Archive for the 'Analysis and Opinion' Category

Books vs. the Internet

Posted on February 18th, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

Even if you’re truly effective in  screening unnecessary information, the fact remains that you need time to deal with incoming online information, whether it’s push-mode info (primarily email) or pull-mode info (e.g. RSS feeds). The question is, where does the time come from? Someone pointed out once that you can successfully manage your RSS feeds, blog updates, Twitter, Facebook, and so on if you give up watching TV. And indeed, giving up television would give many people a significant chunk of time to devote to their online data consumption. TV being what it is, one could argue that it’s a.. Read more

We have a generation gap to bridge!

Posted on January 30th, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I’ve reported a number of cases where managers (most famously, Barack Obama)  implement an interrupt-free environment by mandating a “no cellphones” policy in meetings. While I wholeheartedly applaud this behavior, I must in all fairness report a dissenting viewpoint. I was talking to a Gen Y worker whose company  had launched such a ban, and he told me that he thought it was not a good idea at all, because his millennial generation needed the cellphones to work, he said! To his mind, having a coworker without a cellphone in ringing mode meant they were inaccessible, and hence unavailable to.. Read more

All alone in the info-flood

Posted on January 6th, 2012 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion, Individual Solutions

Although practically every organization is full of knowledge workers groaning under a deluge of email, it’s interesting to note that in many of them I run into a small minority of people who have things under control. I discover them on occasion when I explain the various solutions I can bring in, and someone says “Oh, but I already handle this by…” or “I never do that, I always…” The things they do vary; my favorite are the rare heroes who tell me they turn off all electronic devices after work hours, but there are many variations. Basically these people.. Read more

The iPad and the card file

Posted on December 18th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I visited a doctor’s office and was surprised when his secretary pulled out a card – a ruled cardboard rectangle – to fill in my data. She had boxes of such patient cards in her office. A natural first reaction would be that this doctor must be pretty old and behind the times… Then I saw the doctor, and he was neither old nor behind – in fact he not only had a computer on his desk, but after a few minutes he whipped out an iPad, which he seemed very happy with and used with speed and effectiveness to.. Read more

What would Socrates think of Google?

Posted on December 8th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was discussing with a college student I’ve been advising whether it was a good or a bad thing that Google makes access to answers so easy. To my surprise, she opined that it’s a bad thing – because people who use Google to answer a question are more likely to forget the answer they find, whereas if they have to think the problem through and discover the answer for themselves they will remember it in the long term. An interesting insight from a Gen Y. But what struck me as remarkable was the fact that this is not a.. Read more

Do not Disturb variation

Posted on November 17th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I’ve written before about various methods of ensuring freedom from interruption in the office; but pre-dating these there was the familiar “Do not Disturb” sign you hang on a hotel room door knob. These used to come in different colors, but they kept pretty much to the same form dictated by their function. A cardboard rectangle with hole… what was there to improve? Well, on my recent trip to Berlin I saw what someone felt is the next great leap in interruption-busters. The NH Hotel we stayed in had a switch inside the room that would light an electric sign.. Read more

Can’t they read?! – Take 2

Posted on November 7th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I’ve pointed out that people don’t read the emails they’re replying to… and here is one more common manifestation of this: when you send someone an email asking two or three questions, you can be almost certain the reply will only address the first one. The recipient reads your mail, hits a question, responds to it and moves to another message. Then you need to write them another message to get the other items addressed (and create more overload for both parties). This being the universal case, there are steps you can take to defend against this tendency (besides sending.. Read more

Bye bye, E!

Posted on October 12th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

The letter “e” has become a central symbol of the internet age, along with the once obscure “@” glyph. We have it prefixed to all sorts of old words, from Commerce to Bay, from Business to Book… and of course, to Mail, giving us what remains possibly the most  useful online tool yet devised: email. But things change, and the venerable “e” is beginning to slip. I notice that more and more young people drop the “e” and just say “mail”  without even realizing the ambiguity this introduces – their generation’s experience with paper-in-envelope mail is so scanty that they.. Read more

How ignorance can lead to Information Overload

Posted on September 13th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was discussing Email Overload with a friend of mine who is a veteran manager at an international hi-tech company, and he made an interesting observation. His company, he said, is large enough that many email senders have no idea who should be copied on their messages; they can’t be sure who “needs to know”, so they just CC everyone who is remotely likely to be involved. Basically, they are replacing “Need to Know” with “Might possibly need to know”. Of course, although these folks think “better safe than sorry”, they should be very sorry – the recipients that don’t.. Read more

The innocence of youth

Posted on September 4th, 2011 · Posted in Analysis and Opinion

I was having coffee with a colleague I go back a long way with, and he told me of his first encounter with email. He had just joined Intel (in Israel) in 1988, and his boss showed him his new cubicle, his desk, and his computer, on which he demonstrated the email application. My friend came from a workplace where there was no such thing, and the following conversation ensued, more or less: My friend: What is this for? His boss: well, if you want to write something to someone, you write it in this window, add the person’s name.. Read more