COMMENT: Have we become too e-connected?

For the past three years since I started carrying the TREO Smartphone, many of my friends and colleagues asked and were bemused that despite the capability to access my email with it, I refuse to do so. Originally it was the cost of having to pay for the downloading of the emails through the carrier's network but soon I discovered, why should I pay for communications that should be dealt with in the office? I have seen many of my friends who started carrying their blackberries driven to near distraction every minute as a result of incoming emails. Conversations became more of a chore and effort. Then when emails became as ubiquitous as the phone in the workplace, finding time to actually get the work has become a challenge.

When I read the linked report, I just had to repeat the quote in bold here "The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction. The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state."

I have been a strong advocate of structuring emails to be accessed twice a day. At the start of the work day and at the return from lunch. Each for 30 mins or maximum of 45 to get the urgent matters away and to structure two days (Wednesday and Saturday) as days to clear up all emails that had been held up.

The problem I see socially however, is that there appears to be a unspoken expectation (albeit unjustified) that emails are meant to be replied within the hour or the very least the same day. How this came about is still a mystery but I have always set my emails to be replied at least a day or two after to prevent that expectation from becoming the norm for me.

Hopefully, with this report about over distracted workers and overworked workers, there would be new technologies to help us sort out what needs to be done urgently and what to be set aside. But most importantly, we all need to culturally be realistic in our expectations on how quick others to reply if we are to slow down ourselves.

Lets try to unplug ourselves a little more everyday - get more work done - and take some time to breath...

ZDNet: Driven to distraction by technology