Yet again, it seems that someone has been paid to discover that email is distracting. On average you wait just 1 minute 44 seconds to respond to an email after it arrives and it takes you another 64 seconds to figure out what you were doing again after the interruption. By the magic of extrapolation, this allows us to infer that eight-and-a-half hours a week are wasted checking email.
But this ridiculous figure exists only to create a ridiculous figure for people who like ridiculous figures. It assumes, not only that I check my email every five minutes and I'm pointlessly distracted every single time, but also that this time would otherwise have been spent doing useful work. The reality is that most people get hardly anything done in a typical working day. Here's a typical itinerary:
8:40 Arrive five minutes before boss. Hang up coat. Race to boot up PC.
8:45 Boss arrives. Look like you have been hard at it for the last hour.
8:50 Make coffee to suck up to boss and waste ten minutes.
9:15 Finish coffee and reluctantly turn attention back to PC.
9:16 Check slashdot to keep up to date with important technology issues.
10:45 Finish reading flamewar on slashdot about whether a plane could take off on a conveyor belt or not.
10:50 Check email. Dave in Finance is going for a fag break. You don't smoke but you tag along to discuss "important issues".
11:00 Meeting with the project team. You aren't strictly needed here but your boss wants you along to back him up on item 14 on the agenda.
13:00 Meeting has now reached item 8 and is adjourned for lunch.
14:00 You are back from lunch but your boss has been called away to something more urgent so the meeting is rescheduled for next week.
14:05 Coffee.
14:15 "Fag" break with Suzie from Distribution.
14:30 Flirty email from Suzie.
14:40 Have another look at slashdot. There are some additional insightful comments on the whole aeroplane/conveyor thing that need your attention.
15:50 Email from boss. He needs the figures from this morning turned into impressive PowerPoint slides for tomorrow's meeting.
16:40 PowerPoint crashes. You can't be bothered to do it again, so you log a ticket with IT Services, knowing full well that they can't possibly get it sorted before lunchtime tomorrow, and cc it to your boss.
16:45 Wash up coffee mugs.
16:50 Ring home to see if you need to get anything from Tesco.
16:55 Type furiously while your boss puts his coat on and imply that you will be busy for at least another hour and a half.
16:59 Go home.
Your comments (1) Click to add a new comment
pogo
September 12th 2008
1. sounds about right, although it's me leaving at 5 and the boss is the one left behind. he's probably having trouble logging in to slashdot though.
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