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Have You Been Feeling Off-Kilter Lately? Is The World Spinning Faster?

By Ray Sclafani | March 4, 2010

It's not your imagination. The recent Chilean earthquake shifted the Earth's axis by three inches. In fact, this change in the Earth's mass has sped up our planet's rotation. Our days are now shorter by 1.26 millionth of a second as a result.

Don't worry. Daylight savings time returns March 14th. That should help for a bit.

• According to Basex, an IT research and consulting firm...the average worker loses 2.1 hours of productivity each day due to interruptions and distractions.
• The typical office employee checks their email 50 times daily, and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to RescueTime, a firm that develops time management software.
• With Facebook and Twitter exacerbating the issue, email use is projected to grow by 66% per year, says the E-Policy Institute.

Multi-Tasking is Neither
This loss of productivity all relates to the myth of multi-tasking. Multi-tasking is a fiction. Our brains can't work that way. Although some of us may be able to walk and chew gum at the same time, none of us can do 2 or more thinking tasks simultaneously. What is really happening is that our brain toggles back-and-forth between activities. Some of us can toggle really quickly. Most of us can't. None of us can think about two different things at the exact same time.

The author of the article has some good, helpful tips to reduce E-mail Addiction and Overload:

• Turn off all visual and sound alerts that announce new mail.
• Check e-mail two to four times a day at designated times and never more often than every 45 minutes.
• Respond immediately only to urgent issues. Just because a message can be delivered instantly does not mean you must reply instantly.
• Severely restrict use of the reply-all function.
• Put "no reply necessary" in the subject line when you can. No one knows when an e-conversation is over without an explicit signal.
• Resist your reply reflex. Don't send e-mails that say "Got it" or "Thanks."
• Use automatic out-of-office messages to carve out focused work time, such as: "I'm on deadline with a project and will be back online after 4 p.m."


I would add one thing. If you begin to institute some, or all, of these tips...you should notify your colleagues and clients about the change. Most will wholeheartedly support you. Some needy-types won't get it. But, at the least you have adjusted their expectations.

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