2008-01-29

Multitasking and Productivity

Recently there was a post on /. linking to an article on The Atlantic about the problems with multitasking. Just what I suspected all along. The article appears to be from last November—why'd it take so long to get picked up?!

Then c|net has an article regarding productivity in this brave new age of technology. Referring back to the multitasking article, much of the current technologies actually aren't conducive to productivity at all! The claim: "interruptions from e-mail, cell phones, instant messaging, text messaging, and blogs eat up nearly 30 percent of each day"—ouch.

Early technologies, like the Deere plow, focused on helping us do one thing well. There's an important distinction between a core technology development and mere infrastructure changes. The Internet as we know it was invented in 1974 years ago. The Web was birthed in 1989. Where's the next leap in IT? Blogs, social networks, and such are just sideshows to the real leaps that change the way we do things. The question is, will we use what we have at our disposal in a productive fashion?

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