High-tech hostages

By VICKI JAYNE

Okay, listen up everyone. We've just time for a short presentation on how technology can improve your productivity ... Whoops, hang on. That's my cellphone.

Sorry about that, folks. An important call. Now, where was I?

Right. Technology has had a huge impact on how and where we can do business. It's now an anytime, anywhere scenario - right now you could be using your mobile to connect to your office network, download files, transfer data or zip off an email to a client.

Even when you're sharing quality time with the kids out on the harbour you can hook into your company's latest sales figures or download news from around the world.

Speaking of which, I've just downloaded some new statistics on technology use I could share with you. I'll hook the phone up to my powerpoint presentation here and ... just hang on, the display's not usually this slow.

Okay, there it is.

"A recent survey reveals only 11 per cent of British workers use instant messaging for legitimate business purposes at work - 65 per cent use it for personal conversations during working hours."

Ummm, sorry, wrong report. Here we go.

"Mobile phone users in Western Europe will hit the 310 million mark in 2005. It's expected that by 2007, more than 60 per cent of Americans will carry or wear a wireless computing and communications device."

Bleep, bleep.

Good heavens ... is that the time? I'll just aim my phone your way so I can email a photo of presentation attendees to our database - and thank you for your interest.

Sorry, what about productivity, you ask. Well, I think the technology stats speak for themselves, don't you?

Dramatic licence aside, it's probably fair to say that most of today's knowledge workers have at some time or other suffered from a surfeit of the stuff. The compelling nature of here-and-now information delivery can not only be distracting but counter-productive.

When Wordsworth lamented about the world being "too much with us, late and soon" back in the 1800s, his reveries were at least not interrupted by a rendering of Beethoven's Fifth on cellphone, the insistent buzz of pager or warning bleep of incoming text.

In today's wired world the contemplative reverie is increasingly hard to come by, and erstwhile promises from futurists such as Alvin Toffler that technology would reduce working hours look sadly dated. Growing numbers of salaried staff work more than 40 hours a week and increasingly they allow work to encroach on personal time.

Research by the British Chartered Management Institute found many managers either don't take their full holiday allowance or don't switch off when they do.

Close to half of the 1300 managers surveyed contact their employers by choice while on leave; around 20 per cent spend some of their holiday catching up on paperwork, and more than 60 per cent use the time for stuff they might once have done after work - jobs around the house or tending to health needs.

The institute describes the fact that so many managers can't let go as a worrying trend. The more work overflows into downtime, the less opportunity people have to recharge their batteries and the end result is reduced productivity.

What's happened is that workplace boundaries have receded as communications technology has advanced. The email, cellphones, laptops and personal digital assistants that were meant to liberate us from the workplace have instead taken us hostage.

It doesn't have to be that way, says United States virtual office expert, Gill Gordon. In a book titled Turn It Off (Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2001), he notes there is little limit to what office work can be done from home, car or ski chalet. But that doesn't mean we can't establish a few personal boundaries to take the place of office walls.

His book is not intended to stir up a revolution against portable technology, he says, but to help people use and deal with the technology more effectively.

To do that you first need to understand the role it plays in your life, whether helping or harming. Second, decide where to draw the work/life boundary line, and third develop a plan that ensures you have control of the technology rather than vice versa.

Part of the problem, says Gordon, is that technology has led to a confusion between means of delivery and outcome - just because a message/report/plan can be sent immediately, its dispatcher expects similar response speed.

Immediacy gets confused with importance, agrees Alan Calderwood, director of Priority Management in New Zealand. Anyone who starts their day dealing with email is basically responding to everyone else's agenda rather than pursuing their own, he says.

"If you're not careful, technology can actually increase your workload rather than increase your productivity."

Today's knowledge workers, he says, are bombarded by about 200 pieces of information a day.

"It's little wonder they lose track of what's truly important, such as family, health, or financial wellbeing. They tend to major in the minors rather than getting into the big stuff."

One outcome, says Calderwood, is digital depression - a feeling of powerlessness and inability to keep pace that leads to skyrocketing stress and decreased productivity.

He identifies five symptoms of digital depression:

* Accessibility stress - being constantly available on phone/laptop;

* Insecurity because of digital Darwinism - anxiety that technology is leaving you behind; continuous partial attention and allowing urgent matters to take precedence over important ones;

* Device creep - you get the latest thing regardless of whether it improves your productivity;

* Cognitive interruptus - the technology interruptions that distract you from your daily plan.

All these contribute to skills amnesia - you forget basic management skills of managing priorities, setting goals and delegating, says Calderwood.

It's not new stuff - the company he works for has specialised in personal effectiveness training for 22 years. It focuses on four key areas: time, activity, people and information. Only now there's a lot less of the first and a lot more of the last - the buzz phrase is "technology rich, time poor".

A recent online survey the company carried out (25 per cent of replies were from Australia and New Zealand) found that 87 per cent of respondents use more technology at work than they did a year ago with email in the lead followed by internet access and cellphone. A third said more technology makes them feel more stressed; 80 per cent reported working more than a 40-hour week.

The company's programme for succeeding in a tech-rich workplace includes such basics as starting your day with a plan, not your email, scheduling personal time, controlling your cellphone, easing up on email, surfing on your own time, not being a slave to voice mail, scheduling a quiet time to focus on important projects, keeping all contact information in one place, not being a slave to trends, balancing technology and management skills, testing the productivity benefits of your technology and not robbing your family of time and attention.

Technology is not the problem, but our reluctance to put sensible boundaries around its use can be counterproductive. And the cure is simple: You choose when to turn it off.

Our wired world

* New Zealanders are information high fliers - this year we ranked six in the IDC/World Times Information Society Index, just behind the Fins and ahead of the Swiss. The Swedes were first for the fourth year.

* Market penetration for mobile phone use has increased from 9.4 per cent in December 95 to 64.7 per cent in June this year, according to Vodafone New Zealand.

* Telecommuting is also on the rise. Recent figures from Australia show 26 per cent of working adults use a computer at home or away from the office for work purposes. And they didn't even make it to this year's wired top 10.