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Defending RIM Blackberry Against Productivity
Jasksk writes "Is Blackberry causing masses to lose productivity? This article on CoolTechZone.com clears the myth. The author writes, 'Ever since the patent litigation has settled between NTP and RIM, Blackberry has recaptured the headlines, but this time, it's because of the device itself. While numerous users, generally corporate executives, adore the device, the environment surrounding Blackberry isn't too positive. A number of recent reports and columns are portraying Blackberry (and similar solutions) as time wasting, productivity lowering behemoths that don't deserve to exist.'"
If your job is to never think one thought for more than 59 seconds, then yes, the blackberry is a productivity blessing.
-Grey
Silver Clipboard: Time Management Tips
I thought the Blackberry wasn't popular because it made you stay wired to your job even when you went out with your family and stuff.
The article basically says three things:
.. err .. no, sorry, there were no reasons stated. It just does coz it's ace or something.
1. People use their Blackberrys too much.
2. People don't need to be on call 24/7.
3. People who do use the Blackberrys alot and are on call all day are workoholics.
So there we have it. *Clearly* a Blackberry makes me a more productive worker because
I really hope the author never has cause to defend me on anything.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
And if you thought cell phones caused people to be rude, blackberrys surpass that effect greatly.
They should be totally banned in situations like meetings, or at a grocery.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
A few people in our organization have them and I find them (the devices) to be somewhat distracting. During meetings, I see coworkers constantly, not so covertly, glancing down to IM someone, read their mail, or mostly check stock quotes. However, I suppose this is mostly a cultural issue. Here in North America, that would be considered rude. When I'm in China, I notice that people don't think twice about stopping mid-sentence to take a call or read an incoming IM. When I asked a few people about the practice, they seemed genuinely puzzled by the question and said that it wasn't considered rude or out of the ordinary at all. So I guess the answer is "it depends on where you are." :-)
Blackberry (and similar solutions) as time wasting, productivity lowering behemoths
Shouldn't Slashdot disclose its interest in this story as a rival time wasting, productivity lowering behemoth?
I can tell you that these things are a pain in the ass. Not so much from a technology standpoint, but mainly from the users. I get calls all the time: "My blackberry didn't receive this email in 2.3 seconds, the system is down, FIX THIS NOW!!!"
There is a certain threshold that exists between productive and slave. Slavery, indentured or not, exists when you are inextricably bound to your employer, and have to respond immediately to his commands, on demand, 24/7. At least in my office, with most of the BB users, that line has been crossed.
From a technology standpoint, Blackberry Enterprise Server isn't really THAT bad, I just wish there would be more QA from RIM's developers. Hotfixes and service packs come out far too often, but at least they are trying.
First, this is one of the worst written articles I have ever seen. Maybe it was typed on a BlackBerry?
The article says that having a BlackBerry means being on call 24/7, which surely must result in a dip in productivity, and annoy your family and friends. The article concludes by saying that people addicted to their BlackBerry are in the advanced stages of workaholism, and that isn't the tools fault.
I am a BlackBerry user, and I can say, without hesitation, that is is a great tool, and depends completely on how you use it. I used to carry a RIM pager and a phone, and am very happy to now have one device. I love having my outlook calendar available easily. It has helped me avoid missing many meetings. Having the ability to read email is nice, as well as get buzzed for high priority issues. Finally, I like the fact that contacts sync with my desktop, and that I can dial a number on the phone that was sent in an email or meeting request.
One major problem is the default configuration for BlackBerries, which buzzes every time a message is received. This invites users to constantly read messages, and become addicted to instantly replying. I turned that feature off in the first two or three days I had mine, and have been much happier since.
Another issue is that reading lots of text on a small screen can be difficult. Sometimes I have problems getting through an email, only to see it later at my desk, and discover it is much easier to read. But this is a convenience versus readability thing.
In all, the BlackBerry is pretty neat tool. It can help people who use it sensibly, and it can cause workaholics to turn into monsters.
At my last job, people in our parent office were addicted to various forms of "multitasking" including reading their email during meetings, answering the blackberries, etc. The only problem was that they weren't multitasking, they were unitasking and not paying attention to the current situation, which meant that the meeting was useless. They seemed to be incapable for focusing on a single topic for more than a couple of minutes.
The funniest thing was when the uber-development boss, who was the worst offender, both in showing up late to meetings and not paying attention, decided that his particular meeting was critical and that laptops, blackberries, etc would be forbidden. Of course, then he pulled out his blackberry at the first meeting.
Well, Pushemail is not email in the traditional sense. Email was like mail. When you wanted to your mail you started your Pine, queried your pop3 server and got your mail (this changed a bit with imap and instant notification I must admit, but many non technical people still fire up their email app whenever they feel like it and don't use notification stuff on their desktop).
IM on the other hand is much different, because you get the message (if you have your IM turned on) the instant someone sends it. Like a telephone call.
Pushemail is the same. It is more like SMS than email. Many mobile devices also have email now in the traditional sense.
Even though PushEmail is different you still get emails that people send with the email state of urgency in mind. When I need something now I would use a telephone call or an SMS text message or IM. When I write longer messages with lower urgency I use email. I think many people use that the same way. That is why I certainly can see why pushemail could reduce productivity with people on the receiving end that just can't get their priorities straight (I think I would have a hard time keeping myself doing what I was doing when the Blackberry just went off, but I don't own one).
Maybe people should just turn off the push feature.
Id put a sign out on the door: "no cell phone or blackberry useage unless its an emergency".
And no, ' honey, was that 1 or 2 pounds of burger?' is not an emergency.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
In my case, it saves me time in one way. My team run an application on it that allows us to work with helpdesk tickets with a "real-time" connection back to the office. If not for my Blackberry, I'd have to make a phone call and setup my laptop. Both of which take signicantly more time for most tasks.
I also like the over-the-air sync'ing of contacts. I care nothing about the rest of the Blackberry specific features, and my particular handheld sucks as a phone. My company is deploying a new model which is suppose to be more phone-friendly. I hope so.
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
.
Landfill Mining Co.
Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
And here I thought the problem with them is that when people read your email, all they can seem to respond with is:
Hmmm
-----------------
Sent from my Blackberry Wireless Handheld
Like we couldn't tell that it was sent from a device on which it is a pain to type! BTW, it was really hard to post this because good old Slashdot couldn't manage to use the "Humor" filter and kept inflicting me with the "lameness" one because of too many junk characters... If only the people sending those inane notes on their Blackberries would encounter that same "lameness" filter!
Research in motion uses outdate technology, that is tide at the hip to their servers with a pin. I.e. when their servers go down so dose the blackberry e-mail, the fact the devices dose not have a master rest is also a problem. Trio 650 dose not have this problem nor do most of the smart phones and other wireless PDA on the market. This is not to mention the fact RIM see no need to add an external flash drives on their device. The biggest claim to fame is their track wheel. Witch is a lot more functional then a pen for email. The fact they were first to market with a solid interface is the only reason they have the lead they do. If they do not innovate they will die, and in that regard there is little hope of that. I actively encourage IT departments to look away from BB as a solution if they can avoid it. Only because of installed base dose it makes senses to invest in this ball and chain.
Here's my view: People with blackberries get connected in such a way that they become part of the network, part of the enterprise hive mind. I can't believe that for any company, information is so critical that it needs 24/7 user awareness. I think this is becoming a management problem. Companies must be able to manage their human resources so they don't have to rely on just a few crackberry people to run the whole operation. You'll also find Blackberries--and other mobile devices and applications--cause people to concentrate less on issues. By being always available, the risk is to lose the ability to find time to focus hard on problems. You are swamped with a never ending flow of emails, to which you respond by quick-fix, short answers, not always effective.
If you get a good night's sleep... all this distraction, multi-tasking, can't concentrate non-sense begins taking care of itself. Sleep-o-nauts wanted!
It's not the device, it's the communicating.
With that said, innocent people who are experiencing side effects must realize that it's not heroin's fault that the user is addicted and depicts signs of workaholism all of a sudden. Just because the user can't control his habit and wants to be on drugs nearly every waking moment is not the drug's fault. Heroin was designed to be a productivity tool and it has helped numerous (as the usage trend inclines) users resolve critical matters within minutes because of heroin.
...
As with many devices, there are pros and cons, but excessive heroin usage depicts the con in the user, not the tool. It's unfortunate that a select few users can't seem to keep their fingers of[f] the drug and unnecessarily attend getting high when they could be doing something better, but that's not the case. However, it's simply not appropriate to blame the drug when it's the user who's clearly the problem.
I picked heroin because... crack cocaine doesn't have any redeeming medical usage, though straight up powdered cocaine does. Some people can manage their BlackBerry/Heroin habits quite well & still contribute quite well to their work and home lives. Others burnout, crash or prostitue themselves for the next hit.
When you're on the inside, it is usually very hard to see a problem as it builds up until it reaches a crisis. The very nature of heroin/BlackBerries will utterly fsck with your priorities. Gundeep Hora (Editor-in-Chief of cooltechzone) doesn't seem to know what a psychological addiction is.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why is the parent modded up? Just because a pager suits your needs doesn't make you an expert on the device. Sounds like the BlackBerry isn't for you, but I find it quite useful. I find it fairly flexible, and with email filtering on the device, you can do just about anything. If you want a message only in emergency, set a filter for priority and adjust your profile for level 1 messaging. Don't want to be bothered for a while? Change your profile to one that won't annoy you for each email. It doesn't HAVE to vibrate every time you get a message... In short, RTFM and change some settings. Make the device work for your situation.
You are kidding me, right? You don't want me to call my wife while I'm grocery shopping. This is different from me chatting with her in the grocery store? Perhaps you think talking in public is rude and that we should all silently keep to ourselves, heads down, like convicts.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Actually, blabing away in public is rude.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I did not say it was worthwhile to run a good/crack server. I said if you have restraint it's not a time waster.
The Technical issues are not that hard, albiet not cheap either. s far as filtering: At least on good, if your exchange account is setup with filter rules and subfolders, so will your goodlink device.
Restraint is the ability to decide not to look at something when there is nothing to do about it. If you have it, having a crack device is not a time waster: This means NOT LOOKING AT EMAIL DURING DINNER, or at other times when you either 1) cannot reasonably respond - or 2) have no one to respond to.
Most people who use their crack devices reasonably do not look at email, or stocks in the office: THEY USE THEIR COMPUTERS AND ORGANIZE THEIR TIME. Then they look at the email and mark it all read. When away from the office they iGNORE EMAIL UNLESS THEY WANT TO CHECK it: their general assumption is if it is important - someone will call.
My theory is based on several clients who use these devices and how they function with them. Some are sh*ts, and some are good. The complainant to my note of how blackberries actually get used whined about the technical side of the issue. A completely different question - leading me to suspect that they are questionably technical capible. (As an idiot, I have set up several Goodlink servers, and several Crackberries that do not interoperate with corporate email - except for redirection to the crackmail server. With few problems.)
Well, maybe college Freshman English. No justification, all opinion.
My notification of e-mail is off. it doesn't ring, vibrate, etc. just blinks.
I check it from time to time. Some special e-mail notifies, but that's different.
Lots of filtering and prioritizing.
Those people that depend on it as their e-mail readers are idiots.
How is it any WORSE than Palm or any other daytimer device? Or daytime device with e-mail? They're not ratting the blackberry- the solution in general and they're calling it Blackberry. It's like calling inline skates 'Rollerblades' or tissues Kleenex.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Maybe if the meetings weren't filled with gas bags blithering on and wasting my time, I might actually want to pay attention. An hour of Texas Hold'em is *WAY* more productive than anything going on in the conference room.
"A number of recent reports and columns are portraying Blackberry (and similar solutions) as time wasting, productivity lowering behemoths that don't deserve to exist."
:)
You mean, like, say, the Internet?
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
The Blackberry has become the latest in a long line of technology devices that some use to prop up a threatened sense of self worth. First, we had the pager. Then, when every plumber's brother had a pager, we moved to big, huge, analog cell phones. Then smaller digital cell phones. Now we have Blackberries and SmartPhones with push email. Almost all the time when I recieve an email with the "Sent from my Blackberry...." it is in response to something quite inane, and easily could (and probably should) have waited until they were back at the office. But merely sending it fairly screams, "See, look at me! I'm so important that I can RSVP to the office party from my Blackberry!!" Taking the Blackberry out at a meeting is sort of the newest method of corporate dominance display. See, I'm dominant over you, so I can check my Blackberry in this meeting, which I (being the alpha geek) decreed to be blackberry free. Given the difficulties and limited appeal of push email, I don't think these will become as democratized as pagers (does anybody still use those anymore?) and cell phones have become. There will, however, become another item which will supplant the Blackberry as the corporate dominance display.
I keep trying to tell my boss that these constant interruptions are draining my productivity. That damn telephone device keeps going off, and then I have to talk to some customer about fulfilling *their* trivial needs. What about the company's needs? If only we could get rid of all these customers, I'd be able to get everything I need to get done in 1/4 of the time!
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The article is silly and lacks any depth of understanding of the real
issues.
In the 80's you had to be near a landline phone and only a small
handful of people in academics and the research community used email.
In the 90's if you worked in IT and spent a non-trivial amount of time
on the road or on-call, you had to carry a pocket pager *and* a cell
phone. It wasn't until the late 90's that email became ubiquitous,
and even then it was still limited to 9-5 in the office environment.
In the "00" decade, many different initiatives came along to merge all
that stuff into one thing, so that it's no longer about the device or
the communications medium, it's about just being in communication
period. The Blackberry is simply the most successful example of that.
The real "killer app" aspect of the BB is that you can take all your
possible methods of being interrupted, route them through a single
device, and then turn that device off when you no longer wish to be
interrupted. It gives you the power. What you do with that power is
entirely your choice.
The other killer app is the ability to merge your email and cell phone
address lists and have them update instantly and on-the-fly thru the
wireless network. This is just the fulfillment of "computer-telephony
integration" that we have been promised for the past 20 years. BB was
the first one to make it into a real product that people could benefit
from.
Saying that a new technology invites rude or disruptive behavior is
nothing new. There were many people who thought electric lighting was
evil because decent people should not be working after the sun went
down. That problem won't be going away, unfortunately.
At my old company you could always tell when someone was a blackberry user.
An email summarising some problem would go out to the team and within seconds back would come a one line response from some manager. At first I thought this was great, instant responsiveness and would fire off my own contribution, only to receive another one liner in reply.
It rapidly became clear that the blackberry user was skimming through the emails and not really taking it all in before replying. Several times a veritable shower of one liners would fill my in box as various useless comments were passed and rebutted.
I pretty soon learned to ignore these minimal contributions.
I was on a chairlift once, middle of winter, some guy is emailing on his blackberry.
I can't count the number of times I've called my buddies from the lift to find out where they are, or why in the hell they're missing crazy deep freshies. Now if he had a laptop out and was clacking away, I could understand your dismay, however there could be a perfectly rational, skiing/snowboarding-related explanation for his use of a business tool during a traditionally non-business activity.
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
I agree. I don't even have one, and they still lower my productivity.
;-)
I want my email read tomorrow, after I have fled the building.
At least I have two good thumbs, even if one is stuck where the sun don't shine.
So the article starts of slating the BlackBerry and then goes on to say:
It's unfortunate that a select few users can't seem to keep their fingers of the device and unnecessarily attend messages when they could be doing something better, but that's not the case. However, it's simply not appropriate to blame the device when it's the user who's clearly the problem.
Bravo. What a bunch of sensationalism crap. At least put some time and effort into the subject matter instead of just slating it. Theres positives and negatives to both sides of the argument and the article just sidestepped them all.
I continue to avoid Blackberry and Good devices because they do not properly deal with multipart MIME email. The email RFCs provide for email clients with varying levels of capability, but current mobile email devices (especially the Blackberry) ignore the RFCs and dumb down everything to plain text.
I completely get it that the vendors of these devices are trying to keep bandwidth usage to a minimum, and so only allow their client devices to push plain text bits over the wire; however, that is not a good reason to strip everything back to plain text. In my work environment, we mark up email text and rely upon the receiver using an email client that hasn't been completely neutered.
When Blackberries were first introduced, our wireless networks did not have the capacity to push a large volume of rich text email; however, with 3G networks now actively being rolled out there is no longer any business rationale for imposing this limitation.
On a related note: this is yet another example Microsoft continuing to demonstrate their incompetence. In their pursuit of Blackberry's market share, they should have brought full-featured portable email to market. Instead they only just managed---in Mobile Office 5---to produce a client that marginally outperforms the Blackberry client. Bill Gates needs to stop hiring co-op students and hire real developers who can produce full featuerd software.
The problem with the CrackBerry is the same reason why it's working "so well". Instead of you checking your e-mail which is what e-mail was created for (asynchronous communication), the e-mail is pushed to you. The problem in the M$ world started when Micro$oft decided to make exchange push the e-mails to outlook instead of outlook checking the e-mail at a user-chosen interval.
Exchange is not just pushing e-mail onto users but it's also pushing the CrackBerry onto addicted executives and politicians. It's so addictive I expect to soon see an amendment to the constitution saying something like "The right to bear BlackBerries"
Respek!
"my comunications is improvin,"
Throughout your post you repeatedly refer to the RIM Blackberry as a Crack, a Crackberry, a Crack server. These are all very derogatory names. If you feel that the Blackberry is such a good/useful device, why do you consistently refer to it in such a derogatory fashion.
Additionally, I felt that the original poster was not avoiding reasons why the Blackberry was unproductive, but rather, was also adding a long list of very valid technical reasons against the Blackberry. All the while avoiding one of the biggest reasons, cost. At $300 per device, $100/mnth for the service and thousands for the BES software, let alone the hardware and internet connection, I've always felt that the Blackberry was a ridiculous expense that no one has yet been able to satisfactorily justify to me.
Tell me you just want one and I'll accept that. Tell me the long convoluted stories about how much money you can make for the company, if only you had a Blackberry and I'll call you a typical BS artist who is probably in sales with designs on a middle management retirement. If it's an emergency, they can call you on your cell! If the cell doesn't work then neither will the Blackberry!
Cellphones, TV, Internet, even computers themselves due to games and other time wasters all can be terrible productivity reducers. Actually, these are just a tip of the iceberg if you think of all the examles like them out there.
Just get over it. Those things aren't going away tomorrow just because they have downs as well as ups. Blackberry is still a relatively new thing, but, once the newness wears off, it will join the ranks with things like the Internet who have their downsides, but, definitely can help productivity in the end when used correctly.
Is there really a great media conspiracy claiming Blackberry is forcing people to use these devices 24/7? That seems to be what this article is trying to defend against. All I see is an incredibly short, pointless article spread across two web pages to increase ad impressions.
Why is this even a story? The author couldn't make a point out of a drawerful of knives. Oh wait - this is Slashdot. Never mind.
Perhaps a small script which sent 1,000 copies of an email saying 'Put the f!@£ing blackberry away and pay attention,' which could be activated from your mobile / laptop / whatever in meetings is required?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I work as a Field Technician and my Blackberry is the most valuable tool that I use.
I can communicate much more effectively with a greater number of people (sending messages through broadcast emails is much simpler and more accurate than phone call after phone call). I can also telnet into our servers and avoid lengthy hold times with our Network Operations Center (probably saving 30 minutes EVERY DAY). I can view directions to sites without dragging out my computer, booting up, connecting via GPRS, logging on to VPN, and opening a browser. I can look at a history of work orders, their work logs, and modify their status (eliminating the need to log in when I get home). I can view/modify the on-call schedule without my laptop as well (and the entire group updates automatically).
The Blackberry basically eliminates nearly everything that was frustrating about my job (waiting on hold, repeating conversations over and over with different people, booting up my laptop 5 times a day, checking voicemail all the time). They could cost $500 per month and my boss would sign the bill without a second thought.
The toy isn't going to hurt productivity. The people who are going to use it do do some thing useful are going to do something useful. They ones in meetings who use them to im each other are going to be doodling on their notepads rather than working anyway.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
Well, I think the objection is more to those that call their wives (or whoever) in the grocery and stand there, oblivious to the world around them, as they block aisles and access to other shoppers while they blab away. Then, there's the just plain rudeness of having a high-volume, personal conversation in the middle of a public venue.
Standing off to the side, out of the way of the rest of the shoppers, and placing a quick call to find out what you can substitute for the crimini mushrooms that the store's out of? Great - go to it.
Standing in the middle of a busy aisle, babbling on about your plans for the weekend while everyone has to work around you? Having a profanity-laced argument in the checkout line? Being one of those nimrods that yammers on in their "outdoor voice" into one of those god-forsaken bluetooth earpieces as they wait at the deli, so that the guy behind the counter has to hold up service to interrupt you to find out how much olive loaf you want? Frackin' annoying as all hell.
Most people just don't get "courtesy first, your own amusement and/or gratification second." It's the nice little things that grease the wheels of polite society.
At 3 A.M. you can see people's auras; at five you can see their contrails...
Hear, hear. Well said. I would expect most people on here would have that kind of courtesy, but I don't see it often in day-to-day activities.
Almost all the time when I recieve an email with the "Sent from my Blackberry...." it is in response to something quite inane, and easily could (and probably should) have waited until they were back at the office.
Yes, but maybe people don't really want to have to track you down when they get into the office just to tell you whatever it was. If it is trivial, as you said, then it's better for them to be able to send a message on their way to work (when they have nothing to do), so they can get on with the important stuff when they get in. That way they waste less of their time on inane little things.
I've seen all of the things you complain about with cell phones happen more often with people talking to people actually present. Cell phones aren't the problem, rude people are whether they have cells or not.
nd with email filtering on the device, you can do just about "anything."
Except for avoiding to download a bazillion megs of pr0n, just to have it filtered once downloaded.
welcome our BlackBerry overlords, because the mandatory signature "Sent from my BlackBerry" allows me to easily filter all e-mails from the boss.
An interesting way to look at one's salary is to, instead of look at it per-month or per-year, measure it per-hour.
It can be a real eye opener when two persons compare their salary and they figure out that the one that has a salary which is 10% higher per-month than the other one, still makes 13% less per-hour since the first one works 10h/day and the other one only works 8.
This even before you take in account that not all hours have the same value for someone - that next hour working after having worked 10 hours is way much harder that if it would be if it was after only 3 hours work.
For those that are keen on maximizing their income, consider that the person working 8h/day has, by comparisson with the one working 10h/day, 2 available hours per-day to use in other income generating activities (such as setting up your own company).
For everybody else, you can look at your salary per-hour as a reverse scale of how much you are being done by the Man.
Perhaps you think talking in public is rude and that we should all silently keep to ourselves, heads down, like convicts.
You insensitive clod.. We're not convicts, we're Japanese!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere