Maybe, You're Not So Smart or as Organized as You Think
Category Management
Even with every imaginable, computer-assisted program or device, I still struggle for working efficiently and with continuous learning. I carry a Blackberry, an iPod Touch, an iPod Nano, and a plethora of CDs and bootable USBs. My workstation is a monster Mac (4 CPUs and 16 G of RAM) that runs VMs of WinXP, Win7, and Ubuntu, spread over two large monitors. I have the world's best e-mail, practice Getting-Things-Done, and access a varied range of tracking systems that are synchronized between my systems. Am I better off ? Maybe not.
Lamont Wood writes a good summary about the growing suspcision that office technology does not correlate to an increase in productivity.
Lamont has written a balanced perspective on the positive contributions made by white-collar automation, but he also calls out the myth of "multi-tasking" as creating the appearance of being busy at the cost of effeciency.
I'd like to add to the conversation with an observation that the qualifying criterion for being a 21st century Knowledge Worker is the ability to learn. Scanning e-mails, opening up IM chats and being plugged into social networks does not increase the depth of my job competencies (at least, not for me). Productivity for a brick-layer can be counted, piece by piece. For life in front of a computer screen, productivity requires the acquisition of new skills. And, learning is hard. To be an effective worker requires keeping up a pace of continual learning. A wonderful, must-see, set of videos on the challenge for learning is the documentary: "Minds of Our Own."
Seriously. If you haven't seen these videos, you need to, and it'll take you several hours. The series was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. You are simply not going to believe how obdurate bright people can be in overcoming rudimentary self-perceptions to learn something correctly.
Breaking free of the multi-tasking-connectedness cycle is more than a reprioritization of my tasks (e.g., access email only once a day, Facebook is for afterwork, etc.). Because, it necessitates a different concept of being productive. It's not about busyness. My productivity is foremost and intimately correlated to an ability to learn, and then the application of what was learned.
And then ? Then I can tweet about it.
Even with every imaginable, computer-assisted program or device, I still struggle for working efficiently and with continuous learning. I carry a Blackberry, an iPod Touch, an iPod Nano, and a plethora of CDs and bootable USBs. My workstation is a monster Mac (4 CPUs and 16 G of RAM) that runs VMs of WinXP, Win7, and Ubuntu, spread over two large monitors. I have the world's best e-mail, practice Getting-Things-Done, and access a varied range of tracking systems that are synchronized between my systems. Am I better off ? Maybe not.
Lamont Wood writes a good summary about the growing suspcision that office technology does not correlate to an increase in productivity.
The dirty little secret of office technology is that no one can agree on how exactly to measure white-collar productivity. That means, in turn, that no one can prove definitively that PCs and other technologies contribute anything to productivity
Lamont has written a balanced perspective on the positive contributions made by white-collar automation, but he also calls out the myth of "multi-tasking" as creating the appearance of being busy at the cost of effeciency.
I'd like to add to the conversation with an observation that the qualifying criterion for being a 21st century Knowledge Worker is the ability to learn. Scanning e-mails, opening up IM chats and being plugged into social networks does not increase the depth of my job competencies (at least, not for me). Productivity for a brick-layer can be counted, piece by piece. For life in front of a computer screen, productivity requires the acquisition of new skills. And, learning is hard. To be an effective worker requires keeping up a pace of continual learning. A wonderful, must-see, set of videos on the challenge for learning is the documentary: "Minds of Our Own."
Seriously. If you haven't seen these videos, you need to, and it'll take you several hours. The series was produced by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. You are simply not going to believe how obdurate bright people can be in overcoming rudimentary self-perceptions to learn something correctly.
Why is it that students can graduate from MIT and Harvard, yet not know how to solve a simple third-grade problem in science: lighting a light bulb with a battery and wire? Beginning with this startling fact, this program systematically explores many of the assumptions that we hold about learning to show that education is based on a series of myths.
Breaking free of the multi-tasking-connectedness cycle is more than a reprioritization of my tasks (e.g., access email only once a day, Facebook is for afterwork, etc.). Because, it necessitates a different concept of being productive. It's not about busyness. My productivity is foremost and intimately correlated to an ability to learn, and then the application of what was learned.
And then ? Then I can tweet about it.
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