Tag: ‘Produktivitaet & Projektmanagement

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When this single from Foyer des Arts was released in 1986, multitasking was not yet a popular term. Internet access and mobile phones were not yet part of the standard equipment, even fax machines were not to be found in almost every office until the end of the 80s. In other words, life in the office must have been like a wellness oasis compared to today (I was still in school at the time and can’t judge it). Today, we constantly check our e-mails, surf eBay at the same time, chat with three colleagues at the same time, search a search engine for clues as to whether there is an update for an application, and call our tax advisor at the same time. This simultaneity is to the disadvantage of most people, according to an article in the New York Times that appeared in the Monday edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung on April 2, 2007 (unfortunately I did not find a link to an original article). Multitasking not only slows you down, it also brings in more errors, according to one of the interviewees. Even though the brain can produce incredible achievements, it still cannot concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and switching from one activity to another at the same time costs 1 second. It doesn’t sound like much, but one thing leads to another, and it is assumed that disruptions cost the American economy $650 billion a year. However, an interruption also means that work is done again or an idea is exchanged with a colleague. Here, too, it is assumed that software can help in the future by acting as a “time nanny”. There is some interesting work on this by Eric Horvitz from Microsoft.

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Merlin points to 5 topics that children should learn in every school, and this includes time management. Unfortunately, I’m offline and can’t read up on what age this is supposed to be suitable for, but I’m not comfortable with this thought:

Learn to make a to do list. Learn to prioritize. Learn to break things down into 30 minute blocks of time. Learn about actionable items.

Didn’t it start with the fact that you had to do your homework before you were allowed to play outside? At what point do I tell our daughter that I want to check her priority list? When I’m back in the States in April, I’ll be looking for a time management book for children, maybe that’s a gap in the market next to all the Seiwert titles and thus more money to be made than with Web 2.0 books.*

At the beginning of January, an article by Matthias Drobinski, “The Loss of Time”, appeared in the SZ, about which I had wanted to blog for some time, and this article by Merlins is a good hook.

Germans have never had as much time as they do today, and at the same time the quality of this time of life has multiplied, according to Drobinski. There is no comparison between the tired seniors of the 50s and the retired people who are active today. At the same time, the lack of time is omnipresent, because the time saved by better transport connections and modern communication channels disappears through new “time-consuming purposes” instead of being used for non-purposeful purposes.

The ubiquitous facilitations are used for multitasking and give rise to the flexibilized person desired by the economy, who then has time off when the global constraints of the company allow it. But it is above all the loss of time spent together that makes the loss of time. And this will get worse rather than better in the face of economic pressures:

The acceleration processes will continue, the pressure on the individual will grow to spend his or her life as a being acting everywhere at the same time. Interestingly, it is economists who are currently talking about the acceleration trap […], who are calculating how much the curse of permanent interruption costs when employees no longer come to work because of all the calls, e-mails and Internet excursions.

Finally, Drobinski calls on politicians to ensure that the “stade Zeit” in the form of universal holidays is preserved, because after all, it holds society together. Last but not least, he emphasizes that the Bavarians are doing very well economically with the many public holidays.

As little as I believe that this is due to the holidays or the “staden Zeit”, Drobinski is not wrong on the other points. Does it really make sense to drill children for it at an early age? Is the dawdling of the kids unnatural or the multitasking of the adults?