If You're Measuring Productivity In Hours, You're Doing It Wrong
from the output,-output,-output dept
Usually we don't see these types of stories until March Madness time, but the NY Times is writing about how much productivity is "lost" due to trying to keep up with the "data stream." Apparently research firm Basex has come out with a gimmicky calculator to determine how much productivity is likely lost, and put out a silly, borderline ridiculous press release noting that Intel claims it worked with the research firm to determine that the impact on productivity because of information overload was "up to eight hours a week." Seriously? Productivity is measured not in hours, but output. If productivity were just about hours, we'd be looking for ways to get people to work more hours. But, most people recognize that there are diminishing returns to making people work too much -- and they have time off to charge their batteries.If you're going to measure productivity this way, we could just as easily say that we're putting out a study showing that sleeping costs a company approximately eight hours a day in lost worker productivity! Something must be done! While I have no doubt that information overload can be a cost to productivity, it's not going to be measured in hours. If I "waste" 20 hours a week dealing with information overload, but I'm able to extract information that makes me three times as productive, the rest of the week, then that's a good trade-off. Do people actually pay companies for this sort of research?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: productivity
Companies: basex, intel
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Information Overload
I agree that productivity is not measured in hours. However, you are overlooking what information overload is. You equate "waste" with work - and that's not the same thing. I went to the site, used the calculator, and read the report from the research firm. That's not what they are saying at all. Information overload is a serious impediment on productivity - but you need to compare apples to apples and that's why it's important to have an ongoing dialogue about the problem.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Follow-up
What I wanted to say is that, if we solve information overload, you might end up spending 3 hours instead of 20 hours searching for that important bit of info.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Follow-up
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Milliseconds... not hours
Pick up the slack Joe! You're 8 milliseconds behind Ivan.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Old information
And since when is this "information overload"? Information overload is more information than you can process, and has nothing to do with distractions. This is context-switching, plain and simple. Oh, darn, is context-switching not a buzzword?
"Ground breaking research." Yeah.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Definition
Sounds like a chicken little entrepreneur: The sky is falling, so pay our consultants a gazillion dollars and we'll build you a roof.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Everyone here suffering from too much info?
If you are an executive who, such as myself, suspects that info overload is indeed slowing things down, then tools such as the calculator are actually helpful. I showed the results to my manager (divisional VP), and he immediately asked what we can do to lower our exposure.
The calculator isn't the end all and be all - I suspect if they asked too many questions, no one would even try it - but it gave us a range that lined up with figures I already had calculated. Again, useful in building a case for taking steps to fight info overload.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Everyone here suffering from too much info?
What are you hoping that this proves? That the research is excellent? That your manager is gullible? I'm not sure where you're going with that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Robert Scobles long overdue intervention
I believe it's a case of working smarter not harder. Somehow Robert Scoble sees it from a different perspective.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]