David Allen recently spoke with the Christian Science Monitor as part of an article they’ve published about the continuing loss of productive time that executives face as digital demands and distractions pile on. The level of interruptions, distractions, and pressures is creating the human equivalent of something techies call “thrashing” which in computer speak is where you’ve asked a computer to do too many different tasks at the same time and as a result performance slows to a crawl as its use of the hard drive becomes very inefficient.

Executive Thrashing: For the harried executive trying to finish off an important proposal while emails ding on her desktop as they pile up one after the other, meanwhile, her DND light may be on but the visible voice mail count on the digital display of her office phone increases her stress level as she realizes she’s falling further and further behind. The cell phone vibrating to indicate the fifth new SMS message in the last 30 minutes isn’t helping any more than her administrative assistant who alternates between using the intercom and barging in her closed office door to keep her informed of things that he should handle without the executive’s oversight.

From the article, David Wertheimer, executive director of the Entertainment Technology Center at the University of Southern California says that such intense distractions are proving seriously harmful to our productivity and effectiveness.

“I see the American worker becoming less and less productive,” says Mr. Wertheimer. “As workplaces get flooded with digital demands, such as constant e-mails and nonstop information, we are in danger of becoming a third-world-style economy, where much movement takes place but little actual effective work is being done.”

And you wonder why the quality of corporate communications is going into the toilet? People ask me why I’m such a night owl and appear to only sleep during the day. It’s simple, I’m a writer but that’s a job I can only do uninterrupted – I can’t manage to secure uninterrupted time except in the middle of the night.

David Allen is one of the few people that identified these issues early and developed tools and techniques to combat the concentration and creativity destroying chaos that threatens our very ability to do our jobs at our potential. It is for this reason that GTD has become so prominent in the high pressure world of Silicon Valley – particularly among many people who are, arguably, among the most effective in their respective positions.

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You’ve heard the old saying, “It’s who you know,” and probably the modern variant on it, “It’s not who you know, it’s who knows you.” I’m here to tell you it’s not that, either. A big address book or an even bigger fan base is worth next to nothing unless those people will do one thing: take action on your behalf.

It’s not your network itself that has value for you, it’s your ability to call your network into action.

That’s a pretty broad concept. What does it mean in practical terms?

Let’s take a simple example: how many people do you know who would loan you a dollar? $10? $100? $1,000? As the dollar amount goes up, the number goes down, of course, not just based on the ability of the people to take that action, but their willingness to do so based on the strength of their relationship with you. Simply put, how well do they have to know you in order to take a particular action on your behalf?

That point is the “action threshold”.

If you build a “network” of thousands of “friends” or “connections”, the vast majority of them are going to be very weak relationships. Frankly, you’re lucky if they even recognize your name. How likely do you think they are to take action on your behalf? In fact, with more and more “noise” being generated in the social media world – Twitter, Friendfeed, etc. – it becomes more and more difficult to even get people to take the most trivial of actions, like replying to a message on Twitter or commenting on a blog post. How much more difficult is it to get people to do something of real value?

Given a limited amount of time to spend building relationships, the more people you try to meet and maintain relationships with, the weaker they will be, on average. I’m not suggesting you should build just a small, close circle of friends, but that you consider whether going for raw numbers is really the most effective use of your time. If a relationship isn’t actionable, how valuable is it, really?

The easiest way to build stronger relationships – the kind of relationships that get things done – is by taking some of those “above the threshold” actions for others yourself, by helping others get things done. Here are some ideas on ways to create real value for people via social media:

• Instead of leaving a dozen or so blog comments, write one guest blog post for a friend.
• Instead of leaving just an opinion on several questions on LinkedIn, spend an hour with the person who needs help with a spreadsheet (I did this one last Sunday).
• Instead of posting on Twitter about what you had for lunch, post a review of a new book or product of one of your associates.
• Instead of browsing a couple of forums, spend half an hour calling one of your contacts and discussing with them.
• Instead of inviting a dozen more people to your network on LinkedIn, write a recommendation for someone already in it.

Social media is a powerful tool for building your network, and a powerful network can help you get all kinds of thing done in your business and your life. But don’t make the mistake of confusing activity with progress. Invest your time in relationships in a way that will yield real returns, not just the illusion of results.

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