DataWebTect

Nathan from IT@Intelblog has provided the insight into the cost of distractions on the life of the knowledge worker. So far we knew that the distractions are a pain but now we understand that there is a cost to it. What is alarming based on his post is that we get distracted every three minutes and a minute is wasted for every distraction and this is mind boggling in an ideal 8 hour day.
Most of the time, when we get distracted we just jump into another task and sometimes forget what we were doing. One of the ways to tackle that is to write the to do list and hang it on the monitor. Whenever I get distracted and revert back to my task I review the  paper on the monitor to get back to what I was doing. A break every 20 minutes is recommended provided you were not disturbed by a phone call or something within that 20 minutes.

Another way to tackle is to switch off the cellphones, ignore the desk phone, exit out of the outlook, put some Ipod music, get some coffee and keep hacking. This has worked many times but I was also in trouble for not responding to an important email from my boss and he was breathing in  my neck.  This is very effective if you want your work done.

Intel has started blogging with the first post about the Information Overload, identified via Scobleizer. A really impressive must read and subsequent posts are also interesting but could not subscribe as I could not find the feed.

Regarding information overload, Nathan Zeldes talks about the E-mail and other distractions that reduce the knowledge workers productivity. It is true and the distractions really take their toll and you get lost. For example you might be working on some deliverable and a email pops up saying that something is wrong with other product and you go to put out the fires and by the time you are done you wont know where you left and it would take long time to make up your mind to finish off the task that you were doing before the interruption. Somedays you completely forget until, in shower or sleep, you remember that you forgot an important deliverable. Immediatly scramble up to fix in your laptop.

You can get some breather by organizing and just shutting down your outlook when you are working on an important task but there is no respite from the phone. You will get interrupted and even if you ignore your office phone the cell phone monster would make you answer the call . Let us wait for Nathan Zeldes to give us some pointers to reduce this stress.

Update: The feed is found here and I have misspelled Nathan’s name and my apologies. Thanks for pointing out Josh.