Why Email Has Become Dangerous

mikkl666 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald runs an interesting story dealing with a study about email user behavior, explaining how and why email can be a terrible distraction: 'It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.' Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: 'So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful — an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip — and I get a reward.' There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted."

Comments

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I find porn to be more distracting than email

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, it should be in your email.

Re:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, It's web2.0! RSS-feeds!

Re:hmm

[BrokenHalo]

Dude, it should be in your email.

Not if you're married. Or at least, not if you want to stay married... ;-)

Re:hmm

[aetherworld]

Not if you're married.

You must be new here... Slashdot users are married to porn!

Gotta go, wife is calling...

Re:hmm

[Hurricane78]

Either you're not married, or your wife is strange.
I watch porn *with* my wife. :D

Re:hmm

[cangrejoinmortal]

I find slashdot more distracting than porn, and wikipedia and ted.com more distracting than slashdot, you see the internet is not necessarily there for making 20-something bimbos and their pimps richer than most of us would ever dream of.

Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like this..

[BitterOldGUy]

with regards to comment sites!

Now, WTF was I doing....

Hey

[PunkOfLinux]

I check my e-mail more often than every five minutes and I

What? What was I doing?

Re:Hey

[antifoidulus]

Wasting time on slashdot, damnit quit wasting your wasting time time!

Email is the best

[adamruck]

As far as not interrupting work, email is better than any other medium because I can choose when to read the message. That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.

Re:Email is the best

[houghi]

People call me telling they are going to send a mail.

I used to check my mail two or 3 times a day, but where I work now it is a 'must' to respond immediately on every mail. Only half the work is done.

I guess the only people actually working is IT to keep the mail server up and running.

Re:Email is the best

[Tomji]

Same here, I need to focus and often do not check my email for an hour or two.
Any phone call complelty kills my focus.

Stupid studies like this that do not consider the impact of alternatives just make my bosses encourage others to call me instead of writing me a well structured Email.

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

You should have your email client check for new email every 5 minutes.

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes email is better than other ways of people distracting you, but the problem with email is the volume you get. It would be far worse if every single email message you got was instead delivered to you via phone or sneakernet to your cube.

We need to reduce the volume of emails by people realizing that half the stuff they send back and forth just isn't important enough to justify the distraction it creates. Mass emails would be less distracting if they were posted to a bulletin board or RSS feed, and keep email just for person-to-person communication, kind of like memos used to be.

Re:Email is the best

[zarkill]

At our company there's always talk about how "email is so impersonal and such an inefficient communication method" and "wouldn't it be much better to just pick up the phone or walk over to someone's desk", and every time it comes up I try to raise this very point.

How am I supposed to concentrate on what I'm doing if someone actually walks up to me and asks me something, or buzzes me on my phone? These things are interruptions that REQUIRE an immediate response. It's not like an email, where if I see one come in, I can ignore it for the moment and address it when I'm finished with my current task.

But I think there's a touchy-feely backlash against email that favors the immediate human contact, regardless of the side-effects.

Re:Email is the best

[somersault]

Your client checking for new mail and yourself checking your client for new mail are two different things.

Any business person relying on email will most likely have their client being updated at least once a minute if they are using an Exchange with Outlook. That's how often my Outlook seems to update anyway.

Phones with DirectPUSH capability or a crackberry don't even do the once a minute thing, they just send you the message immediately.

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

So, Peter, what's happening? Aahh, now, are you going to go ahead and have those TPS reports for us this afternoon?

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.

Voice mail and a Dorito fart. Problem solved. Executive decisions make executives.

Re:Email is the best

[zappepcs]

You should try this just to watch what happens. When one of those people that wants your time visits your cube, and while they are talking the phone rings, ignore it while they look at you like they are waiting for you to answer it. I treat the phone like email in that regard. If it's important, they'll leave a message and I'll get to them when MY schedule permits. Depending on caller ID, I might answer, might not. It's not the medium that is distracting, it is whether a person will let themselves be distracted or not. At work, I often wear headphones so that I don't have to listen to other people talking, or the phone ringing.

Email has notifiers to let me know, voicemail has notifiers to let me know, IM has notifiers to let me know. I don't have to check. A quick perusal of my task/status bar tells me all I need to know.... when I want to know.

If people seriously don't want to be interrupted, it's possible.

Re:Email is the best

[digitig]

Quite. I usually check my email at the start of work, before and after lunch and at the end of the day. I used to get phone calls asking why I didn't respond to an email 10 minutes earlier, although I seem to have managed to train my co-workers that email is not an immediate means of communication (and that the "high priority" flag is their priority, not mine).

Re:Email is the best

[digitig]

Why? If it's urgent then they'll phone. An advantage of email is that I deal with it at my convenience. Having the client pop up with "You've got mail" is an unnecessary distraction.

Re:Email is the best

[Aceticon]

The things is, the barrier to entry for other people to send you an e-mail is lower than to phone you and much, much lower than to walk to you cube.

So you're a lot less likely to get e-mails for unimportant things.

Then there's the fact that many e-mails are pieces of conversations that spread over multiple e-mails (e.g. question e-mail, answer e-mail, thanks e-mail)

On top of this there are things like mailing lists and automated e-mails that pretty much mean you're pretty much being spammed by your colleagues or automated agents.

The end result is that the information to noise ratio of e-mails is much, much worse than in traditional means of communication.

Which is why so much time is wasted with e-mails: checking if an e-mail is meant for you or important for you consumes time (even if you don't care about that e-mail) and the huge numbers of non-relevant or unimportant e-mails one gets at work thus translate into significant amounts of time being wasted.

Re:Email is the best

[jep77]

I guess the only people actually working is IT to keep the mail server up and running.

Which is why I spend ALL day e-mailing...just to make sure it's working... And I get paid to do this? What a country!

Re:Email is the best

[UnknowingFool]

That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.

That's why I built and internapault. It works on employees at levels higher than interns with the correct shielding. And, yes, Dilbert is my hero.

Re:Email is the best

[tompaulco]

You should have your email client check for new email every 5 minutes.
My Outlook only pulls new e-mails every 5 minutes, but that tends to lead to the situation where someone will call me or IM me and ask if I have had a chance to respond to their e-mail yet, even thought I haven't received it yet.
Of course you have to understand that i work at a company where I have 10 standing meetings on my calendar, and if I show up, I find out that they moved it to another day or time, and I also regularly get asked if I can be in an 8:00 A.M. meeting at 8:10 A.M. (at which time I am usually on my way to work because unless I was specifically notified that I need to be at work earlier, I usually show up between 8:30 and 9).
Don't get me started on the number of meetings scheduled at lunch time that are not lunch meetings, or the fact that we have two deadlines daily, one at noon and one at 1:00 P.M.

Re:Email is the best

[D Ninja]

As far as not interrupting work, email is better than any other medium because I can choose when to read the message. That is not true if someone calls me, or walks into my cube.

Exactly. That's the entire problem with e-mail. I wonder how many times someone receives an e-mail to do something, or accomplish a task and says to themselves, "Well...I'll work on this later." Then, they wait, waste time, etc. If I want something done, I call the person or walk right into their cube.

Additionally, e-mailing someone does not count as contacting them. Until you hear their voice on the phone or see them face to face, you have not made contact with that person.
/rant
//e-mail is pretty useless in many situations
///give me the pony express

Re:Email is the best

[jonadab]

Indeed. The thing about email is that it doesn't interrupt you. You're supposed check it between times, when you *aren't* in the middle of doing something else.

From the summary:
> people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2hours a week figuring out what they were doing

This statement is true, but the article has the cause and the effect switched around.

The only people who check their email every five minutes are people who are looking for a way to waste some time, either because they've run out of work to do, or more likely because they don't want to do their work. If they didn't have email to check, they'd check the weather, change their wallpaper again, shuffle some papers around on their desks, or print out something unnecessarily just for a reason to walk to the printer and back and stop by the water cooler on the way. They'd probably play a couple of rounds of Minesweeper if they thought they could get away with it.

I mean, come on, every five *minutes*? That just screams "I'm bored and have nothing else to do."

Re:Email is the best

[icebrain]

The things is, the barrier to entry for other people to send you an e-mail is lower than to phone you and much, much lower than to walk to you cube.

So you're a lot less likely to get e-mails for unimportant things.

I'd argue that it's the other way around; you're much more likely to get emails about unimportant things (like Coke vs. pop vs. soda maps, engineering drawings for cocktails, etc). Any fool can bang out a quick email and send it; email requires no direct interaction and can be done from the comfortable confines of their own chair.

Phone calls take a bit more effort, you actually need to speak to someone.

Walking to the cube requires physically evicting one's ass from the chair and walking over there, then dealing face-to-face with another person.

Re:Email is the best

[VeNoM0619]

People call me telling they are going to send a mail.

People call me asking me if I got a memo, then I politely say I got it already, that I just forgot to put the cover sheet on it. But they insist on sending me the memo again just in case.

Then my other boss walks in my cubicle, and asks if I got the memo, as I politely respond I just forgot to put the cover sheet on. But he insists that he's "gonna have to go ahead and send me the memo again".

I can't wait for the meeting with "The Bobs" to explain how I only get about an hour of actual work done a day.

Re:Email is the best

[1u3hr]

Then there's the fact that many e-mails are pieces of conversations that spread over multiple e-mails (e.g. question e-mail, answer e-mail, thanks e-mail) On top of this there are things like mailing lists and automated e-mails that pretty much mean you're pretty much being spammed by your colleagues or automated agents. The end result is that the information to noise ratio of e-mails is much, much worse than in traditional means of communication.

If you just let everything pile up in your inbox.

If you create some filters so low priority stuff (most mailing lists, eg) goes to an appropriate folder, and doesn't pop up an alert, (or reverse it and have a whitelist of important senders and/or topics) you can improve your ratio a lot. Much better than you can with any other form of communication.

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the only problem is, in the environment I'm in, if you don't answer an email in under 5 minutes it is followed by a phone call or a walk in...

Re:Email is the best

[plague3106]

I have my mail client set to check every 10 minutes, and I read each message as it comes in.

I have no problem getting right back into what I was doing. That whole 62 seconds number seems pulled out of thin air.

The only time email interups me is if it's asking me to do a task right now. In that case, it's not the email or replying to it that causes me to rethink what I was doing, it's the task.

Re:Email is the best

[Aceticon]

Space to store filter definitions in Outlook is limited. Where I am now I long ago used all available memory for filters in Outlook....

Re:Email is the best

[BrokenHalo]

Why? If it's urgent then they'll phone. An advantage of email is that I deal with it at my convenience.

Indeed. I go a step further than that. A colleague used to go to great lengths to bring me my phone if it rang when I had put it down on a desk or somewhere, until I explained to him that the purpose of a mobile phone is to make life EASIER for the owner, and I prefer not to be a slave to it.

The fact that someone has taken the trouble to call indicates that the matter is reasonably urgent, so I actually do call back soon, but at a time of MY choosing.

This might seem a cranky attitude to take, but then I guess I'm a cranky old man now. :-) In any case, my policy keeps life simpler, and enables me to give the correspondent the attention s/he deserves rather than a rushed or ill-considered response.

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite. I usually check my email at the start of work, before and after lunch and at the end of the day. I used to get phone calls asking why I didn't respond to an email 10 minutes earlier, although I seem to have managed to train my co-workers that email is not an immediate means of communication (and that the "high priority" flag is their priority, not mine).

Email is IMHO the one of the worst way of getting things done. Some people use email as a way of escaping work, they will go to great lengths to make them selves unavailable by any other means than e-mail, never answere their phone, and lose no opportunity to point out that the only proper way to contact them is via e-mail and they can get really annoyed when you actually have the gall show up in person to re-iterate your request. The latency when dealing with people like this can be anything up to a week before they even respond if they respond at all and even longer before anything gets done and that includes simple tasks. I don't mind waiting until the next day for some simple task like having a VM development box set up or getting a security certificate renewed but when it takes a week to even get acknowledgment I get pissed. There are quite a few individuals that I have worked with over the years that literally dove for cover when they saw me coming because they knew it meant that they would have to interrupt their solitaire session and actually do some work for a change. On one occasion after getting no response for several days I called the guy in question and was told he was just so busy that he couldn't get around to answering his mail and that I'd just have to wait. Later that day, after my boss came around and asked me what was delaying the project, I actually went see the dude and found him playing a racing game with one of his colleagues on an XBox that they had hooked up to an LCD projector.

Re:Email is the best

[BrokenHalo]

Mass emails would be less distracting if they were posted to a bulletin board or RSS feed

I've taken to using a template response borrowed from Slashdot:

"Your message has been intercepted by a lameness filter..." and offering a series of suggestions. People get the message eventually. (Yes, it probably is a bit obnoxious, but I can be like that sometimes...)

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're not so concerned with missing calls, turn off your god damned ringer when you put it down somewhere so people that are actually trying to work don't have to listen to your imperial death march ringtone all day. Incessant ringing cell phones in the office probably distracts me more than checking my email every 5 minutes.
How's that for cranky?

Re:Email is the best

[Kalvos]

Can't call me. I had the office phone disconnected. There's just a home line now, and it's never picked up -- answering machine only. Relatives get used to identifying themselves, clients get used to using email, and if somebody really need to hear my voice, I'll use my SkypeOut.

Re:Email is the best

[adamruck]

Ever have someone that sends an email and then calls just to say that they sent an email?

I don't miss that job.

Re:Email is the best

[zippthorne]

You have the client issue a popup when new messages are received. The google toolbar does this, if you have gmail. I'm pretty sure most of the linux clients do it. And you can set them to check a lot more frequently than every five minutes. I used to set one of 'em to 1 second, in fact. I don't remember which one though. It came with Mandrake, IIRC.

Re:Email is the best

[mce]

Indeed.

Where I work now, I have no other option than to synchronize my mailbox every 10 minutes (or manually on demand). Manual is only usable if you know you're expecting a mail really soon (like in: your room mate just sent it and you want/need it asap for some reason), so I actually want a much quicker automatic notification. Bad luck.

Where I worked before, I had a check + auto download running every 58 seconds. Yes five-eight. :-) The check used two signals: a permanent visual flag for immediately spotting new mail when I returned from a meeting or so (no matter how hidden or "down" my mail client was at the time), and an audible one triggered only if there was no unread mail before. The latter was for when I was not looking at my screen when mail arrived. If I expected something urgent, I could decide and read it immediately if I wanted, but if I decided to ignore the sound, there would be no further trigger until I unlocked my screen and would see the visual flag. This combination of two intervals worked perfectly well for me for many years. I had full control of own time management while still being able to respond within a minute or two when needed.

Re:Email is the best

[somersault]

Outlook pops up a little window for messages that go directly to the inbox.

Checking every second is a bit of a waste of network overhead, don't you think? It's not too bad if it's just yourself, but in a corporate environment it's a total waste of bandwidth..

Re:Email is the best

[BrokenHalo]

If you're not so concerned with missing calls, turn off your god damned ringer when you put it down somewhere so people that are actually trying to work...

That might work for a cube-rat, but I work in an environment with lots of background noise from machinery, in a (metal-walled) building where phone reception is poor, so I have to leave it in selected places. In any case, it's only the two of us there, so the ringtone doesn't bother anybody...

Re:Email is the best

[2names]

I don't usually respond to ACs, but I can't pass this up...

I am one of those people that insist on communicating via email. Here are my reasons:

1) Workflow and queueing: everything I work on MUST be listed and prioritized in our request database. It is part of my job description. I have been instructed by my direct supervisor to only work on projects that have an official request in the database, period. Any updates to the work being done are also entered into the database as running comments. If a person sends me an email about a project I can enter that information into the database just as it was sent and not have to try to remember every detail of a telephone conversation. This method makes it easier for me to make sure that what the user wants is what they will actually get.

2) Time Savings: I have found that if a user is forced to type out their requests via email or directly into a database of some sort that they will be far more succinct than if they are involved in a conversation. I don't ever remember receiving an email request where the first 4 paragraphs are "how's it going?" or "this is what has been going on in my life recently" or "did you hear about the new person in Accounting? I heard they came here from blah blah blah."

3) Historical record: again, trying to remember details of telephone conversations over the span of a project, even if decent notes are taken, will almost certainly lead to something getting missed. I have had the experience several times in my career of having a user insist that they told me a certain tidbit of information when in fact they had not. I have also had the experience where the user actually DID tell me something and I just plain forgot. Having a reference record in the form of saved emails makes this much less likely to occur. There is also the "Cover Your Backside" benefit. Like it or not, at some time in your career you WILL have to defend something you did or did not do, and having the email trail to back you up helps tremendously.

So, you can call me a grumpy old codger, or whatever the current vernacular requires, but I will continue to insist that business communications occur via email. Now you kids get off my lawn!

Re:Email is the best

[Anonymous Coward]

where I work now it is a 'must' to respond immediately on every mail

Same here. It's amazing what you can do with automatic replies. Depending on your mail system (I'm guessing Outlook/Exchange) you can setup replies, forwarding, etc. and if you're really on the ball can run a script to take portions of the original and respond with bits in-line.
For example, anyone from HR gets a response that is along the lines of "Thank you for notifying me of the policy, I have read and reviewed it, and shall forward any questions at a later time".

I have found that with a minor amount of effort, I can slack like a master, while appearing to be working like a maniac.

Re:Email is the best

[jimbolauski]

I just stare at my desk; but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.

Re:Email is the best

[Dan541]

Email is IMHO the one of the worst way of getting things done. Some people use email as a way of escaping work, they will go to great lengths to make them selves unavailable by any other means than e-mail, never answere their phone, and lose no opportunity to point out that the only proper way to contact them is via e-mail and they can get really annoyed when you actually have the gall show up in person to re-iterate your request.

You just described me, in that work environment.

Re:Email is the best

[Dan541]

Additionally, e-mailing someone does not count as contacting them. Until you hear their voice on the phone or see them face to face, you have not made contact with that person. /rant //e-mail is pretty useless in many situations ///give me the pony express

So stopping someone in the middle of something is the way to get work done?

I find nothing ruder than when someone interrupts me in the middle of a project by simply walking in, I then have to spend the next 10mins trying to get rid of them. Email exists for a reason, if Im busy then I'm not going to be able to do anything about it, so people should just learn to send an email and ill get around to it when I can.

There is nothing worse than when your trying to do work and someone keeps bugging you.

Re:Email is the best

[D Ninja]

I would tend to agree, actually. However...a couple different things.

1. According to this article, people stop to read e-mail and are interrupted anyway.

2. If someone is really bothering you that much, there are ways to tell them to leave you alone. Isn't that part of what "being professional" is?

3. E-mail wastes a lot of time generally speaking (more than a phone call). For example, say I e-mail you with something important (to me). You decide, "I'll do that in two days" and I can't complete my project now because you decided to wait. That's not good. You can be sure I'll be showing up at your office/cubical/etc. Relatively unimportant items can be e-mailed, though. I agree with that.

Re:Email is the best

[Dan541]

For example, say I e-mail you with something important (to me). You decide, "I'll do that in two days" and I can't complete my project now because you decided to wait. That's not good. You can be sure I'll be showing up at your office/cubical/etc. Relatively unimportant items can be e-mailed, though. I agree with that.

That really comes down to poor teamwork, it is your responsibility to say "look I need this done by X time, so that it can be incorporated with Project X which is due." I'm sure you get the picture. But if you have done that and I delay your work then of course I would expect you to come and see me about it.

Email works well, but people still need to communicate correctly and I think thats where the problem exists. Communication is also about understanding the other person not just getting them to understand you, so if someone is not treating your email and your deadline appropriately after you have already told them, then they are not doing their job correctly.

Re:Email is the best

[smittyman]

I couldnt agree more. Working in IT is always having to prove yourself afterwards if a client starts complaining you agreed on something.

Also there are legal requirements, think of SOXA for example, you need proof of certain statements.

Too much info going back and forth, you cant remember everything.

Working in a Change Management position at the moment and i need to track, at every given time, around 70 to 80 changes that we are handling and 100+ that are run by other groups. Verbal communication is impossible at that scale. Also gathering evidence of approvals etc need to be administrated.

Email is my working ground, it is my "business critical" application.

In private life i tend to check EMail every other day or so, i rather talk to friends.

Re:Email is the best

[MikeFM]

I hate when people call me. That is the single most disruptive event that happens to me. It's worse even than people coming into my office to chat. People call and think that they can just keep blabbing on for an hour and they don't feel self conscience about people noticing them being there bugging you.

Email and IM is barely a distraction. I ignore it until I'm at a natural resting point and then check it. People that are distracted by it are probably not using it for work related tasks and are less jaded to it (to many years online).

Heck, sometimes I just ignore my phone, voicemail, email, and IM altogether and actually get some work done. It's amazing how much code you can write when you just ignore everyone. Sometimes I just decide not to answer my phone or voicemail for a couple weeks at a time.

You were already wasting time..

[qoncept]

If you're checking your email hoping for an "invite out" or "juicy gossip," the time you are on probably isn't very valuable before anyway. In a business environment, you aren't wasting time, you're communicating. Not taking in to account organizational spam, of course.

Re:You were already wasting time..

[JCSoRocks]

I agree; I don't think I've *ever* gotten a "wonderful" corporate e-mail. I don't give my work e-mail to friends, and I don't use it for online forms... so I get neither personal communication nor entertaining junk mail.

The only e-mail I read immediately is any e-mail from my boss, or someone on my current team. Otherwise I just ignore it until later... or delete it. E-mail really isn't much of a distraction if you proactively manage it.

Re:You were already wasting time..

[King_TJ]

Exactly! But beyond even that, the idea that checking one's email repeatedly means they're "interrupted from doing constructive work" is flawed.

I know in my own situation, whether I'm reading/posting on Slashdot or repeatedly checking my email, it's because I have some free time to kill in the first place! When I'm given tasks to do, I'm going to focus on them first and the other stuff can all wait.

The fact is, though, when you work in systems administration or computer support roles, your time isn't really "in demand" the full 8 hours you're present in a day. Rather, you're paid to be *available* if and when anything goes wrong, and to do things to "continuously improve" the computer/network environment. As anyone can testify who has ever ordered new equipment or services for their business, that equates to plenty of "hurry up and wait".

Dot dot dot.

[HungryHobo]

Lets just throw in that distracting "talking" thing which many people are utterly addicted to. They waste hours every day talking or being talked at. Many love to exchange lots of gossip and when they hear something juicy or tell a joke and their reward center is triggered by another talker reacting positively they get a buzz like with a slot machine and it can be terrible for your concentration.

Re:Dot dot dot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I know what you mean. Especially when they start making run-on sentences.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[networkconsultant]

Slashdot wastes far more time than e-mail :D

Like Slashdot itself

[FeatherBoa]

usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful

This describes Slashdot exactly.

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[morgan_greywolf]

This describes Slashdot exactly.

Speak for yourself. I'm still waiting on the something wonderful... ;)

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[Tubal-Cain]

Replying to get your hopes up when you see that someone has replied to you.

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[fprintf]

Also need to check in on the reply itself to see how it was moderated. Might it get a +1 insightful or a non-karma enhancing +1 funny?

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[phillous]

that seems really nice of you, so I thought I'd do the same for you. Isn't it a shame that you'll get an email telling you that you have a reply, only to find out that its not very interesting at all?

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, my RSS feed in my mail is much more...

ooooh, shiny... ...distracting that anything in my inbox.

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[Anonymous Coward]

usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful

This describes Slashdot exactly.

I know!

Just the other day some nice African fellow gave me $10,000,000 because his uncle was an oil baron.

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[Anonymous Coward]

Speak for yourself. I'm still waiting on the something wonderful... ;)

Don't hold your breath, we haven't even found the monolith on the moon yet.

Re:Like Slashdot itself

[syousef]

usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful

This describes Slashdot exactly.

Here, I'll fix that for you, vim style...

1,$s/wonderful/adequate/g

Don't check your email

[Anonymous Coward]

Let your email client tell you when you have mail.

Re:Don't check your email

[houghi]

The ideal is not to do that, because you will stop doing what you were doing and start doing something else.

The best is to have fixed times during the day as to where you launch your email client and answer all the mails in there and then CLOSE your client again.

I used to do it two or three times a day. Morning, to get starting, right after luch and an hour before leaving to see if anything MUST be done immediately. Most of the time it could wait till the next morning. Sometimes it was 1 mail and exceptionally 2 mails that needed action or a reply.

And more often then not, not responding to an email would solve the problem by itself.

Re:Don't check your email

[DoubleBarrelDarryl]

In my job that isn't possible. Most of us IT guys can't be expect to check their email twice a day. If a computer, server, or some other piece of technology in my company goes down, we are expected to fix it when it happens. If we dont check an email when it pops up, then there is a potential of loss of business if our phone server dies out.

Re:Don't check your email

[lpevey]

Could you implement a policy to require someone to actually call you or use some other contact method for that?

Re:Don't check your email

[DoubleBarrelDarryl]

I would fail to see how being called every ten minutes is less distracting then reading an email and sending back a reply. You are thinking though.

Re:Don't check your email

[lpevey]

If your company has an emergency (or something perceived as an emergency by the PHB) every ten minutes, you're right, calls wouldn't help.

Re:Don't check your email

[DoubleBarrelDarryl]

Also, our phones are glitchy at times. If they would only hire another assistant.

Re:Don't check your email

[element-o.p.]

From gpp:

...then there is a potential of loss of business if our phone server dies out.

Kinda hard for someone to call you if it's your phone server that just keeled over...

Re:Don't check your email

[lpevey]

I'm sure you've heard of cell phones. You don't have to be a smartass.

I would have been first

[Dr. Eggman]

I would have been first to comment, but the article reminded me I hadn't checked my email in nearly 5 minutes!

On a more serious note, does anyone else feel this article is a bit on the flimsy side. To me, it reads like a bad self-help book in search of a gullible audience.

Re:I would have been first

[QuantumPete]

Actually, I find that the more e-mail you get, the less likely you are to check it. My work e-mail is literally bombarded with messages, one every minute or so. I often don't read any messages for half an hour or so. My private e-mail, however, I check on every five minutes, just in case. Weird...

Re:I would have been first

[deraj123]

I find the same thing, but on a more specific level. I get popups that I can easily ignore when I get new messages. If it's from my manager, and the subject starts with "Re:" and it isn't a message that I've sent, I tend to ignore it for hours. This is precisely because my manager sends lots of inane emails in response (usually copying multiple departments thanking someone for completely some simple task).

However, if I get an email from one of the other developers on the team, I read it as soon as I have a break in my train of thought. If one of them took the time to stop and send an email, it's probably important. Also, if I don't check it in 10-20 minutes, I'll probably get a follow up phone call - I'd like to avoid those.

I think the trick is to get notified of new mail, and be able to simply ignore that notification until you are done with your train of thought, then look at the notification and decide if the email warrants pausing your current task.

- on a side note, even though it's usually useless, I do tend to read emails originating from my manager fairly quickly, as they often require me to send a response putting a quick stop to a bad idea

gmail

[tlacuache]

Gmail's helped me out with this. Any mail I'm expecting but is not critically important (developers' mailing list digests, stuff from my family, etc.) gets auto-tagged and removed from my index. So once or twice a day I look and see what new mail is in those areas. Spam gets moved to the spam bin. At that point everything else, which isn't too much, is probably something that needs to be dealt with when it brings itself to my attention. But at least I'm not getting interrupted with a "new mail" notification as often as I actually get new mail.

Re:gmail

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay for you. Yay for the other n00b who modded you interesting too. Had you ever used real e-mail (y'know, pop3/smtp) and a real e-mail client, you would have known the joys of filters, folders and threading way earlier.

Re:gmail

[TheRaven64]

Any half-decent mail client can do that. Apple's Mail.app sits on my dock and is badged with a little icon indicating the number of emails I have waiting that have got past my filters. I can glance at this and see if there's anything waiting for me.

If email is dangerous..

[Anonymous Coward]

If email is dangerous, Slashdot is the devil.

After twenty minutes of reading everyone's comments, I can never remember what I was doing at work.

Re:If email is dangerous..

[houghi]

You think that is bad? I can never remember what kind of work I do.

Re:If email is dangerous..

[somersault]

I think I sometimes plan out what I'm going to do better out of work hours, and then forget when I get back to work and find 23 slashdot replies waiting for me - though usually I've already checked some of those replies the night before or just after I wake up. I've got a lot more work done on the days where I leave slashdot replies for after lunch :s The trouble is, you sometimes actually get articles on /. that are relevant to your job, so you feel justified in reading the comments!

Interrupts

[Sobrique]

Interrupt driven working is ineffective.

We know this already.

Personally I think ... brb checking email

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely. The best email I get is trying to sell me Nigerian iPod Enlargers... I'd rather a chance at +5 Insightful any day.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[AioKits]

Slashdot is merely the tool for my shovel leaning. Seriously, what were we doing? Don't remember...

"News" web sites are slot machines as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Whenever you cycle between sites on the web (typically when being at work), you are a victim of the same slot machine reward trap.

Slashdot

[Lord Byron II]

The same goes for checking for the latest story on /.

Auto-notification?

[Max Romantschuk]

I check my email maybe a few times a day. When I get a message Thunderbird shows a nice little box telling me who it's from and a bit of the subject. If I miss that there's an icon in the system tray. Why on earth should I bother to keep opening my email client window?

Re:Auto-notification?

[Max Romantschuk]

Maybe I should add that the summary shown when mail arrives it also good for evaluating if I should open the email client window or just do it later and avoid a context switch...

Sorry, not waste

[ccguy]

So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2hours a week

This argument is essentially flawed: It does not take into account the time *saved* by checking the email every five minutes.

If I get an email from my boss he might need an immediate answer, otherwise it is *his* time (more expensive) that is wasted if he needs an answer before he can do something.

And this also applies for my colleagues.

Plus since I don't have to idle while they answer, I make up for that 'wasted' time the article mentions.

Please don't listen to this crap, if you don't want to waste time on email just ignore those powerpoints with music and flowers, but do read the work emails as soon as possible.

Re:Sorry, not waste

[MyLongNickName]

No, this is a case of folks needing to use the right medium for the right purpose. EMail is intended to be asynchronous. If your boss needs an immediate answer, he should walk over and talk to you, or pick up the phone. Sometimes, something is too complicated or will take a lot of back and forth, but is not urgent. I will schedule a brief meeting so as to presume the recipient needs to drop everything to attend to what I need. If something is urgent, I get my butt out of my chair and walk over to the person who has the info.

Iit ain't really complicated/

Re:Sorry, not waste

[ccguy]

EMail is intended to be asynchronous

Work email should have decent round-trip times.

If your boss needs an immediate answer, he should walk over and talk to you, or pick up the phone.

Yes, because a phone call is less of an interruption than a quick email. In fact a phone call is likely to interrupt if not annoy other people as well, and anyway if my boss calls me I'm going to say 'I'll check it and get back to you' anyway (my boss doesn't call to ask the time).

If something is urgent, I get my butt out of my chair and walk over to the person who has the info.

There's a difference between 'urgent' and 'as soon as you can'. I don't expect people to get out from a meeting to answer an email, and I think everyone's entitled to take a piss without being called on their cell. However, if they are on their desk and not doing something really urgent, I appreciate that they don't have long email checking cycles.

By the way, I never email non work stuff to work addresses. I do have friends at work of course but if I send them something that is not related to work I use their personal addresses.

Re:Sorry, not waste

[NoisySplatter]

Not only is the argument flawed, but I'd like to know who actually participated in this survey. That 64 seconds figure seems absurdly long. Maybe my job doesn't really require that much concentration, but it takes me about the time it takes to close the window to remember what i was doing before i looked at the email.
I'd actually be in favor of instant messaging at work. Our emails take about a minute to get to the recipient and with the number of "come take a look at this and tell me what you think" emails that fly around I'm willing to bet that it would actually save time.

Re:Sorry, not waste

[commodoresloat]

I think everyone's entitled to take a piss without being called on their cell.

Unless it's during a commercial!

Push Email!

[Piranhaa]

This is why push email is so good. You don't (or don't need to) be hovering around your inbox like a dog wanting to get a treat. On my Blackberry, I setup filters and blocks so only the important emails come through, while the regular 'crap' stays on my inbox. It's still distracting (unless you turn on silent), but it still distracts a LOT less than checking your email every few minutes...

Re:Push Email!

[morgan_greywolf]

The article's point is about push e-mail, though. Push e-mail is the problem, not the solution, because it just pops up on your screen.

BTW, if you want push e-mail, you don't need a Blackberry. Even if you don't want to run your own external mail server, you can just use fetchmail, which pretty much gives you the feel of push e-mail at home.

Re:Push Email!

[Phiu-x]

Or set you hard client to check for new mail and download it every 1 min.

Re:Push Email!

[morgan_greywolf]

Not the same. Fetchmail even works if the mail client isn't running.

less time than exasperating phone call

[baldsue]

It might take 64 seconds to figure out wtf I was working on after checking my email but it takes a hell of a lot longer to figure out wtf I was working on after an exasperating phone call from the same idiot who emailed me.

Minor - very minor.

[Penguinisto]

Okay, so what about all the other interruptions in the day (mandatory meetings that don't involve what you're doing but you have to go to it anyway, emergencies that pop up which you're required to jump after, the Boss stopping by to get your input on something he/she just saw somewhere, folks stopping by to tell you some joke they heard on TV last night, vendors(!) wanting to get a word in edge-wise with you, phone calls, etc)?

Trust me, there's far worse than email out there (and I can always minimize my email client until I decide to go look at it).

/P

pote na ginei to meeting?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doste poio katw tis epiloges sas parakalw kai pshf;iste analoga

e-mail im procrastination

[Anonymous Coward]

It's better to check emails every 5-10 minutes than constantly twitter or be on IM all the time.
"I'm sitting down"
"ok i've sat down"
"i don't know what i'm doing"
"i still don't know what i'm doing"

with e-mail, it's less of a procrastination-maker.

also, some of us rely on emails and are in front of our screens all day - coding and procrastinating (or procrastinating by coding - it happens)

use notifications (a sound or an alert image on the screen) for e-mails. don't be obsessed. and once in a while, re-read very old messages for fun. (oh, so that's why the girl left me. ouch, now you know that you were indeed an ass) wlol

enjoy e-mailing and having fun. behold the dark side of procrastination though.

IMs too?

[andy19]

I wonder if this applies to instant messages as well. I know emails generally take longer to read, but seeing that flashing new IM can get distracting as well.

Re:IMs too?

[Yvan256]

That's because there's a person waiting for a reply right now behind that flashing IM icon.

In person / phone call = requires immediate attention
IM = requires a reply ASAP
email = should be able to wait about 30 minutes before a reply. If it's more urgent, come see me / call me /send me an IM.

I think companies would be wise to have such policies in place (method X of communicating = xyz delay).

Re:IMs too?

[Dan541]

But then everyone will make phone calls for every little thing.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Z00L00K]

Don't forget that there are other kinds of interruptions too - like IM clients that has the same effect.

64 seconds?

[ThePhilips]

In corporations, you have to react to e-mail fast. That's why people check it often.

I'd say working in large companies is more dangerous (and distracting) than e-mail itself.

Working for smaller companies, I never had problems writing 1000+ lines of code per day. Working in large companies, I have to stay after 6pm to be able to concentrate at all. And e-mail, believe me, is least of the distractions.

Re:64 seconds?

[JaredOfEuropa]

In corporations, you have to react to e-mail fast. That's why people check it often.

Educate your co-workers! I tell everyone that I do not read my email continuously. Use emails for non-urgent stuff, big reports, stuff that needs to be filed or tracked, and quick questions that don't require an immediate response. For urgent stuff, I ask people to use the phone or IM. And if I need to concentrate, the phone goes to voicemail. If something comes up that is urgent enough to interrupt me while I do not want to be interrupted, drop by my desk.

I don't like being interrupted by email, so I use the "Getting Things Done" approach: processing email is best done as an activity when you are in the mood, not ad-hoc every time the little envelope appears on your taskbar (turn that thing off, by the way). A few times a day (depending on what else I am doing), I open my inbox, read everything and take action:
- If the email contains junk or info only, I delete or file it accordingly
- If the email prompts me to take some action, I do it right away if I can complete the action in under 2 minutes.
- If I can't process an email in under 2 minutes, it goes into the "action" folder (which I process when I am in the mood for that).
Bam. A few minutes, empty inbox, no distraction. And best of all, no stress caused by interruptions or an overly full inbox.

Re:64 seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

... Working for smaller companies, I never had problems writing 1000+ lines of code per day...

Wow, people still write code in COBOL?

Re:64 seconds?

[Anonymous Coward]

For sure...the bigger the office, the higher the chance of having a hottie in the office.

AC

Re:64 seconds?

[ThePhilips]

Since I work normally in R&Ds, my story is slightly different.

1. People often ask questions: per e-mail, per phone or personally coming to my office.
2. I myself also has to ask questions often, what is also distraction. (And in larger companies, with generally disorganized source code structure, you have to ask question more often.)

Delaying e-mail processing is also often doesn't help. Most mails have some sort of dead-line (hours, days) attached to them. Miss dead-line and some stupid error in your area would go into spec, like domino causing even greater damage later.

Worst case is of course if somebody needs my input during conf call. It's kind of when you are not invited to canf call, but your manager warns that if question related to my work would come up, they would call me. It is pretty much impossible to concentrate on any large piece of work, when you know that you might be interrupted any minute. Is such cases, I often find myself doing nothing else but checking e-mail...

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Chrisq]

Yes: Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: "So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful â" an invite out or maybe some juicy gossip â" and I get a reward." There are also some hints offered on how to keep control of the inbox, for those of us already addicted."

My sentiments regarding slashdot!

Are you guys serious?

[Yvan256]

TFA and some comments keep mentioning "checking email every 5 minutes".

Don't you use email clients that check for new email automatically every 5 minutes and tells you if a new email has arrived? If you need to manually click a "get new emails" button every 5 minutes then I suggest you find a better program.

In fact I've never seen an email client that couldn't do this, so what gives?

Re:Are you guys serious?

[LoudBanana]

Exactly what I was going to say. I keep Thunderbird minimized to my dock 24/7, set to check every 1 minute if there's a new email.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[LordLucless]

They're probably using gmail, hotmail, or some other web-based email system. Most people don't even seem to realise that stand-along email clients exist these days.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[travdaddy]

The end of TFA actually says:

"Turn off intrusive alerts. Anything that pops up, flashes, or goes "ding!" will interrupt you when you're trying to focus and will trigger a response to check your email."

That seems like a really bad idea to me. Without alerts, I would be checking for new emails a lot more often than I already do.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

http://www.poppeeper.com/

It's gratis and works with POP3, IMAP, and a lot of webmail clients. (Windows only, but very small)

But there are more than enough other tray applications that have similar features.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[Yvan256]

And if the title of the email is precise enough, a simple alt-tab to the email client, reading the email title, deciding that it can wait and an additional alt-tab shouldn't break your train of thought that badly.

If email has become dangerous, it's become of spam. I wonder how much ressources (electrical power, cpu cycles, bandwidth) is wasted by it.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[Habey Gonzo]

Just to add some thoughts to the parent post, leaving the e-mail client open but minimized, and configuring it so it will autocheck for messages and pop-up one of these transparent windows that show the subject and first line, and auto-close after five seconds, doesn't really interrupt work. You can quickly determine by seeing the subject if it requires a fast answer or not, or simply ignore these popups if you are working on something complicated. It does work for me, at least.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[phillous]

Some of us work for companies which insist on using Lotus Notes, you insensitive clod!

I need to know about email when it comes in, and lotus will tell me, oooh maybe half an hour later if im lucky. Generally I'm hitting refresh every 5 mins or so.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[Yvan256]

Never used Lotus Notes. And if takes 30 minutes or more to know if you have new emails, then either Lotus Notes is a POS or it's not configured properly.

If it's set at 30 minutes, then complain to IT and your boss that you need it set at 5 minutes. If you get in trouble for a late email reply, tell your boss why.

I don't understand the problem unless Lotus Notes is a POS, in which case you should either fix it or replace it ASAP.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[jonadab]

> In fact I've never seen an email client that couldn't [automatically check and notify]

A lot of older mail clients, especially Unix-oriented ones, don't do this in the mail reader because the expectation used to be that you would use a separate biff utility if you wanted that. This is changing, but gradually. Gnus, for instance, still doesn't do automatic new-mail notification last I checked, and it is a *very* powerful mail client in other respects. Having used Gnus, I tried to use Thunderbird for a while at work (people were raving about it...), and the lack of even the most basic functionality was so extreme in comparison to Gnus that it was *painful*. (It couldn't even properly rewrap quoted excerpts! And as for per-group configuration, forget about it.) I'm back to Gnus now, needless to say.

Personally I just check my mail about once a day and let it go at that, stuff that can't wait a day is normally handled by phone where I work, or in person. But if I wanted to know when I get new mail, it's not hard to set up a separate biff utility.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[barzok]

Actually, I spend less time checking for mail if I have alerts turned off. The alerts are a distraction more than anything else, every time I get one it triggers me to go look at my inbox.

The key is SMART alerts. Only have it pop up an alert if something that needs immediate attention pops up. I've done this in the past, and it lets me work for hours on end without being distracted by non-priority emails.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[Pope]

I have to use Outlook at work, and the first thing I did was shut the volume off and turn off those fargin' toaster alerts. The icon in the taskbar will do just fine.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

I set my client to check email every 30 minutes, with alerts. Twice an hour I've got mail, unless I don't.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[fabs64]

As much as I despise the rest of the outlook client, the way it does alerts that show the subject and the sender is good.

As in, quick glance down, that's from my boss, should have a look. Or, that's from the HR department, it's as good as spam, I'll ignore.

Re:Are you guys serious?

[Dan541]

Just respond when lotus tells you about the email.
It's not your fault the system is "Slow".

Re:Are you guys serious?

[gr8dude]

The problem is slightly different. Due to the great number of messages I receive on a daily basis (and the frequency is high too) notifications such as {play a sound, animate tray icon, show a balloon tip} are becoming useless because they show up too often.

As a result, I decided to turn them off. I know that I am supposed to receive emails, and that some of them are of a great importance, therefore I keep going back to the mail client every now and then in order to see what's there.

There are several folders where messages go after being filtered by the rules I set, I see that some of them have new messages so I feel that I have to review them. Time is wasted.

Finally I decided to turn off automatic email checking, and instead I'm switching to the mail client and manually pressing 'check mail'.

My point is that "finding a better program" is not going to fix the problem. I think this is some sort of a logical layer addiction one cannot get rid of easily. My conclusion is that the solution is based on "updating one's psyche" rather than "updating one's mail client".

Here are some additional thoughts about it: http://railean.net/index.php/2008/07/28/information_overload_is_real

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[somersault]

Getting a marketing call is the worst. How the fark did they get my direct dial number? It's not just bad because it's directly distracting, it's bad because afterwards I get pissed off that I was distracted.

At least if I choose to check my email (or IM) messages it's because I want to [know if I have any replies on /.]. Also if I'm busy I can just not check my email. Since I use Outlook for my work mail I can just check the system try to see if there's a mail icon anyway (but this only works for the main inbox, not subfolders).

Oh puhleeze

[zifn4b]

If you're really that worried about it, turn the pop up notifications for new mail arrival off and only check your email at regular intervals during the day or when you're in-between tasks.

Now as far as people coming by your cube every five minutes to interrupt your work, that's a different issue. At least with email and instant messaging you have control over whether it distracts you or not by configuring your client. Worse case scenario, turn the damn thing off when you're busy.

Twitter? ROFL

[Geoffrey.landis]

I agree with most of the article, but here's one that makes me ROFL:

Mr Reynolds has even begun to think of email as rude and invasive, preferring to use tools such as Twitter

Yeah, right! And did you know that heroin was invented because doctors in the 19th century thought morphine was too addictive?

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[ZeroFactorial]

Could someone explain irony to me? Just checking...

Beats instant messenger!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll take email over AIM/Jabber/etc methods anyday.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Geoffrey.landis]

Email is also compared to slot machines in the way it works psychologically: "So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful."

Obligatory xkcd reference

(don't forget to mouse over)

Addicted to Email? Impossible...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure about you guys, but I usually check my email once in the morning and once at night... and that's it. Anything of critical importance I have on a seperate, filtered mailbox that's pushed out to my BlackBerry, so it /tells/ me when I have new mail, and it's /always/ important.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[ZeroFactorial]

In fact, email probably ENHANCES productivity when the subject of the email received is:

"Stop Reading Slashdot and Get Back to Work"

Dangerous

[redaction101]

I've never viewed procrastination as dangerous. I dare say that none of us here on /. would disagree.

Unless of course you're a member of the bomb squad. In which case, how/why read e-mails mid task?

Is this new?

[UnknowingFool]

You could say the same thing about phone calls. However, I more easily ignore my email as it is far less attention grabbing than a ringing phone. With modern phone systems, you can see the person calling and voice mail helps you not to answer. That ringing is still distracting. With email, I tend to postpone all but the urgent emails if I have to work on something. It's how people manage the technology and not let the technology manage them.

Annon

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Outlook and it pops up when new email comes so it doesn't waste much time :)

Email is dangerous?

[vaedur]

Thank god they finally made guns safe, all i have to worry about is email!

The bain of instant messaging

[omnirealm]

I work in a corporate culture where if you are not available via
instant messaging, many perceive is that you are not really working at
the time. I know several people who wake up in the morning and the
first thing they do is connect via the VPN to get their instant
messaging client running so that their bosses and coworkers think
they are working diligently. I work best by batching tasks via email
messages, so I make it clear to people to just send me an email and I
will get back to them within a day or so. This does not work for some
people; one person in my organization will try instant messaging me
and calling my office phone, but he will not bother to send me an
email, and then he will later complain that he cannot communicate with
me.

As a software engineer, I remain productive by having several hours of
uninterrupted time to focus on a particular task at hand. When the
code builds, installs, tests, and is in the repo ready for the next
release, then I am ready to move on to the next task, like check my
email, which I do maybe two or three times a day. I am able to give my
code the due attention it deserves, and I can concentrate on not
making coding mistakes by keeping the entire code context "swapped in"
my head while I am working on it. During that time, invariably some
project manager somewhere is panicking about a status report or some
other overhead and is trying to get me to update a bug ticket or
something. Usually, by the time I read his frantic email about the
status report, I have already fixed the problem that he wants status
on because I was able to focus on it without interruption.

Most people eventually figure out that they get good consistent work
from me regardless of the fact that they cannot interrupt me freely at
any time, like most other employees in my organization. I do wish that
more of my coworkers would take a more proactive stance on not letting
themselves get interrupted all the time, since I see first-hand the
negative impact it has on their ability to function. I get annoyed
when I am trying to talk to my boss during a meeting and he stammers
right in the middle of an important discussion with, "Uh, wait, I just
got am IM, I, uh, need to, uh, just a second, let me think..."

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[filesiteguy]

Interesting you mention the IM client running. Though we do that as well, I typically am listed as "unavailable" and forget to check it. My staff just ignores that and sends me emails instead.

Go figure.

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[rickkas7]

Also annoying: people who send an AYT IM, then proceed to spend a minute or two typing a long IM, instead of just sending me an email in the first place, thereby interrupting me twice.

There are definitely things worse than email distraction.

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[KindMind]

... I know several people who wake up in the morning and the first thing they do is connect via the VPN to get their instant messaging client running so that their bosses and coworkers think they are working diligently.

Boy, that's messed up ...

I work best by batching tasks via email messages ... As a software engineer, I remain productive by having several hours of uninterrupted time to focus on a particular task at hand ...

Yeah, exactly. I work best in batch mode. I'll have down time waiting for stuff to build, etc., and that's when I'll check my emails. But I totally ignore email while coding. It's the phone calls that get me - the simple act of the phone ringing is enough to cause me to dump my memory, and lose what I'm doing. I've tried to educate our support dept. to email instead of calling for that reason. I'll usually get back with them within a reasonable time, just not instantaneously. Most of their questions take research anyway, and can't be answered immediately.

... I get annoyed when I am trying to talk to my boss during a meeting and he stammers right in the middle of an important discussion with, "Uh, wait, I just got am IM, I, uh, need to, uh, just a second, let me think..."

I think IM is evil, myself, but then I'm looking at it from a perspective of it being an interruption. I have diligently fought to keep it off my PC.

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[CodeBuster]

I have also observed the propensity of coworkers to generate interruptions, via email or IM, in the office environment and have come to the conclusion that it is part of a larger breakdown and slow motion train-wreck that has been building for quite some time in society in general and that is manifest as the collision between increasingly effective communications tools and increasingly hyper-active, self-centered, and demanding consumer culture which makes people ruder, more selfish, and more inconsiderate than at any time in the past or at least more able to express their demands. They assume that whatever it is that they are working on is absolutely more important than anything else that you might be doing, particularly if they are not explicitly lower than you are in the corporate hierarchy, and so see absolutely nothing wrong with interrupting you at their pleasure. Naturally, because they expect and demand prompt replies (as if they were the customer and you were the vendor), they become extremely irritated and annoyed with your apparent lack of attentiveness when you do not respond instantly. I am not sure what the solution is, but I think that it must start with everyone learning to have some minimum level of respect for other people's time. Some things are important, but most things can wait most of the time (the boy who cried wolf comes to mind).

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[u38cg]

I don't have IM, thank god. My work isn't coding (or indeed geek related at all) but it does require a similar immersion in what I'm doing as I have to juggle several different mental tasks at any one moment. I open and process my email three times a day and have had senior managers asking me why I'm not making myself "available". I'm lucky in that I can throw my productivity stats around and make it clear that I get through significantly more work than those who have their phones on and email clients open. However, I am still in open conflict with the local culture; it doesn't matter, as I don't want a career there, but it is realy frustrating to see hundreds of people all performing well below par because nobody will step back and treat knowledge workers like knowledge workers, rather than assembly line workers.

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[Number10]

I contend the source of the problem is the constant stream of interruptive advertising people are forced to endure these days. We're conditioned by advertisers that interruptions aren't just acceptable, they're EXCITING! and FUN! - go forth and interrupt your friends! I think the solution is to fix the problem at the source, the advertising, rather than trying to rehabilitate people from an advertising-soaked life.

Re:The bain of instant messaging

[CodeBuster]

interruptions aren't just acceptable, they're EXCITING! and FUN! - go forth and interrupt your friends!

One certainly gets that impression when watching those classic Mentos ads. Heck they could even have a new one where after getting into some random person's car they could drop a few Mentos in the driver's Coke before exiting the vehicle. Then the driver, now dripping with soda could turn and smile as the teenage brat flashes his remaining roll of Mentos to the camera before the scene fades to black.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[networkconsultant]

But work is only rarely rewarding ;)

Safe Sex

[Ukab the Great]

It only takes me 3 seconds to recover my train of thought after thinking about sex. Which is why I'm able to think about sex far more often than I read emails.

load of BS

[hesaigo999ca]

Sorry, for the lame brains that have problems focusing maybe, but when you are an engeneer who uses the computer all day long and have mission critical stuff running at all times, you tend to develop a knack for keeping your eye on the ball. Even if I am reading emails, I am quite capable of running a few scenarios and watching the tray for any pop ups....this seems to me, the typical user who has a hard time understanding you don't just keep clicking accept when zone alarm warns you something is trying to connect to the internet.

Are these also the same people that call you to say the computer is broken because I cant seem to connect to the internet, and want to buy a new computer.
I tell them they have to upgrade to atleast a quad core with 4 gb of ram, and that gives me about another 6 months to a year before i get their next phone call saying they broke their computers....again.

Re:load of BS

[tompaulco]

but when you are an engeneer who uses the computer all
Four years ago I didn't even know how to SPELL engeneer and now I ARE one!

Re:load of BS

[hesaigo999ca]

of course typos are allowed , what do you mean I have to be precise in what I do....
I are not being too silly

I read this same article like 8 years ago

[Verdatum]

More wasted research money! Before even reading TFA I could've written it on pure conjecture. "If ur a dummy who doesn't know how to use email notifications or filters, you waste ur timez!"

Newsflash, if you don't like your job, you'll FIND something to waste your time (*cough* slashdot), and no amount of research or policy enforcement will stop that. And if you're being interrupted by actual important emails, then they're actual important emails, and the interruptions are necessary and justified.

Peopleware covered this a long time ago

[lwriemen]

Reimmersion time is actually 15 minutes in the Peopleware (DeMarco and Lister) quoted studies. This applies to all interruptions, email notifications, phone calls, IM, co-workers/bosses, etc. What I found funny about the article was that it was advocating technologies like IM as somehow being less intrusive. It was also concentrating on people consciously checking email rather than actually being interrupted by it, which means they probably weren't being too productive in the first place.

I avoid it.

[Arc the Daft]

Skydiving can be dangerous. I avoid it. Rodeo clowning can be dangerous. I avoid it. Not tying your shoes can be dangerous. I avoid it. Checking my email can be dangerous? Oh noes! Now I'm *really* screwed.

Actually it is a huge boost to productivity

[filesiteguy]

I get between 300 and 500 emails a day at work. (This does not include the openSUSE emails, the catalog emails and the Apache emails I get on my home accounts.) Of course, I have my trusty blackberry always at my side.

Instead of a distraction, I find email a productivity enhancement. I always know what is going on with my staff or my customers, and I can handle situations immediately. My inbox - and I just got in to work - has 35 items in it. After I resume work (away from /. distractions) I will empty my inbox and catalog everything. Using David Allen's GTG techniques (http://www.davidco.com/) I manage emails easily whenever I need to. I have discrete folders for anything that takes longer than 30 seconds to read and review. When done, they get archived or deleted. What doesn't need further review gets deleted immediately.

I especially enjoy those five to ten minutes before a meeting gets going where I can review my current emails (sent while I was in the last meeting) and do this process even on my blackberry.

Now, I have cut down on reading/writing emails while on the freeway. :P

Who needs to CHECK their email?

[bistromath007]

If you're not using something that gives you alerts when you actually have one that isn't in your spam folder, you deserve whatever you get for living in 1998.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Hijacked Public]

And other humans just in general.

I always keep all of the communication apps I have running on a different desktop from than the actual work I am doing. And turn off all automatic beeping and rectangle blitting to the active desktop. That lets me prioritize messages rather than someone else.

It takes me less than 64 second for my next move

[gsgriffin]

When interrupted by an email, I can easily determine my next move at work in about 30 seconds. But, then again, Solitare isn't that hard to lose focus on.

Heh.

[vegiVamp]

I already unlearned that behaviour years ago; but just today, I installed an out-of-browser gmail checker so I can keep my browser closed when I don't need it, in hopes of reducing temptation from gmail as well as /. and other devilish sites.

I still need my browser too much for other stuff, though, so the temptation to quickly parse the rss feeds for new stuff is still there. I have a long way to go :-)

Close the inbox and phones on do not disturb

[daeg]

I switch -- I answer the phone for two hours and then put it on do not disturb for two. I only check e-mail about once every 30 minutes and make sure my inbox has 0 items. If I am not responding to something immediately, it gets flagged for follow up, categorized, and moved. I delete 90% of e-mail -- most of it is useless. Anything that won't be taken care of within a day or two gets put on a TODO/task list or delegated out.

Works great for me.

I always get my reward

[Nursie]

But then I'm a geek and have set up a random-futurama-quote autoresponder for when I get *that* bored.

Re:I always get my reward

[cayenne8]

I don't think email is any more distracting that talking ...in fact, I find it less so. I do at times carry on almost real time conversations on email, it is quiet (no one else in cube land can hear what you're saying). But, if someone comes to talk to me....the conversation at times goes on longer than needed, and not everyone takes the hint that you are finished and leave...

Nice thing with email, it is asynchronous, you can leave a conversation hanging if you have to do something else which is more difficult to do conversing in person or on the phone.

While I know that supposedly only old people in korea use email, I find it one of my best tools for conversing with people, often multiple ones at the same time. And since nowhere I've ever worked allowed IMs due to security reasons, I've never really used them. But, pretty much everywhere has email...

Re:I always get my reward

[Brain Damaged Bogan]

"And since nowhere I've ever worked allowed IMs due to security reasons, I've never really used them"
at my workplace we use Spark: http://www.igniterealtime.org/projects/spark/index.jsp
because the server is hosted on the intranet, so no real security issues and it's pretty damn handy for finding communicating across the office(s), much quicker responses than email.

Very context-dependent

[argStyopa]

I think the study's results are extremely age-, habit-, and context-dependent.

1) I'm a freight forwarder, dealing with time-sensitive issues all the time, and receiving around 150 emails a day (not counting junk/spam/personal). If it took me a minute or more to return to the context of what I was doing every time I answer an email, I'd never leave work. Perhaps for people in fields where email isn't a constant thing, it would be more distracting, but certainly not for people where email IS their job.

2) I'm 41. I've been 'on the internet' since at least the mid 90's (cred: I had a 5-digit slashdot ID at one time but forgot the login/pw....) so for me email is a very usual way to communicate, I prefer it. Even I have to admit that I'm baffled by how well younger people (teens or 20-somethings) can multitask through 8 different chat threads simultaneous. Yes, like many my age, I try to tell myself that they aren't able to think 'as deeply' in that experience, but in honesty that's a rationalization and they may simply be much better at that 'style' of comunication. For someone like my parents, I'd say yes, an email may be very jarring but for my generation and younger, not so much.

So while I can accept that a lawyer or researcher in his or her mid fifties or 60's, on hearing the 'ding' of email and breaking out of what they were doing to read it may indeed take over a minute to get back into the groove of what they were doing, I don't believe this result is average for most computer-literate people today.

Re:Very context-dependent

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're a freight forwarder, be careful that you're not part of a "reshipping fraud" ring... I already got bitten as a seller on ebay, by shipping an item that had been purchased with a hacked PayPal account, to a reshipper who had been recruited through monster.com...

Re:Very context-dependent

[value_added]

Even I have to admit that I'm baffled by how well younger people (teens or 20-somethings) can multitask through 8 different chat threads simultaneous. Yes, like many my age, I try to tell myself that they aren't able to think 'as deeply' in that experience, but in honesty that's a rationalization and they may simply be much better at that 'style' of comunication.

I think your rationalisation is fully justified and "multi-tasking", to the extent it doesn't relate to the differences between the sexes, is a fraud perpetuated by those who can't manage their time (or the time of others), and substitute superficial involvement with meaningful activity.

I'll stipulate that every successive generation may be slightly different than the last, but those differences are minor. And then, perceived abilities or gains in one area are typically offset by losses elsewhere. You think using a keyboard to type things in multiple program windows is a skill? Not unless you can do so in a coherent manner without spelling or grammar errors and multiple revisions that were unheard of in the days when people relied on typewriters.

Are the kids today more computer literate? Hardly. General computer literacy may be more widespread, but the younger crowd is transfixed by gadgets, and their knowledge is superficial when compared with that of folks in the industry I know ten or twenty years ago. A collection of trivia is nothing more than trivia, just as information (no matter how quickly you can click and point to obtain it) can never be synonymous with knowledge.

Can they walk and chew gum better than we did? I spent years listening to music while doing homework until I learned how that habit is, and always will be, a Really Stupid way to do anything.

Doing anything properly requires time, effort and concentration. Remove those elements, and you become the equivalent of the guy making the rounds at a party and not noticing that everyone having a real conversation has stepped outside, or left altogether.

As for those using email clients that require "checking for email" and do so at frequent intervals, I'd suggest they consider measuring their productivity using a different metric. If I tried justifying my salary by the rate at which inter-office memos were filed in my wastebasket (to use a historically quaint metaphor), I'd be laughed out the door.

Re:Very context-dependent

[argStyopa]

As much as I may agree to every one of your points as cogent, well-reasoned, and accurate....I still can't help but wonder if we're just repeating the eternal mantra of "those damn kids!" 2008 version (tm).

Email is so...

[Anonymous Coward]

... five minutes ago.

Shirking our responsibility.

[sidragon.net]

Email is not “dangerous”; this sensationalism diverts attention from the real problem. It is more accurate to state: some people lack the self-control to avoid becoming consumed with it and many other things. Similar arguments may be made with alcohol, video games, and Slashdot, but the excessive commentary on these would quickly exhaust us. Simply acknowledge the unpleasant observation that people who do not accept personal responsibility for running amok are dangerous, and that sometimes includes you and me.

True story

[jeroen94704]

A previous co-worker of mine was always complaining about how all the email he got from the project lead was so distracting, and keeping him from getting work done. This surprised me, as I wasn't having this issue, even though we were on the same team, and getting essentially the same email. At some point though, we were was sitting behind his computer together when an email came in. That's when it became clear he had enabled every notification possible in Outlook: For every incoming email, a sound played, an icon started flashing in the system tray and a system-modal dialog popped up. When I pointed out that he might get a quieter day by disabling all notifications and simply checking his email manually a few times a day (As I do myself), he became very defensive and wouldn't hear about it. His argument was that some emails required his immediate attention, so he should know about their arrival instantly.

Re:True story

[ZerdZerd]

You can enable the beep and flash-thingy based on rules. So messages with "urgent" in them will get noticed immediately.

People

[smoker2]

This says more about those people than it does about email. If they can't keep focussed on a subject without their mind wandering off because of incoming mail, then they need other remedies. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you must. Honestly people complain about all the demands on their time, and then deliberately put themselves in situations that increase those demands. Sounds to me like they are engineering an excuse to do less work.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[somersault]

The best/worst part of TFA (and I couldn't really keep myself reading after this pile of crap) is this:

Mr Reynolds has even begun to think of email as rude and invasive, preferring to use tools such as Twitter and Flickr. He also uses social networking sites such as Dopplr, which tracks people's travel, to find out if they are away before he contacts them, and status alerts from instant messenger or Twitter to help him decide if now is a good time to interrupt them. Other tools, such as blogs and wikis, have decreased the amount of email that he sends and receives, while RSS feeds and recommendations from friends and colleagues allow him to keep abreast of the most important news.

How the heck is checking multiple social networking sites, blogs and RSS feeds going to be any less distracting or addictive than having one place to check all your messages? Using multiple sites in such a manner means that every single message you send then becomes a mini adventure in itself, which is a surefire way to lose your train of thought. And since when was sending someone an email 'interrupting' them? Email will only interrupt you if you have a client open and set to alert you, or have been stupid enough to leave email enabled on your phone while doing whatever it is that requires you not to be interrupted.

Desktop Alert

[Ohio Calvinist]

I think this research should inform how mail clients (in particular those at work) are created, and how mail notifications are displayed to the user. In my own experience; I think that I've become more productive having turned off the audio notification when I get new mail, because when that bell chimes, by instinct if it were, I stop what I am doing and switch to my mail client, which definately upsets my train of thought for at least 60+ seconds. I've found the best method is to use the desktop notification feature with Outlook (we're an Exchange shop). I find I can quickly glance to see if the message is "worthy" of reading immediately, and get back to work without upsetting the thought at hand (I'm a programmer) and paying the penalty.

I have to say; I think the most absolute distracting thing is a phone ringing, beit mine or someone in the cube farm. When I recieve a call, my thought processes are rattled for several minutes and most of the time when I hang up I find I get up to get coffee, etc. Even hearing someone elses phone is is enough to break a train of thought.

I would give anything if there were some way to have a silent, maybe on screen or vibrating FOB or something, notification to pick up the phone; and the office made everyone use them.

At my last gig the helpdesk phone rang to our area incase the HD (2 people) were out or busy and it drove me absolutely nuts; and I am sure it cost me literally weeks worth of productivity.

Re:Desktop Alert

[UCSCTek]

I was going to post on how high I thought the 64 seconds of distraction estimate was, yet you seem to find it reasonable. I'm usually programming or analyzing data when I check e-mail (which tends to be every several minutes) and it certainly takes nowhere near a full minute to get back into my last task--for example, I just switched back to setting up some jobs to run right now and I'd guess it took maybe 5-10 seconds before I was full speed again. Switching from that back to writing this post was essentially fluid. So, I guess some people are just naturally better at multitasking, which points to a potential flaw in the article: if people are checking their e-mail with frequency related to their multitasking ability, then there is no issue with inefficiency.

Re:Desktop Alert

[Anonymous Coward]

I would give anything if there were some way to have a silent, maybe on screen or vibrating FOB or something,

How about giving a couple bucks to your local office store for a headset?

The problem I see (& this is outside work as well) is that most people have been trained Pavlovian style to drop everything when the phone rings, somebody knocks on their door, etc. and this has expanded to include email notifications whether visible, audible, or sensory.

The solution is to untrain yourself- when you're at home LET the phone ring, no matter how bad it bothers your OCD impulse to answer it no matter what. Allow those messages to come in without action, soon you will be free of the stimulus-response urge and can stay focused on the task at hand.

Also consider using some noise-canceling headphones.

Oh brother

[jav1231]

This is bean-counter doomsdayer mentality. These are the same bozo's that try to quantify how much time you spend tuning your radio to a station or watching TV and the like. You can't get that time back. People simply aren't going to sit at a desk and use every second of their work day doing robotic activity, get over it. Humankind has already decided that the benefits of email are viable regardless. People like this either need a life or a place to go that's really quiet so they can count grains of sand in a jar.

Dangerous?

[Bonewalker]

Unless you are firefighter stopping in the middle of five-alarm fire, a cop, or an EMT, etc., I don't really think a distraction from work is "dangerous". Just an incendiary word thrown into the title to make people read the article or visit the site. Lame.

Visiting slashdot is now dangerous, too. Luckily, it is only sometimes lame.

Re:Dangerous?

[mjwx]

Zombies with chainsaws - dangerous.

Email? - not so much...

Zombies with chainsaws as legs, hilarious but still dangerous.

Email, still not so.

Email with chainsaws as legs, might be dangerous but still not as much as the zombies.

More dangerous items...

[need4mospd]

Now that we've finally established emails as dangerous, let's get back to this horseless carriage issue...

Oh shit!

[sjonke]

Thanks for reminding me - I was suppose to be checking my email.

Only true for the common mind

[HikingStick]

For those of us with ADD, that 8.5 hour figure isn't accurate. For the ADD mind, email can mean one of two things. It's either:

1) business as usual (we're still getting things done and may even be more productive when our minds get these wonderful little rabbit trails), or

2) we get absolutely nothing important done (so that 8.5 hour figure would actually refer to weekly productive time.

Then again, for a minority of the ADD crowd (myself included), Slashdot takes the place of email in serving as that uber-stimulus that actually helps keep me running at peak efficiency.

Good Grief

[dcollins]

Every 5 minutes? Must be some alien life form. I can barely drag myself to check my email once every 2 days or so. (And that's almost my only contact with the outside world -- no cell phone, no IM, either.)

MailTrust Add

[genner]

Anyone else find it funny that MailTrust has an advert attached to this story

Interesting

[db32]

Typically it is the reverse for me. I sit around doing unproductive things until an email interrupts giving me something productive to do. Most of my emails initiate work for me, system monitoring emails, project starter emails, etc.

Good to see news that's only 6 years old re-posted

[DocJohn]

The study that talks about the 64 second recovery time was published in *2002*. How is this news today??!

Oh, and it included an astounding 16 subjects that worked at one company.

Yeah, that's good data to base generalized conclusions on about all email usage and behavior.

Women vs. Men

[EchaniDrgn]

One statistic that I would find possibly revealing would be the amount of time it takes for Men vs Women to check their email and get back on track.

My wife can do half a dozen things at a time and seems to have very little trouble multi-tasking. I on the other hand need to stop one train of thought and start another before even responding to simple questions like, "Are you hungry?"

I say possibly revealing since it may be that there is no difference when averaged out over a larger population, but my instinct say this might be one place that male and female habits differ quite a lot.

breif message on the screen...

[JoelisHere]

Another solution might be the notification system Growl (growl.info), which puts up a brief message on the screen with details such as the sender and subject line while the user is in other programs. Presently only available for Mac OS X, a version is being tested for Windows...

That functionality already exists in Outlook.

Addicted? Me?

[Eg0Death]

Naaaaw. I'm not addicted. I can stop anytime I want! Why, I once went . . . hold on, something just came into my Gmail . . . . .

I'm always getting interrupted by email

[Cro Magnon]

I'll be sitting at my work desk reading /. when MS OutHouse pops a message saying that my boss sent an email telling me to get back to work. I hate email.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Because he is using more stuff he thinks that he is less distracted

So don't check it constantly

[The Second Horseman]

Have some self-control. Don't enable email notification features or applications. Don't have your Blackberry set to vibrate or beep when you get an email. When you're at a natural break in what you're doing (need a bio-break, have to talk to someone, just need to take a minute and stretch) check it at that point. Log out of your IM client or set your status to "away" or "busy" when needed.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[BrokenHalo]

How the heck is checking multiple social networking sites, blogs and RSS feeds going to be any less distracting or addictive than having one place to check all your messages?

Fair point. I've managed to put some distance between myself and my email by connecting all my email accounts to Thunderbird, and just firing up the client two or three times a day. I don't really care if anyone hates me for it, they can always call me if the matter is urgent.

Slashdot is my major distraction, I waste WAY too much time here. :-) At least I don't do Facebook though; That really does seem to swallow up peoples' lives...

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Bent Mind]

Reading the bit you quoted, I'd say that Mr Reynolds has only recently discovered that Outlook isn't a Web browser. The next step is the realization that you don't have to open the message as soon as it arrives.

I especially liked:

which tracks people's travel, to find out if they are away before he contacts them, and status alerts from instant messenger or Twitter to help him decide if now is a good time to interrupt them

My IM client is almost always set to busy. However, if you need to contact me, please send me an e-mail and I will respond as soon as I am able.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[DaMoisture]

Yes, but that is becoming more and more popular, especially among the younger generation. A text message, for example, is seen as far less invasive than a phone call. Even worse, replying to a text in an environment where one would not make a phone call is not seen as rude or disrespectful. Just because it is a useful tool does not mean it should replace phone calls.

What is wrong with this guy when he sees email, the most easily ignored form of communication of those he listed, as more rude and invasive than tracking someone's travel?

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Gryphoenix]

Sounds like a quest to me! http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/09/0527214

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Anonymous Coward]

"...use tools such as Twitter and Flikr..."

he has another sock-puppet? i knew he was a tool, but jeez!, it's getting hard to keep track of that guy....

posting AC to protect moderation...

Ya, right. And when I was a kid....

[Jerry]

some 60 years ago I remember a study which proved that Pepsi Cola caused Polio. It was a statistical study correlating the consumption of Pepsi with the rise of Polio. Statistics -- the currently favorite method of lying.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Crazy Taco]

ow the heck is checking multiple social networking sites, blogs and RSS feeds going to be any less distracting or addictive than having one place to check all your messages?

Great point, but perhaps an even bigger one is this: How is having twitter (and IM programs, for that matter) constantly popping up status alerts going to be less intrusive? Not only do you now have multiple programs popping up alerts, instead of just your email client, you also have moved from email to programs that are by their nature much more likely to cause interruptions. Twitter is named after bird twittering, in other words, it's supposed to work like birds, who are CONSTANTLY chirping and sending short messages. How could that possibly be less distracting? Instead of a summary email message you will probably get 50 random small updates from twitter. This guy sounds insane.

64 seconds...or?

[Anonymous Coward]

so what, is 64 seconds longer than the distraction by surfing to another webpage? or a phone call? or a hot girl walking by your window?

If anything, I find email is a heck of a lot less distracting than people calling or even IMing.

As always, context matters more than anything else and quoting "64 seconds" without relative measures is both meaningless and misleading.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[somersault]

Personally I agree with the texts being less invasive - similar to email. You can check them whenever you have time, or send someone a message in a lecture where they wouldn't be able to talk.

I would still consider it rude to text in a formal meeting, or if you're always texting while sitting around with your friends. Occasional texting is fine.

Funnily enough, one of my friends used to always complain at people for texting when they were with him, but since he got his own mobile a few years ago he was the person in the group that was texting the most often!

attention shifts increase production from ADDers

[Iowan41]

Tis true. One size does not fit all.

IM's are more disruptive

[Anonymous Coward]

There is an easy fix: just don't check your email so often. Addiction is the real problem, but I think IM is more disruptive than email. We use Skype in our office, and although Skype is a great tool for communication, I find it to be more disruptive.

__

Beleive nothing you hear, half of what you see, and everything you track with a vehicle tracking device.

I get dinged on that at every "review".

[khasim]

Fortunately, I don't care about reviews any more.

I use email because:
#1. It is self-documenting. If you ask me the same question next week, I'll forward you the email I sent you last week.

#2. It is self-documenting. If you want to claim that you didn't agree with something next week, I'll forward you the email where you did agree with it last week.

#3. It requires a LOT more thought than talking. That means that people have to THINK about what they want to say rather than calling me and uh, well, I was, uh, that thing, it, uh, was, uh ....... Why waste MY time for YOU to get YOUR thoughts in order?

#4. It allows me to send you lists like this. I can identify each point and if you have points to add, you can add them. You can reply to my points, by number.

#5. All of the above WHEN IT IS CONVENIENT FOR ME. (and when you consider it convenient for you). You have a RECORD that YOU involved me. Now the ball is in my court. I will get to it as soon as I deal with the issues that are more important. And I expect the same from you.

FUCK "immediate human contact". The people I've encountered are (generally) not pre-disposed to clear communication. They are easily distracted and LOVE personal anecdotes and trivia. That's fine when I'm at lunch or grabbing coffee or whatever. NOT when I'm trying to fix a problem before it impacts the entire company.

When I'm working, I am WORKING. I expect the same from you.

Put it in email. That way we'll have documentation for who was involved in the decision, what the decision was, why we decided that way, what criteria we considered and what options we discarded.

If we have a "face to face" meeting, then SOMEONE is going to have to take notes about that and THEN write up those notes and get everyone's sign-off on them so they can be used as documentation.

My current CIO hates the way I use email. I believe it is because he hates having a papertrail of his decisions.

Re:I get dinged on that at every "review".

[Kidbro]

Every now and then I run into a post that manages to express my own thoughts in a way much better than I would have been able to do myself. Yours was such a post. I'm glad I'm not the only one thinking exactly the things you just posted...

Re:I get dinged on that at every "review".

[cerberusss]

My current CIO hates the way I use email. I believe it is because he hates having a papertrail of his decisions.

Actually, I'm one of those people like your CIO. Often, e-mail is convenient for the reasons you describe, but I find it sometimes lacking -- there's no feedback other than a reply, no discussion or suggestions, etc.

As for paper trail, I guess I don't feel the need for that as much.

Re:I get dinged on that at every "review".

[cerberusss]

I found GP pretty angsty. Why bother with a "paper trail" for all sorts of trivial stuff.

Re:I get dinged on that at every "review".

[Raenex]

So you're one of THOSE people that NEED to emphasize LOTS of words. Your boss probably hates you because you come off as angry and anal retentive.

dangerous compared to what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe people sometimes need a distraction every five minutes. Maybe they would have wandered off to the water cooler otherwise or done who-knows-what.

Dangerous?

[deepgrey]

Zombies with chainsaws - dangerous.

Email? - not so much...

Phone vs. email

[ShannaraFan]

I answer the phone for exactly five "people" - my boss, our NOC staff, my wife, or one of my kids. I'll also answer if I'm expecting the call. Otherwise, if I don't recognize the number, and I'm not expecting the call, piss off. That rule applies both at home and at work. If you want me to do something for you, send the request via email, I don't do this just to be a prick - my mailbox is my to-do list, my journal, my archive, and my audit trail.

Boss: "Why did we drop TableX from the database, and who's the idiot that made that decision?"
Me: Let's just type TableX into Google Desktop - oh, here's an email from October 2006, from you, directing us to drop that table, because we're using it to store credit card info in violation of PCI regulations. Any further questions?

I only check my email every few weeks

[Skapare]

... and so I've missed quite many opportunities to refinance my house, to save big money on male enhancement products, and help an ailing Nigerian prince transfer his inheritance to my bank account.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[stabiesoft]

I especially think texting while driving is far less disruptive than phoning while driving. Who needs to see where they are going????

Cranial Calcification

[DynaSoar]

"It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email."

If you can't control your own behavior to the point that you have to react to an email as soon as it arrives (the only way I can see 'interruption' being relevant) then I imagine the figure is approximately accurate. However, most people manage to choose when to read email and when to stop. Those with that sort of control also tend to read several in a session, so even if it took them a whole ohmygodfreaking minute and four seconds to "recover", that's a minute+ more than the 10 or 15 or 20 minutes they spent sorting through, reading and responding as appropriate.

You've got to pity the poor boneheads who can't operate via their own free will and can only immediately react to email stimuli. You've also got to pity the poor boneheads who think a minute and a few seconds is a significant amount of time. Imagine the terror they must feel when confronted with having to spend several whole minutes taking a shit. They're probably the ones who don't wash their hands after since that'd take up another minute or so.

It takes me at least 64 seconds to recover from reading such a ridiculous article. Stop it.

Email or Slashdot?

[spazoid12]

Is this quote about Email or Slashdot??

So with email, usually when I check it there is nothing interesting, but every so often there's something wonderful...

Oh no!

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[pacificleo]

rarely ??its rewarding only on the day you get the paycheck not before not after

Wasting my time?

[Anachragnome]

I'm seeing a LOT of posts from people that think they are wasting their time here on Slashdot.

Personally, I can't think of a more educational, insightful and amusing source of information on the web today. The moderation helps me sort the wheat from the chaff, and sometimes the wheat is pure gold.

Do you folks REALLY think your wasting your time here? Really?

Easy solution

[adolf]

Total non-problem. Just check e-mail once, twice, maybe three times a day - no problem. Then, the context switch between e-mail and whatever else isn't very expensive because it simply doesn't happen very often. I keep my mail reader closed until I'm prepared to spend some time using it.

Maybe I'm old-fashioned (and indeed, I've been using the deprecated, hyphenated form of "e-mail" here on purpose), but that's what works for me. I treat e-mail as a non-realtime medium for things which needn't happen instantaneously.

For conversations or questions that need to happen in a more real-time fashion and that are worthy of interrupting either myself or someone else, I pick up the phone, or send an SMS.

*shrug*

CA used to limit email access

[Trip6]

At CA you could only look at mail between 9 - 10 AM, between noon and 1 PM, and between 3-4 PM. This limited the amount of time people spent refreshing their email. We used to hate the policy but now I see that it makes sense. Email is supposed to be store and forward, not real time communication.

It's YOU!

[CorporateSuit]

It takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought

You must be the guy, in front of me in line, who spends 13 minutes to order an extra value meal because he's too stupid to know what he wanted to eat before leaving his house to go to the restaurant. I've finally found the man who slows my life to a crawl because of his raw incompetence and inability to organize his thoughts enough to dribble a coherent sentence out of his mouth when there is a flashing sign behind him. While the rest of the world spins in 7-second increments of attention, you, sir, sit there for over a MINUTE at a green light trying to remember whether your car is automatic or manual transmission because your favorite song popped onto the radio. Where are you? I'm coming after you right now. With an axe! I guarantee it will take me less than 64 seconds to remember what I was going to do with it when I find you.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[DeadDecoy]

I actually find the phone more disruptive than email because it has the ringing nag-factor. I tend to use email (and slashdot commenting) as a mini-break between mental tasks. The main difference is that when I get mentally fatigued I tend to do something non-productive anyways. Sure some technologies can be a serious distraction for the obsessive compulsives among us, but are people's performance really that great after working 4-8 hours straight with no break. I actually find these articles a little annoying in that they assume the human is an automaton from which you have to extract maximum efficiency to get anything worthwhile done.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[recharged95]

I'd say the loss of "train of thought" is common from email, IM, social networking sites, and newpapers--basically any online tool that poses as a information aggregate is distracting from the task at hand (unless the task is to socialize). Cause you need to focus on filtering (i.e. understand by thinking about the details) the aggregated information to the point the information is actionable. That's why you lose train of thought as you go back to the task you were doing beforehand.

Done with writing this post, now back to work in 5 minutes...

Re:Good to see news that's only 6 years old re-pos

[commodoresloat]

The study that talks about the 64 second recovery time was published in *2002*.

They must have meant 64 months.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[networkconsultant]

Even then it's soured by taxes :P

Definitely need tp phase out email from the work p

[Anonymous Coward]

http://tinyurl.com/6zngyy

E-mail is not the problem

[Xugumad]

The problem is a continual stream of things that need doing that interrupt from what you're doing. That they happen to arrive by e-mail is co-incidental.

Department policy - only check email every 2 hours

[jroysdon]

We actually have a department policy that we are are to check email every 2 hours and respond to immediate/emergency type requests at that time. Every 4 hours we have to deal with non-critical items and respond to everything (deal with it, schedule it, get it where it needs to go). We're not to check email any other time, but stay on task.

I think it's great. I had to turn off my vibrate for work email on my Blackberry, and keep my Outlook minimized so I don't see new emails, but it helps a ton to keep focused.

We also don't take calls except from within our department (which must be urge to call or IM, otherwise must be emailed), or from customers who we're expecting a call from. All other calls go to VM (which is integrated with email) and follow the 2 hour/4 hour rule.

You'll be amazed at how much more work you get done. And how much more you respond to everything, just with a 2 or 4 hour delay in response.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[omfglearntoplay]

I like email way more than phonecalls. I save lots of time, although occasionally email does distract me. Which is why i turned off that evil outlook mail icon at the bottom right of my screen. it was hugely distracting for me. Now I just check email when I want to (mostly).

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost all email (except for mailing lists that can be filtered by the mail client) appears at first glance to be personally directed to me, so I feel compelled to at least skim through it when it arrives. Tweets and feeds are broadcast, I can safely ignore them unless I'm really interested in the sender/content at that precise moment.

IMO everything that is not personal 1:1 communication should be kept out of email, because it costs too much of my attention to filter broadcast from important emails. Cramming disparate kinds of communication into one channel is a relic.

Another reason for checking email too often is the urge to keep my inbox tidy - delete most messages, move some to subfolders, reply to really important ones. Part of it is just anal, like the compulsive emptying of the recycler on my desktop. Part of it is fear from prolonged email sessions - if taking care of email takes more than 1-2 minutes it really starts feeling like work.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[harmlessdrudge]

Exactly. Stop your email interrupting you. Let Twitter do it instead.

It's called distraction

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is this even news. Back when the internet wasn't even there there already was a word for it: distraction. It doesn't apply to e-mail, it applies to all other kinds of botherings: telephone calls, people jumping into your office for no good reason, ... Maybe the only thing that has changed is how easy it is now to distract people and how socially accepted it has become, versus for instance reading an e-mail the day after it was sent. If true, that's an incredibly stupid development.

Re:It's called distraction

[Dan541]

I remember when it used to take several minutes for an email to arrive in an inbox on the other side of the world.

Another interruption

[Gazzonyx]

The other thing I can't stand, personally, is when someone comes over to speak with you and you hold a finger up, as if to say "just one minute" (you've been on a code section for 45 minutes and you know you're juggling eggs to the max of your ability); three lines of code should finish up and you can let it all expire and get swapped out. Loudly they blurt out "Hey, have you seen my coffee mug? I can't find it."

Poof. You watch every variable and interaction disintegrate from your minds eye as you, still holding up a finger to signal that you're busy, stammer, "...mug?... Have I... seen your... coffee mug. No, I don't even know what it looks like." With that you spend the next 15 minutes trying to figure out how everything was working together coming down to the function return.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Dan541]

What is wrong with this guy when he sees email, the most easily ignored form of communication of those he listed, as more rude and invasive than tracking someone's travel?

Really?

After a phone call Im much more likely to be reached via email than any other method, unless I don't have my laptop in front of me in which case SMS moves from 3rd place upto second.

The only good way to reach me besides phone is by email, but I have always refused to take email on a handheld device so sometimes it takes a little longer than a phone call to respond.

Completly absurd

[smartdreamer]

So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8 1/2 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.

That is absurd. 8 1/2 hours represents losing 64 seconds every five minutes on a 40 hours basis. That means that in each period of five minutes, you'll lose couples of minutes checking your mail (opening app or login, looking to your account(s), etc.) and replying. After it you'll need 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption. That leaves you 0 to 10 seconds of productive time. In other words, if you have a meeting or you play some game for an hour and can't check your mail, you need to check them on a shorter period in order to compensate.

Nobody go check his email every 5 mins. It would be stupid to do so. Wait for alerts you fool! If you were waiting for a specific information by mail, it may even save you time or wake you up!

What makes me waste time is studies like that and the time I take to comment those. Now, what was I doing..?

a virtual bubble of silence

[Gr8Apes]

Email is great. I only answer it on odd mornings. Turn off all those silly popups and sounds, and it is quite unobtrusive. The same thing goes for IM, and your cell's SMS notifications.

Computers and Hypnosis

[LM741N]

I read about a hypnotist who used the computer paradigm to try and prove that hypnosis was real. You take a person and tell them to be on the internet for 10 minutes without any clocks around and removing any on the computer. Then after they decide they have had 10 minutes, they find out the real time. Well, it usually ends up being more than 1/2 hour. .

The brain when subjected to computer usage loses all track of time. It goes into warp speed. Anyway, I forget EXACTLY how he tied this to hypnosis, but I can kind of see what he was getting at. I suppose he was trying to say that the computer hypnotizes people as time shifts and people seem to want to believe everything they read on the internet ie. they are highly open to suggestion.

Great, the efficiency nazis are at it again

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod troll if you would, but I am sick and tired of studies like these screaming about how this or that is wasting peoples time.

1) People are not all the same

2) Bullshit meetings and office politics are far more distracting than e-mail.

Re:brief message on the screen...

[QuietEarth]

Growl.
IMO, Growl brings one of the worst features of Windows to OS X. Stupid pop-ups interrupting me all the time.

Uh, not

[The Cisco Kid]

Some of us dont send (or receive) invites or juicy gossip, or other 'entertainment' via email. Some of us use it for, oh, I dunno, actual communication? You know, like 'writing letters' - only without the pen, paper, and the 1 to 3 day wait of physical transport.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[somersault]

Okay so how do you propose a company sends out important messages and notifications if not by a group email? When I'm going to perform maintenance I send out an email a day or two in advance to the whole domain. 1:1 communications IMO can be done via email or IM, though email tends to be easier to keep track of and provides more accessible records.

Work occasionally should feel like work, otherwise you may be doing it wrong ;) I only started using subfolders for certain projects this year. My inbox is mostly just a big blancmange! If I need to I just use search or sort by name, etc.

i suppose we havent

[nimbius]

considered timewasters that drop by your office and do the same thing as an unwanted email? or that fundraiser envelope circulated around the workplace for janes son's little league team, or fscking avon mags that just sort of appear on desks.

for that matter, what about real mail? the vendor shwag and 'publications' we all see in our office mail?

I dont know if we can fault email entirely for our productivity lapse. remember, theres always dilbert.com and, uhm, /.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[sootman]

Ha! I *wish* email was as good as Slashdot. If I had the option to only view my inbox at "+5" I'd save *years* of my life. :-)

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[NateTech]

If your inbox is somehow associated with direct customer support requests, you do have to respond when it arrives.

Thus, you're "watching" the alert boxes and/or the client all the time, and then the usual "noise" e-mails from co-workers and of course, the boss, get more "attention" than they should.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[NateTech]

Plan ahead for important items -- most of which are about things that won't happen for more than 24 hours, and put them on an internal company website.

The only "time sensitive" things are often IT announcements about outages, etc... and even most of those go in the bit-bucket.

I typically don't give a crap if e-mail isn't working in Timbuktu. Only IT and the users there do. I usually DO care if the outage is going to take an extended period of time, like into the next day.

Since that's rare... I'm running out of things that might be "time sensitive" enough to even warrant e-mail notification.

Generally most "company-wide" announcements really don't need to be, anyway.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[somersault]

Well personally if I'm going to be knocking out important services like VPN or email I sent out an email a couple of days in advance.

For critical things like that, it seems a bit weird to just leave it to a random announcements page that people have to remember to check, and that mostly will never have anything important on it. Our company is pretty small, only about 40 people using computers in total, but we have 3 offices and several road users, so email is the one thing that you can guarantee everyone is going to check at least once a day, and IMO it's the best method for notifying people of important events.

An announcement or policy board with fixed company events would make sense, but for maintenance operations which often can only be scheduled a couple of days in advance (I myself was ready to make a change but had to wait for our ISP to be ready, and after waiting a month for them to be ready I wanted to get the changes done as soon as possible, so scheduled it for 2 days after they were all sorted out), you can't guarantee to reach people.

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[Bent Mind]

If your inbox is somehow associated with direct customer support requests, you do have to respond when it arrives.

If your in-box is somehow associated with direct customer support requests, your job is reading e-mail. How is doing your job distracting you from doing your job?

Thus, you're "watching" the alert boxes and/or the client all the time, and then the usual "noise" e-mails from co-workers and of course, the boss, get more "attention" than they should.

Your customer support requests aren't separate from your regular e-mail?

Re:Oh! I can't wait until they do a study like thi

[NateTech]

Unfortunately, not at my company. They've not implemented anything that intelligent yet, sadly.

I use client-side sorting techniques to address the problem, but it's not perfect.