It may not surprise you to learn that I don't read Men's Health. I can't relate to anything in that magazine's name because:
A) I am not a man, and
B) My idea of "health" is to eat low-fat Twinkies.
Even so, a recent article in this publication really caught my eye. Titled "Crazy at work? It may just be office ADD," it's about the increased difficulties in being productive when you are constantly interrupted by
e-mails, BlackBerries, text messages and cell/landline phones.
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According to this article, Dr. Ned Hallowell, an expert in Attention-Deficit Disorder, has seen a spike in grown adults experiencing ADD-style symptoms: difficulty focusing, inability to complete a project, anxiety and irritability.
"The problem," the article's author writes, "is that our Gutenberg-era brains may not actually be capable of handling all this Bill Gates-era info."
Among the article's more disturbing facts:
- We're not the multi-taskers we think we are: Research repeatedly shows we really can't handle two complicated tasks at once. Case in point: Hallowell refers to our distracted tone on the phone as "e-mail voice" - a dead give-away that we're trying to simultaneously read e-mail.
- It's hard to get back on task: Once we're interrupted, it takes an average of 15 minutes to resume the task you started. And it can take another 10 minutes to reach the same level of concentration that we had before. So the next time someone asks: "Got a minute?" realize they actually mean: "Got a
half-hour?"
- We are addicted to information: We not only want to be able to check our e-mails and voice mails anywhere, anytime, we want to be the first person in the office to report the latest breaking news. It's a phenomenon that even has a name: "competitive awareness."
- Mental overload has its costs: Research shows the overloaded mind is more likely to procrastinate, less adept at time management and less sympathetic to the problems of others. "It may be the greatest irony of the age we live in," Hallowell told Men's Health. "The more ways we have to connect to one another, the less connected we really are."
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So what do we do? The good news is we don't have to spike the office water cooler with Ritalin. Instead, the article offers a few practical tips:
- Protect that a.m. "burst." Most of us have a rush of energy and concentration early in the day, and Hallwell says we should shield it from interruptions. He advises people to try doing an hour to 90 minutes of work in the morning before checking
e-mail or surfing the Web.
- Watch online time. Workers who use Firefox as their Internet browser can go to pageaddict.com and download the software, which gives a summary of the time spent on each Web site. Once people see how much time they're wasting, they are more motivated to stop.
- Empty your inbox. Hallowell's mantra is "OHIO": only handle it once. Set aside a few specific times during the day to read e-mail, and when you do, act on the messages immediately: respond, delete, forward, file.
For more information on modern-day overload, check out Hallowell's book, "CrazyBusy" (Ballantine Books, $14.95).
Swift writes a weekly column for The Forum.
