A report from the McKinsey Global Institute says that interaction workers spend 28% of their work week reading and answering email.  Your response may be, “No way—only 28%?”  Or you may say, “Wow, that seems like a lot.”

The study suggests that using social technologies could improve productivity significantly.  But companies will realize that benefit only after they’ve changed their structure, processes, and culture.  That’s quite a challenge, since social technologies are considered by many to reduce, rather than enhance, productivity. But times and technologies are changing rapidly. The productivity uses of new technologies are not always apparent in the first few years.

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This fall David Allen will be presenting his “Making It All Work” seminar in San Francisco and London.  This is a great opportunity to enjoy David’s entertaining and inspiring approach to GTD education.

What you’ll learn:

• How to get immediate control of “current reality”
• How to keep track of the total inventory of your commitments, including examples from David’s personal system
• What decisions are critical to make, about what, and when
• Why most “personal management systems” don’t work
• How to evaluate the best tools to use to stay in control
• Why organizational issues are often personal process issues
• Why it’s so challenging to really change the simplest habits, and the secret key to make it easier
• How to use procrastination to your advantage
• How to continually self-consult to get back “on your game”
• How to install simple tricks that create profound results

You can find out more about the seminar by clicking here.

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An Opinionator piece in The New York Times called The Busy Trap has been generating a lot of discussion in the last few days. The author, Tim Kreider, challenges some popular assumptions about whether it’s good to be busy, and whether we’re busy with what matters.

“Even children are busy now, scheduled down to the half-hour with classes and extracurricular activities. They come home at the end of the day as tired as grown-ups.”

How about your kids, or the kids you know? Do they have enough unstructured time?

“Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”

And how about you? Does your schedule reflect what is meaningful for you? If you’re not sure, have a look at David Allen’s summary of the 6 Horizons of Focus. It can help you create a schedule that aligns your next actions, projects, and higher goals.

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“The two key ingredients for making it all work are:

• Control
• Perspective

If you can maintain a sufficent level of each of these factors in yourself or in your organization,  your world will be in order and you’ll be focused exactly as you should be.”

—David Allen, Making It All Work

Where do you stand, today, on the matrix of self-management?  In less than two minutes, GTD-Q will give you a visual representation of where you fit in terms of the two critical elements of self management—control and perspective.

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A new study suggests that the stress of dealing with email causes health problems. In the study, those without email felt more productive and focused. But as anyone who relies on email can tell you, it’s also stressful to be on vacation from this pervasive form of communication. Some study participants reported feeling isolated—which is also stressful—when they were away from email.

So are you stressed if you do and stressed if you don’t?  Or is there another, better option?

Yes there is.  It’s the GTD approach to getting email under control. You can stay connected, or take a vacation away from email, and trust that your decision is healthy.

You can read more about the study in this article from the Atlantic.

The Latest ‘Ordinary Thing That Will Probably Kill You’? Email

By Megan Garber

Your inbox is stressing you out, a new study finds.

“You’ve Got Wail.” / Original image of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” via Ian Burt/Flickr.

 

Here are some things about your job that could lead you to an early demise:

Your commute to your office.
Your morning coffee.
Your coworkers.
Your chair.
Your lunch.
Your happy hour cocktail.
Your commute from your office.

Now, we can add one more X to the X WILL KILL YOU work party: your email. Well, sort of. A new study, a collaboration between UC Irvine and the U.S. Army, measured the stress effects of email usage on a group of thirteen Army workers in a “suburban office setting.”

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Get clear, get current, get creative.  Sound good to you? That’s what you get from a weekly review. David Allen calls it ”the critical success factor” in GTD. Lifehacker has two recent posts on this topic. The first is their link to our video of David talking about the value of the weekly review, and why it provides the leverage you need to be more productive.  The second is a how-to that includes practical tips for getting into the groove of doing a weekly review.

Your time is valuable. The time you put into a weekly review is a guaranteed investment in yourself.

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Technology should enhance productivity, making it easier to get things done so you have more leisure time. But have tools that are designed to help really just added to our workload, distraction, and stress?  In this concise interview with the SF Chronicle, David expertly frames the issue and helps you decide what to ask yourself.

Q: Do you think that we’ve seen technology move our workforce in an unproductive direction?

A: The whole planet is unproductive; it’s just that technology is making it more obvious. What’s important is knowing where are you and how do you allocate your resources to get where you want to go. That’s been true forever. It’s true all this tech is totally distracting all kinds of people, but then again, they are letting themselves be distracted. How come? Because they’re not clear about what they’re doing.

Q: So being distracted by tech is the symptom of a problem, rather than the core of the problem?

A: Yeah. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do. If you don’t know where you’re going, any tech is fine. It’s like: Why not? Why not surf the Web? There are worse ways to waste time. But it comes down to the situation: Who’s doing it, why are you doing it, and what are you avoiding by doing it?

Read the full interview here.

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This thought-provoking Harvard Business Review blog post is sure to stir up conversation, in person or by smartphone.

Is Your Smartphone Making You Less Productive?

2:09 PM Friday April 6, 2012
by Ndubuisi Ekekwe

Mobile devices have exacerbated an always-on work culture where employees work anytime, anywhere. They’ve contributed to the blurred distinction between when you’re “on the clock” and when you’re not. Service industry professionals are especially tethered to these devices. There’s an assumption that using smart devices boosts productivity, since they allow us to work constantly. But, we’re also jeopardizing long-term productivity by eliminating predictable time off that ensures balance in our lives. Is the obsession of regularly checking email really helping anyone’s bottom line? Are the unrealistic expectations these devices facilitate not setting staff up for burnout?

You can read the full post here.

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If you’re looking for practical time management training, watch a busy mom for a day. You’ll learn that moms are experts when it comes to organizing their to do lists by contexts. They can move forward on projects, even when others might not see the possibility for progress. Some might call it multitasking, but in fact it’s more the ability to rapidly refocus, using whatever technology is at hand, including Facebook.

Moms Rely on Facebook More Than Other Women

by Leslie Meredith, Senior Writer, TechNewsDaily
12 April 2012 07:30 PM ET

Forget the weekly playgroup to compare notes with other moms — many now head straight to Facebook. Moms use the social media site more frequently than women without kids, and with far more finesse.

Marketing firm Performics yesterday (April 12) released its study of 3,000 active U.S. social networkers, and found moms were more proficient than other women at getting information from Facebook. Fifty-six percent of moms considered themselves to be “experts” at using social networks compared with 36 percent of other women.

You can click here to read the complete article.

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