According to Templafy 86% of professionals name emails as their preferred means of communication and email is ranked as the third most influential source of information for business audiences. Most people receive on average 121 emails per day and Harvard Business Review says we check our emails 37 times a day or every fifteen minutes.
McKinsey state that the average person sends 28% of their day reading and answering emails. Sanebox has found that 62% of all our emails are not important and can be processed in bulk. Edward Hallowell, a psychiatrist and expert on attention-deficit disorders, says the modern workplace induces what he calls “attention deficit trait,” with characteristics similar to those of the genetically based disorder.
Besides email, there are text messages; Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter etc. and we are all doing several things at once. This constant multitasking is taking its toll. Our smartphones have become Swiss army knife-life appliances. Earl Miller, a neuroscientist at MIT and one of the world experts on divided attention, says, “our brains are not wired to multitask well…when people think they are multitasking, they are just switching from one task to another rapidly. And every time they do, there is a cognitive cost in doing so.” Even though we think we getting a lot done, ironically, multitasking makes us demonstrably less efficient.
A study at the University of California found that multitasking impedes the brain’s ability to absorb information, Glenn Wilson a professor of psychology, showed that people’s problem-solving ability dropped by the equivalent to 10 IQ points when they multitasked and their stress levels rose.
There is no need to quote another study or expert to realise that as a leader you need to do use your influence to help people manage and cope with the volume of information and the waste of time that are indicative of the traditional organizational structure. Bold organisations like VW who have lead the way since 2011 by switching off their email servers after hours. Perpetual Guardian the Kiwi Company that initiated the 4 day work week has seen this idea gain traction internationally. Twenty New Zealand companies have adopted the shorter work week after Andrew Barnes shared the benefits, “ We saw engagement levels go up 40 percent; work-life balance 50 percent; stress levels dropped; and more people said they were able to do their job over four days than five”.
But why do we have to do this? The answer is pretty simple…we have no choice. Make sure you help your people deal with relevant and beneficial information and don’t overload them. I leave you with the following information:
The volume of information being produced is staggering here are some statistics:
The internet in a minute:
- 474,000 tweets are sent
- 300 videos are uploaded onto YouTube
- 69,444 posts are added to Instagram
- 5 million posts are added to Facebook
- The Facebook like button is pushed 13 trillion times
- 5 billion searches happen on Google
“We are not in a world of information overload, we are in a world of filter failure”- Michael Lazerow