Doing company trainings you can’t fail to notice how ‘connected / switched on’ employees have to be nowadays and looking into the faces as stressed as f**k.
Seldom do you see participants come in WITHOUT their mobiles, they place them strategically and watch for incoming mails or messages. Mostly on mute at least, so we don’t constantly get disturbed by streams of pings. Nevertheless the mere ‘lighting up’ of their phones tell them – look at me, NOW. 9 times out 10, they obey and can you really imagine that they get what happens in the session for the next few seconds or so?
I’ve recently read an article (link to BBC) about the work of Cal Newport, not now please, but sometime when you can ‘FOCUS’. In the article Cal criticises the current ‘always connected’ working climate for knowledge workers. He questions whether this is actually effective & beneficial for the employees and more importantly the ‘bottom line’ because it distracts them from doing the ‘deep work’, (the name of one of his Cal’s books – affiliate link). He argues deep work is what is needed to produce ‘knowledge based products & services’. Finally he challenges companies to rethink saying “The companies that encourage their workers to remain wired into multiple tasks at once will find themselves falling behind those that value slower, deeper, quality thinking.”
What’s more, reducing the flood of email would be a key part of achieving slower, deeper and quality work as Cal’s next book will explore ‘The World Without Email”. Finally, an advocate for ‘digital minimalism’ (another of Cal’s books!) in the workplace is able to get his message through the NOISE. Will it ever get loud enough to be really heard & heeded or will it just be drowned out by the ever-increasing madness of our digital world?
http://www.calnewport.com/blog/2008/07/02/e-mail-zero-imagining-life-without-e-mail/
QOTD. Do you follow Cal’s sentiments concerning deep work and could you imagine a world without email?
“can’t fail to notice” (hier: mir entgeht nicht. dass), employee (Arbeitnehmer), on silent (stumm), to disturb (jdn stören), ‘stream of sth’ (die berieselung mit etw), the mere (bloß), to obey (etw gehorchen), ‘bottom line’ (Nettoprofit), to distract from (jdn ablenken von etw), to challenge sb (jdn herausfordern), according to (laut), advocate (Befürworter), to heed sth (etw beachten), to drown sth out (etw übertönen)