Work, Family and Technology
Julie Schwartz Weber October 29th, 2008
On Monday, October 6th, the Sloan Work and Family Research Network hosted its first Work-Family Thought Leaders Conference Series.  Maggie Jackson, author of Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and Jessica DeGroot, President and Founder of the Third Path Institute joined Sloan Network affiliates and other guests to discuss the problem of distraction in our technology-laden, time-squeezed culture, its affects on our work and family lives, and practical measures that business leaders can adopt to reduce distraction in the workplace and at home.
Maggie began the discussion, outlining how our modern day, technology-driven culture impacts our work and family lives. Maggie quickly noted that while technology can provide positive benefits, like easy instant access to information and people, technology also leads to lack of attention and focus in our work and home lives. More particularly, in work, Maggie talked about how workers tasks are increasingly fragmented and interrupted, where on average, workers change tasks every three minutes. This fragmentation/disruption results in less productivity, more stress, and less creativity. Socially, too, Maggie notes that while people may be in touch with more people via technology, the quality and depth of the relationships is declining.
Jessica then followed up with some pragmatic solutions adopted by business leaders to keep distraction at bay in the workplace and at home. These solutions included:
1)Â Â Â Using technology strategically (E.g., a partner in a law firm opts to check email and voicemail at a set time each day, not as the messages arrive),
2)Â Â Â Living with intentionality (E.g., a business employee chooses to hire another employee to whom specific tasks will be delegated so that the business employee can leave work at a regular hour), and
3)Â Â Â Finding quiet time in which to do work and think (E.g. one client refuses to allow more than half of any day to be filled with meetings).
More information about Maggie Jackson and Jessica DeGroot is available on our site.
Stay tuned for our second Work-Family Thought Leaders Conference Series, scheduled for mid-January.
Related to your thoughts on how time pressures and technology have made us more fragmented and less efficient, I fairly recently gave up on multitasking as a work practice. Multitasking means you never pay anything the attention it deserves for very long, you are constantly being interrupted or interrupting yourself, your stress level goes through the roof and, no surprise, though you are “successfully” juggling lots of stuff, nothing ever really gets finished to a satisfying conclusion.