and it's important to... Squirrel!!... where were we?
The NYT did yet another piece on the hazards of interruption, this time getting into the biochemical reasons why it pleasures our brains to feel we are responding to the urgent, even though we know we will look back at our day and wonder why we didn't accomplish anything.
They had a similar story several years ago, pointing out that an interrupted task takes on average 25 minutes longer to do than if not interrupted -- something I'd noted without precise quantification when I'd found myself sans blackberry for 3 weeks in the middle of a very peripatetic summer, outside and away from computer. Once the anxiety was past, it was inescapable that there was far greater efficiency in checking emails only occasionally and in batches, rather than throughout the day.
But the best tidbit in that article was in a sidebar, about a study that had been done on the most effective people across professions as rated by their peers -- with the throw away observation that 90% of them happened to subscribe to the same (low/no tech) approach to thinking about organization -- Getting Things Done by David Allen.
Ninety percent would be more than an accident and hints at correlation, no? So I got it -- wonderful stuff, the first management book I've encountered that understands what my life with 3 kids looks like (and graciously gives me a pass while kids are 10 and under). Here's the best recommendation: if you follow this book, you will no longer wake up in the middle of the night anxiously needing to write things down lest you forget them, and all things that need to get done will get done.
Now if only I could find a book to teach me how to only need 4-6 hours of sleep...
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May '10
Re: and it's important to... Squirrel!!... where were we?
I am sure that the reason I am essentially a failure in life is that I have never read a self-help book. Even the best management book I ever read, Robert Townsend's Up the Organization, was required for an undergraduate class.
Re: and it's important to... Squirrel!!... where were we?
Heather, I'm a huge fan of Getting Things Done. Or "GTD" as the computer geeks put it. And you're right -- it does help you sort some stuff out, feel less overwhelmed by the million things you have to do. But you still have to put the iPhone or BlackBerry down to GTD.
It always amazes me -- and I'm a serious iPhone addict -- to be in meetings and see everyone's head bowed down, as if in prayer, as they work their smartphones in their laps. I guess they should be praying. Because if everyone is always emailing or texting or surfing, then no one's ever going to get anything done and we're all going to be out of work.
Re: and it's important to... Squirrel!!... where were we?
PS: Shameless plug: I did a public radio commentary about this very topic a few weeks ago.
May '10
Re: and it's important to... Squirrel!!... where were we?
Oh, man... I think I've finally stopped laughing about the "prayer" meetings. :D :D Those just slipped out.
Is it bad that I'm writing this comment whilst listening to your Martini Shots commentary? I've just had to go back and make about 5 corrections...