Visiting offline

"A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times, according to one measure by RescueTime, a company that analyzes computer habits. The company, which draws its data from 40,000 people who have tracking software on their computers, found that on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day.

The fractured attention comes at a cost. In the United States, more than $650 billion a year in productivity is lost because of unnecessary interruptions, predominately mundane matters, according to Basex. The firm says that a big chunk of that cost comes from the time it takes people to recover from an interruption and get back to work."






So now the companies (see link) who helped create easy access to email, who helped create emails, for Pete's sake, are trying to help those of us who spend way too many minutes surfing the Internet break our addiction.

Not because it's an addiction, apparently. Because workers can be more productive when they focus on a task, instead of the task and the message and the email and the phone call...crazy busy isn't productively busy.



How do I know that? I found it out while avoiding writing my sermon.