KnowledgeForward

There is a lot of conversation about information stress and overload that I can fully get behind, but sometimes it’s taken in a direction that can be counterproductive.  First some things I do agree with:

People feeling deluged by the increasing amount of email, blogs, websites, etc. would generally benefit from stepping back and thinking hard about what they are doing and come up with processes and systems (personal attention management) to deal with it?

     Yes.

The amount of information and the number of channels it is used to launch at people are on a hyperbolic increase?

     Oh yeah.

Many people have fallen down a slippery slope of e-mail, IM, or texting habits that are causing stress and counterproductive behaviors?

     Hell, yes.

Organizations need to do more to understand how they use attentional technologies and capabilities and optimize them where it makes sense?

     Amen, brother.

Many people are finding it more difficult to sort through all the noise to find important information and make good decisions in a timely manner?

     Yes, yes, say it again!

I buy into all of that - I really do.  I’m not a member of Stowe Boyd’s “overload, schmoverload” club. But it seems like at the other extreme a “war on interruptions” was declared somewhere along the way that I just don’t buy into (for a typical example, see here).  How can I not be on that bandwagon when it seems like common sense?  While I believe information overload and information stress are under-diagnosed issues, an easily quotable number incorrectly pinning this problem on one specific cause (unnecessary interruptions) can overmedicate for one symptom while ignoring a more holistic approach.

Let me step back for a minute and explain why I disagree with statements like “The cost of unnecessary interruptions plus recovery time (time spent getting back to where you were, if indeed you do get back there) to the U.S. economy is $650 billion as of 2007. Most interruptions are neither urgent nor important. The above represents 28% of the knowledge worker’s day.” (This comes from a Basex newsletter).

First, everything seems to count as an interruption, from socializing to e-mail (e-mail just sits there until you check it - how is that an interruption? It’s a “distraction” like having a TV in your office. Turn off alerts if they annoy you).  Second, the time eaten up by interruptions is touted but not the time saved for those who felt impelled to interrupt.  Third, before the word “interruption” I’ve noticed the modifier “unnecessary” casually flickers in and out (such as when the cost figure was $588 billion and didn’t mention “unnecessary”) despite the complexity involved in making a such a value judgement about each interruption.

I think it’s important to have realistic goals about how much fat is there to be cut.  If 20% of that 28% really can’t be touched, then someone proposing a project to tackle info-stress or interruptions should make clear they are going after 8%, not 28%.  The dangers of pumping up the inefficiency being tackled are:

• There’s danger in promising more than they can fix (you’re setting yourself up for failure).
• There’s danger of causing a net loss by cutting beneficial (to the organization) interactions.  This must be tied to optimizing enterprise productivity - not the productivity of one worker at the expense of others.
• There are negative cultural impacts that could result if one thinks there is 28% waste out there and a major crackdown is needed.  Extreme problems tend to lead to extreme actions.
• There’s a danger in proposing a number that is so uncredible that an executive decision maker dismisses the bearer of the information (article, consultant, internal employee asking for a mandate to address the issue).  Executives are used to squeezing out a few percentage points of inefficiency. Being told there’s 28% sitting around just causes eye-rolling - I’ve seen it myself.

I wonder if these 28% and $650bn stats would stand a reversal test.  If totally unnecessary interruptions are costing this much, does that mean eliminating them would save 28% of time and $650bn?  If not, what’s going unsaid?  If you lump distractions and socializing with interruptions or play loose with “unnecessary” then you’re implying a payoff that is an order of magnitude more than what is really achievable.  There’s a base level of inefficiency to all human work that won’t be eliminated unless you get rid of the humans, so understand how much you really stand to gain as you tackle this problem.  Dividing the two terms out (and literally meaning “interruptions” when using that term) allows creation of metrics, ROI, and strategies to address that can be applied to interruptions but would be useless against distractions and socializing. I would focus on how to improve the effectiveness of information workers by pulling more important information forward and pushing less important information back rather than sending in an exterminator to blast all the (unnecessary) interruptions.

So, you’ve got some important documents, code, forms, or whatever that needs to get done and demands undivided attention?  You’ve started on this task a few times already, but keep getting interrupted or distracted and there’s still a daunting amount left?  What you need is a solid block of interrupt-free time and as few distractions as possible.  This can help you get the work done on time, with less stress and higher quality.  Ray Ozzie gave a good example of his approach in an interview: “When I was coding I had a four hour rule that said don’t code unless you know you’ll have four hours of contiguous time because otherwise you’re just introducing more bugs.”

Here are my tips on how to get that contiguous time:

Disclaimer: This has to be an important enough task that reasonable people will understand being blocked so you can get it done.  This assumes you aren’t expecting any positive interruptions by others working with you on the task that may interrupt with useful information.  So you’re working solo at this point. And finally, this assumes you aren’t on primary support for the air traffic control system, a surgeon, or Jack Bauer: you don’t get any interruptions that must be handled or someone dies, countries fall into enemy hands, billion dollar systems come crashing to a halt, etc.  Treat this like you’re on vacation or on a plane - somehow things would survive until you checked messages that night.

At Your Desk

• Close your email client. Yes, you can do it! Just click that close button in the upper right corner
• Turn off mobile devices (I recommend off, not just silence, so you’re less tempted to check them)
• Close every app on your desktop not related to the task at hand (that means no Twitter, no browser if you don’t need it for the task, etc.)
• Forward your phone to voicemail
• Set the “busy” indicator on your instant messaging client
• Block the time out on your calendar. I usually use “{project name} work time” or sometimes just “BLOCK”
• You may want to wear headphones and listen to some non-distracting music.  For me that means no lyrics, no radio since it has commercials, and nothing SO good that the music itself distracts me
• Some people put up a physical barrier.  If you have an office with a door, fine.  But I think a chair or piece of tape blocking a cube just invites giggles

Away From Your Desk

If you can get away from your desk, that’s even better.  Find a place no one will think to look for you and away from distractions.  Examples include reserving a small conference room (be courteous - if they are in high demand I wouldn’t do this), the company cafeteria during the afternoon, or sections of small tables and chairs tucked away in a wing of the building where people don’t know you.

Away From Your Office Building

If you need more than a day of time, trying to block everyone from coming by your office or cube may not work, so I’d recommend trying to work offsite.  This could be a coffee shop, library, or at home.  One time I was presented with a daunting coding task that was dropped on me with a 2 day deadline.  I negotiated that I wanted to work from home the next two days to get it done.  At that time, my home was very quiet and I’m pretty good about not getting distracted.  And I was the solo programmer on this and could work on a local version of the server. It worked beautifully and I was done on time and with no bugs in my code.

I hope this helps you.  I normally write about Enterprise Attention Management, but a little personal attention management now and then is a good thing too! If you have any additional tips to share, feel free to click on “comments”.

Today’s blog entry is from a comment I posted in Stowe Boyd’s blog where he poo-poo’ed the idea of information overload as a legitimate problem. I guess it’s summed up in the title of his post “Overload, Schmoverload: The Myth Of Personal Productivity“. Unfortunately his blog template seems to clip long link names, so here they are in full.

There’s no “right” answer in the debate between those that believe information overload will soon cause the heads of information workers will begin to pop like popcorn as they slump over in their fuzzy cubicles and those that believe we’re just adapting to the new flow.  I toggle back and forth between both points of view myself depending on what I’m facing at that time. 

What I propose is a focus on attention management (specifically what I’ve been writing about as enterprise attention management) that focuses on how enterprises can help information workers to pull the important messages forward and push the less important messages back.  Whether you see information overload as a crisis or just one more thing people are adapting to, improving efficiency is something everyone should be able to get behind.  I blogged about this at http://knowledgeforward.wordpress.com/2007/08/17/a-manifesto-free-definition-of-attention-management/.

And I fully agree with what I have called closed-loop analysis and you term as network productivity.  For those who learned not to be selfish in kindergarden, what is important is the value of interruptions to everyone in the loop as a whole, not just you.  If a 5 minute interruption of you for clarification saves me a day of work, you’d be a jerk to say no. I just posted a set of interruption patterns to try to clarify the good-and-bad nature of interruptions and the need to look at the closed-loop at http://ccsblog.burtongroup.com/collaboration_and_content/2008/06/interruption-mo.html.

I struck a blow against interruptions today by finally getting around to turning off e-mail alerts (also called “toasts”) in my Outlook e-mail client.  In my presentations on Enterprise Attention Management I describe how people will take action only when the cost of action (figuring out the software or getting new software) exceeds the cost of inaction (the annoyance factor).  Well, with e-mail alerts it finally hit that point for me. The number of times it distracted me has been far greater than the number of times it served its purpose by interrupting me to let me know something important had arrived.  So I decided it was time to hold the toasts.

Here’s how you do it in Outlook 2007:

I won’t detail instructions for other e-mail systems, but for those that have alerting, most of them have a way to turn it off.  For web-based e-mail it’s often in your IM client.  For example, with gmail the app itself it web-based, but if you use the Google Talk client it also pops up alerts by default.  You can turn those off by going to Settings, Notifications, and clicking off the checkbox for “Show notification” under “New email”.

Now if a co-worker’s e-mail sends me off on a wild goose chase it will still disrupt my day, but at least it won’t interrupt my train of thought since it will wait patiently until I check my e-mail before annoying me.  E-mail will always be a distraction, but it doesn’t have to be an interruption. 

A couple of questions came up in my EAM presentation on Monday night:

Q. It seems that the EAM conceptual architecture is all about the receivers and not the senders or messages.

A. First, I need to mention that by “Enterprise” I mean intra- and inter-enterprise.  In otherwords, it doesn’t apply to companies trying to grab the attention of consumers.  That issue has its own fields of study: advertising and marketing.  My intent here is not to help advertisers scream louder or to help create more pointed messages to surgically skewer personalized targets. I’m trying to help organizations improve the effectiveness of their own information workers by examining how to enable them with attentional technologies and capabilities to pull important messages closer and push less important messages further back.

That said, in reviewing my materials I have to agree that I spend more time talking about how to help receivers of messages than senders.  Most of my research in creating my EAM architecture and the questions I have received from larger enterprises are about the information worker trying to sort through information, handle their inbox, and deal with interruptions.  Outside of consumer advertising you just don’t see a lot of studies on the other side of the coin: how people send messages or store content.  I think this is because a decade ago we shifted from an age of information scarcity to information abundance, as my colleague Guy Creese has written and as is well catalogued in David Shenk’s book Data Smog.

Most of the technologies, capabilities, and processes used by creators of information to make their information easier to find are more in the knowledge management (and, more specifically information management) domain than EAM.  These include use of content metadata, versioning, aging policies, use of taxonomy and ontology, navigation, and content repository architectural design.

What I do talk about is how enterprises can provide an appropriate set of communication and collaboration mechanisms for senders, provide guidance to senders on which channels and workspaces to use and how to use them, and put monitoring in place to be alerted to explosive trends.

Q. If this is about what enterprises as a whole can do, how come my examples are about what individuals can do (for example, setting email rules)?

As I quoted from Gary Masada of Chevron in my posting on Cornering the Corner Office about Information Overload: “Technology can be an enabler that helps people do this.  But in the end an individual will have to do it.”

I am not recommending that CIOs and owners of attentional technologies figure out how to organize the time and workloads of their information workers or start setting up filters for them.  There’s a level of indirection here - the owners deploy technologies and processes that information workers can then use to help themselves.