes things more complex; it exists only to boost productivity and effectivness.
I see the effect mentioned in the article (lots of work, more coming, so you don't have time to fully *finish* everything) in offices with lots of tech-savvy workers, and in offices without them. I don't think tech familarity fixes the problem, it just shifts which problems become your time sinks.
I think that's the core of the problem: not that we're getting better at tech, but that finishing some tasks faster with tech doesn't necessarily allow us to actually *accomplish* more. (Does it help me accomplish more if I can talk to my boss more often via email? Maybe. Maybe not.)
A study some years later showed that the people who used the financial planner the most had the worst financial performance! We figured it was because it was taking up the time they should be spending on all the other kinds of planning, not to mention the rest of their work.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net