In This Edition:
1.
Baseball Ends, Basketball Begins
2.
Brave New World is Here
3.
The All-Time Intruder
4.
Interruptions and Low Productivity
5.
A Closing Comment
Baseball Ends, Basketball Begins
October! You can't beat it. Fewer hurricanes. Cool crisp days and the
harvest moon, capped off by Halloween. Just as the World Series ends,
College basketball begins. Enough activity and excitement to go around.
Hey, here's an idea -- let's make it October all year 'round!
Brave New World is Here"People never are alone now... We make them hate solitude, and we
arrange their lives so that it's almost impossible for them ever to have
it." --Aldous Huxley, Brave New World, 1932
Alas, even in the wonderful Autumn, "Brave new world" is upon us. When you
don't have, or feel you don't have, an extra moment to read philosophy,
history, or science, when great literature, plays, and novels are as foreign
to you as hieroglyphics, do you have any chance of seeing your work, career,
or life in a new light?
You might be doing well in the race but it's essentially the same race down
the same track with the same opponents that may prove to be less than
sufficient in enabling you to get things done that you want.
Even if you're among the rare few office workers who recognize how crucial
safeguarding
your day and work time has become, the chances are highly likely that you
are not immune to the call of the modern day siren -- the cell phone.
The All-Time Intruder
The results are in and the cell phone has become the most disruptive aspect
of work and everyday life for office professionals. With more than
four-fifths of the population sporting these little gadgets, it's now taken
as a given that any part of your day is subject to disruption.
On a plane, in a meeting, during a presentation, at a business lunch, or
yes, in the restroom, some probably well-meaning but otherwise totally
boorish soul will whip out his cell phone and engage in public space cell
yell. And the conversations, my goodness, are they inane. If everyone uses
a cell phone in the restroom or a lunch or during a meeting and uses it at
will, how long will it take before we all go mad?
The 2003 annual Lemelson-MIT invention index survey found that when asked to
name the invention they hate the most but can't live without, 30 percent of
respondents said the cell phone. Second to the cell phone were alarm clocks
at 25 percent, followed by television at 23 percent and razors at 14
percent.
I would be utterly embarrassed to have others around me hear my half of what
can only be described as pedestrian. "Yes, the elevator has just pulled up
to the 16th floor." Do these people have the ability to go for say an eight
or ten minute stretch without being in contact with someone else? What are
they afraid of? Confronting their own thoughts?
Interruptions and Low Productivity
Paul Radde, Ph.D. author of Thrival says "Cell phone use is not just plain
rude, it is mentally distracting and abusive to others. Cell phone use
captures the brain's interest in completing the conversation, so whether the
user is broadcasting or simply within earshot, the Zeigarnik effect kicks
in. This is the same desire for closure that makes the effects of
multi-tasking akin to the effects of post-traumatic stress."
The Zeigarnik effect is characterized by the tendency of people to remember
interrupted tasks better than those that have been completed. "Once taken
off one task, without completing the transaction," Radde observes, "the mind
continues to seek closure. If you have a number of things going, but none of
them to completion, you have these tensions tending toward completion -- and
that is stress-provoking."
It's not that you can't get things done with the use of a cell phone;
indeed,
you can get a lot of things done. However, the nature of what you get done
is highly skewed. Just as the man with only a hammer sees everything as
nails, the incessant cell phone user accomplishes a variety of tasks,
understandably enough, that accrue directly to having a cell phone. In
other words whatever can be handled by a phone call is more likely to be
tackled than say a problem that requires solitude and abstract reasoning.
Sometimes this get-it-done kind of individual overdoes this stay-in-touch
aspect of what he's trying to accomplish. I mean, how many times can you
call a client? How often do you need to stay in touch with your office.
Would every 60 minutes do it, or would 45 minutes be better, or 30 better
still? What kinds of new tasks and new responsibilities at work are you
creating for yourself and others as a result of the constant communication
and, need I say it, over-communication?
A Closing Comment
Too many career professionals are uncomfortable with solitude.
Increasingly, this discomfort tolerates only shorter and shorter attention
spans. To retreat into one's own mind, to pause, to reflect is now treated
as if it were enemy territory, yet these skills are needed now more than
ever!
