Life Hackers and Shaving a Yak
Courtesy of a 43 Folders post I learned some interesting facts regarding some of the reasons that it seems to becoming more and more difficult to GED*, Get Enough Done which is a step down from Getting Things Done on the personal productivity hierarchy. The source of this information was a really interesting NYT article, Meet the Life Hackers by Clive Thompson which I probably would not have read since one of my newest GTD inspired strategies is to delete the daily NYT email without reading. I might have found it, however on Thompson’s own blog, Collision Detection. So, here are the facts, stats, and accompanying jargon that I learned from Clive Thompson via Merlin Mann:
- There are actually scientists of "human-computer interactions" who study how high-tech devices affect our behavior.
- A study of "cubical dwellers" revealed that they spent 11 minutes on a given project before being interrupted to move onto something else…the 11 minutes included answering emails and viewing web sites….then the REAL kicker: after the distraction, it takes 25 minutes to return to the original task. ouch!
- The "science of interruptions" began with telegraph operators 100 years ago…the original high stress high tech information worker job. The discovery was that if someone spoke to a telegraph operator while they were keying a message, the distraction caused errors…"switching channels". For workers monitoring data, it was found that the presentation of the information aided focus. Hence, pilot’s cockpit were configured so that the instruments could be read at a quick glance.
- Continuous partial interruption, so dubbed by Linda Stone is the overload of too much information and too many interruptions that sabatouge our productivity and sometimes our sanity. Brad Feld who also noted "Meet the Life Hackers" on his blog writes that research into pci, personal computing infrastructure ,will help us manage the enormous amount of trivial things that keep us from taking our pci to the next level.
- Yes, I do remember the days when the phone and the mail were our only two communication interruptions and they were both very manageable….hold my calls? Now, we may have to decide between opening the email that our notifier just interrupted us about and the phone call that we are on…well we can always do both. Hmmm? I didn’t catch what you said..or wrote, or both…
- Now back to that 25 minutes to return to the task….well, we can’t remember what we were working on! Yes, 40% never make it back to the original task. What short term memory? I have no idea what I was doing!
- Well, the researchers found that the bigger the computer screen, the easier it was to complete multi-tasks; in fact 10-40% were able to complete multitasks faster, the bigger the screen. Presentation once again helps attention.
- People who sit next to each other in cubicles are "co-located"…they are referred to as "distributed" when they are connected online but working from different locations.
EBay Customer Assistance
Last Saturday when the power went out, on top of everything else, I was trying to sell 2 items on Ebay. One auction ended on Sunday and one would have ended on Tuesday. The auction wasn’t top of mind at first but by Sunday when I finally got to Panera’s Wi-fi there was 1 bid on each item and a number of questions that were of course unanswered. I should have immediately cancelled both auctions but having never been in this situation before I really didn’t know what you could or couldn’t do and since there are no live people in EbayLand in order to navigate their frequently no help answers you have to know the right questions and have lots and lots of time.
So…by Monday when one of the auctions had ended with my item selling for 1/2 of its value I finally was able to figure out how to cancel the other one in the brief moment of Internet access. Well, the one bidder immediately sent me an indignant email referring to my necklace as her necklace….as if her one low bid 2 days before the auction was scheduled to end entitled her to the necklace. In addition, I also immediately began to get email from those who had made inquiries about various things regarding the necklace. All of these people were polite and merely wondering if I was going to re-list the item and if I would be able to answer their questions. I emailed all of them back, including the indignant bidder, and politely explained about the power outage, lack of Internet access, and that my intent was to re-list.
Figuring the various ins and outs of Ebay is an exercise in frustration and of course you can’t just pick up the phone and ask a person…not that being able to ask a person is any guarantee. If anyone has ever talked to Linksys Customer Service you know what I mean…another bonus provided by the power outage from hell was of course having to get my wireless network back up and which required a conversation with the dreaded Links.
Anyway, most people emailed me back and thanked me for explaining the situation to them. Ms. Indignant thanked me for explaining in one email, lambasted me in another, and then another and finally threatened to report me to email. I have no idea for what. And as far as reporting me to Ebay…good luck communicating with Ebay!
I wrote Ebay at least 6 emails in the middle of the whole debacle and each one received an answer…gotta give them credit for that I guess. However, I wondered if any of my emails had been read by anyone that spoke the same language that they had been written in. Or, if they had been answered by some keyword prompted software program. Many of them began with something like this; you are the buyer or seller and may have inquired about or maybe not..but here is an answer to your buyer/seller question blah blah blah.
The truly best one was the one I wrote complaining about the harassing emails I was getting from Ms. Indignant. First of all, they have you attach the email you are complaining about which I did. Their answer made absolutely no sense at all and didn’t mention one time the harassing email situation which was what I was writing them about in the first place. They actually said, we see you cancelled your auction due to a severe ower outage and see that you want more information about the item ..there is no further information about the item. I wanted more information about the item? I don ‘t think so! Then, they suggested I go to Live Chat for help….well, you can guess what happened here, right? "We are experiencing a high volume of requests so please be patient….." Natch!
Calling Miss Manners
According to a recent article in Forbes Magazine, based upon a survey conducted by the research company Synovate, 52% of Americans believe they would "die" if their cell phones or email were taken away….to prove just how important our cell phones and email rights are to us, the same study indicates that we are more than willing to forgo any semblance of good manners to stay connected. The study reported that 68% of Americans report observations of poor etiquette at least once a day by cell phone users and 18% report poor email etiquette. Loud conversations in public places are noted as the worst of cell phone offenses while sending along chain emails and poor grammer are the worst email practices.
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