Connected Worker

Here’s a link to my blog post this morning as part of my day job at Monster: Become More Productive by Slowing Down.

The burning question: is our drive (obsession?) to stay connected “damaging our interpersonal skills, skewing our work/life balance, and limiting our creative thinking”?

I’m not trying to strike a technology-will-turn-us-all-into-distracted-and-unfocused-scatterbrains tone here, or in the Monster post. In fact, if I had that doomsday attitude, I wouldn’t have started this blog.

But author Steve Prentice’s arguments and recommendations that for “cooling down” make sense. My email inboxes don’t need to stay open all day. Taking a break for lunch is a good thing. Not fiddling with my phone while at the dinner table tonight will be helpful for my work/life balance.

After all, the tools of technology and new media are meant to help us do our jobs better and more efficiently. It’s only when we allow these tools to control us that we run into trouble.

So if cooling down actually makes us more efficient, more productive, less stressed, and clearer-thinking workers, I’m all for it.

How about you?

Technorati Tags: Productivity, Steve Prentice, Cooling Down, Creative Thinking

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In a story that I wouldn’t exactly call breaking news, the Wall Street Journal reports today that instant messaging is being used for communication at work. As a Connected Worker, you’ve obviously known this for a long, long time and count IM as part of your essential online toolkit.

Or do you?

There are three main reasons to use instant messaging:

1. Asking, receiving, and answering quick questions and answers that you don’t want to call about or resolve through a string of one-liner e-mails
2. Engaging in creative brainstorming from geographically disparate locations
3. Chit-chatting and/or indulging yourself with some much-needed “goof-off” time

All three can have a place in your creative and productive work flows.

And then there’s another approach that works well, too — turning off your IM altogether.

I have colleagues who swear by IM, and others who don’t want a thing to do with it. After all, there’s nothing worse than powering your way through an important project requiring your undivided attention, only to be interrupted by a colleague’s “So, how’s your day going?” kind of message. He/she is looking to chit-chat; you’re looking to get sh*t done without interruptions.

In such a scenario, resist all temptations to send back a snarky reply and extricate yourself from the conversation as quickly as possible. Then, do what you should have done before you launched into the project in the first place: sign out of your IM client(s).

It’s important to ask yourself how well you handle interruptions and to limit your IM use to the times when simple pings aren’t going to break your concentration.

And so as to keep your colleagues and contacts in your good graces, be sure to ask for their IM preferences, too.

As for me, Gmail chat (bperson) and Skype (Bryper) — are great ways to reach me — most of the time. If I’m busy, I’ll be sure to tell you nicely, or I just won’t be logged on.

Technorati Tags: IM

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