Jonathan B. Spira's Blog: Overload Stories, page 19

Automaticity: The Impact of Distractions on Work and Driving

The ability to do one thing on autopilot while doing something else is referred to as automaticity.  While experienced drivers can hold conversations and listen to the radio while driving, novice drivers cannot.  Indeed, many new drivers turn off the radio and ask passengers not to talk to them.  They also don't make phone calls or try to send text messages.

Automaticity does not mean that distractions – while driving or otherwise – do not have an impact.  Brain scans by neuroscientists studying this issue have shown that the brain has difficulty paying attention to sights and sounds at the same time.  If the brain is focused on a visual task, its ability to handle an auditory task decreases markedly, and vice versa.

In the course of writing my book Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization, I attempted to determine the impact of distractions and replicated an experiment that NPR had conducted a few years earlier.  I played the piano.

Playing the piano involves a similar amount of hand-to-eye coordination as well as coordination between hands and feet (for pedals, in both cases).  Playing the piano also has a similar amount of automaticity as driving.   I have played the piano since I was five years old and I have been driving since the age of 16.  Even when I am out of practice, I can still sit down and play many of the Beethoven Sonatas I memorized for performances years earlier.

Essentially, I played the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and had a friend ask me increasingly complex questions.  Being asked simple arithmetic questions threw off my tempo completely.  It was impossible to play Beethoven's intricate arpeggios and do simple arithmetic simultaneously.

Recently, I came across a video prepared by Farmers Insurance as part of its University of Farmers online efforts.  Hosted by Prof. Nathaniel Burke, who is portrayed by actor J.K Simmons, the Distracted Driving video cites some statistics (distracted driving "accounts for 25% of car crashes") and some root causes ("music, cellphones, food").  It shows a man  driving while an increasing number of distractions appear, including a boom box located directly behind the driver's head, a drink being spilled on the driver, a few people poking the driver with long sticks, and a mobile phone.

After a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt jumps into the car and starts dancing in his seat, the car (not unsurprisingly) crashes.

While most drivers don't face this number of distractions on a regular basis, the video (which is 30 seconds in length) does an excellent job of driving home the point that, simply put, distractions distract.  Given that a typical knowledge worker may be subject to almost as many distractions while at his desk as the Farmers Insurance driver faces in the video, it's amazing we're able to get any work done at all.

 

Wendy Ellin: 10 Tips for Easing Information Overload

 

 

 

Wendy Ellin blogged on wendyellin.com about Jonathan Spira's tips for dealing with Information Overload.

Full blog post available here.

Irene: High-Tech Hurricane or Old Media Triumph?

As Hurricane Irene started to bear down on the New York metropolitan area, like many others, I started to think about preparing for a variety of eventualities including storm damage and power failure.

The View from the Eighth Floor

Though the storm packed a good punch, with strong winds and heavy rain, it never reached the potential that meteorologists had forecast.  Indeed, wind speeds reached 80 mph (128 km/h) at times but, in general, sustained winds were(according to news reports) at most in the 60 mph (96 km/h) range and generally far lower.

Some storm-related preparatory tasks were relatively easy, such as removing all of the outdoor furniture from my terrace (and hoped that neighbors, especially those living on higher floors, had done the same).  After reading that the FBI told its employees to make sure to place papers and files inside desk drawers so that they wouldn't fly out if office windows broke, I moved all papers (what happened to the Paperless Society?) away to safety.  I thought about taping the windows but, apparently, prevailing wisdom has shifted away from this so I decided that the shades and blinds would have to protect against possible broken glass.

Experts on television and radio were telling apartment dwellers to stay away from windows if they lived on the 10th floor or higher since the higher you go, the stronger the wind gusts get.  One of my criteria for living on the eighth floor of my high-rise condo was that the fire department ladders didn't go much higher. Now I had another reason.

Then there was water.  In the event of a power failure, the pumps that supply water in taller buildings won't work.  I filled five larger pots just to be safe.  I already had plenty of bottled water to drink so that part was covered.

Now came the hard part, namely news and information.  If the power went out, my main Internet connection (Verizon FiOS) would also go down (although the FiOS connection does have battery backup, it is intended to keep voice services up and running for up to eight hours, but not data).  I made the switch to Internet radio years ago and migrated my last battery-operated radio (a shower radio) to Wi-Fi last year.  There's got to be a battery operated radio here somewhere…

It turns out I actually had two.  One is a battery-operated Radio Shack weather radio, the other a small battery-operated clock radio.  Of course the clock-radio hadn't been touched in years, the batteries had been left in way too long and had corroded but, after a quick cleaning, it worked reasonably well with new batteries.

Now onto ensuring a modicum of Internet connectivity.   My new HTC Sensation phone has a built-in 4G hotspot and I also have a Clear 4G hotspot.  I charged both and also made sure any other mobile phones I had lying around well charged as well.  My Apple iPad was already fully charged and I would need its ten-hour battery life if the power went out (I made sure that the most recent issues of the Economist and other newspapers and magazines had been downloaded, to minimize the need for Internet connectivity.  Finally, I also charged my Nikon D90 DSLR in case a photo opportunity presented itself (it didn't but one never knows).

It turns out that television news about hurricanes is highly addicting when you are in the path of the storm.  Based on the dearth of my friends' Facebook posts, I would say that most of them were watching the news as well.  Unlike what I heard right after the earthquake (which shook Washington and New York and was centered in Virginia) where there were reports that there had been 5,000 Twitter posts per second, I heard no such stats being bandied about during Irene.  In fact, the news media seemed downright serious about the coverage and reportage was in many respects at its best, demonstrating the power and often-overlooked value of old media.

Indeed, during severe storms and power failures, when cell sites and towers go down and wireless data becomes unreliable, AM radio, which first came into existence in 1906, and broadcast television, which came into widespread use in the 1940s, are still the media to which almost everyone turns

More than 1.3 million people are without power in the tri-state area as I write this.  At one point, the Long Island Power Authority was reporting that 25% of its customers were impacted by a blackout.  As I write this, the skies are brightening although cloudy with occasional sprinkles. The flood warnings continue for the tri-state area as rivers and lakes continue to rise and it will take days to restore power to millions of people along the eastern seaboard so we are not quite out of the woods yet, but the forecast for radio and television news is for clear skies.

Jonathan Spira interviewed on the Sound of Ideas

David C Barnett spoke to Jonathan Spira for the Sound of Ideas radio show on Cleveland Public Radio.

Full show is available here.

Guest Column: Poor craftsmen blame their tools

Search 101?

Blaming search tools for failures in search is common, and more often than not without merit.  It often seems as if Google has failed us when we search for content that we know exists, yet the search results taunt us by refusing to reveal what we are looking for.

The truth however, is that we are simply incredibly bad at using search tools.  Two items came to my attention this week that demonstrates our ineptitude at finding what we are looking for.  The first was a statistic derived from research by Dan Russell, a search anthropologist at Google, who was interviewed by Alexis Madrigal for theAtlantic.  Russell studies how computer users perform searches, and found that 90% of computer users do not know how to use CTRL + F (PC) or Command + F (Mac) to search through a document or Web page.

The time that is surely wasted by not using this simple technique is staggering.  (Just to make sure we all are out of the 90%, this shortcut to the Find function allows you to search locally for keywords in a text document, PDF, e-mail, or Web page.  Try it out and join the 10%.)

The second piece of the puzzle comes from reports on the findings of the Erial (Ethnographic Research in Illinois Academic Libraries) project.  The project was conducted over two years and employed both anthropologists and library staff members to examine student research habits and attitudes towards libraries and librarians.

The findings from the study will begin to be published this fall, but Steve Kolowich, writing for Inside Higher Education, notes that the researchers found that students were even worse at search than they had anticipated.  In his article, What Students Don't Know, Kolowich discusses some of the findings, including the following;

- Only 7 out of 30 students observed at Illinois Wesleyan conducted what a librarian would consider a reasonably well-executed search.  (Presumably this encompasses such criteria as the use of appropriate search engines, Boolean logic, and authoritative sources.)

- Students mentioned Google more than twice as many times as other available databases in interviews, yet had no understanding of Google's search logic and were not capable of formulating searches that would return good results.

- Of the students who did turn to non-Google scholarly databases for research, 50% ended up using a database that would not have been recommended by a librarian for their search needs.

- Only 3 of 30 students that were observed formulating search queries used additional keywords to narrow search queries.

- The researchers observed that students would end up with either too many or too few search results, and would often simply change their research topic to one that was easier to find information on.

It is staggeringly clear that there is a need to teach basic search techniques to students, who, without instruction, will likely go on to become part of the 90% of computer users not using simple page search.  We have created powerful search tools and technology (compared to what previous generations had available) that are capable of so much, yet we are clearly neglecting to teach proper usage and even basic understanding of search mechanics.  Even much needed advancements in search technology will not help if we are not even capable of using the tools we have now to their full potential.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.  He can be reached at cburke@basex.com

"Coach" Ron Tunick interviews Jonathan Spira

 

 

Jonathan spoke to "Coach" Ron Tunick about Information Overload.

Full podcast available here.

Plugging In While Plugging Out

If there is a fork in the road, take it.

A recent holiday left me in a quandary.  The concept of my trip was simple: fly to Stuttgart, take European Delivery of a Mercedes-Benz E350 BlueTec diesel-powered sedan, and drive it in a northerly direction to the Nordsee (North Sea).

But should I unplug?  Or should I spend a week of my time in Germany and the Netherlands plugged in to the hilt?  Or, perhaps this trip was a chance to attempt to actually strike a balance and not veer toward either extreme.  As much as possible, I wanted to explore places I had never visited before without technology-enabled distractions.

Since a good part of my workday is spent in front of a computer of some kind, should I not completely unplug from all that?  After careful consideration, I decided that this would be akin to throwing away the eBaby with the bathwater.  After all, travelers of an earlier age would have taken countless books, guides, maps, and brochures with them.  I, on the other hand, was traveling light.  I had my iPad tablet and even brought along a portable Wi-Fi hotspot to ensure coverage wherever I may be.  The challenge would be to not let that connectivity pull me into excessive working or mindless information consumption.

In the past several years, as I became more and more cognizant of the effects of Information Overload, I have found myself better able to separate work from the rest of my life and not fret, for example, about how much e-mail might be accumulating while I am doing something else.

As a result, I had little concern about checking e-mail or conferring with colleagues.  Instead, I decided to use the ubiquitous online access to enhance the trip experience, and prove to myself that it was possible to consume information in moderation and not let it distract me from the sights and sounds of my journey.

The first leg of the drive, from Stuttgartto Maastricht, took us past Karlsruhe, Speyer, Mannheim, Koblenz, and Aachen, among other cities, and it was fun to look up information about the places we were passing.  Checking the weather was another activity best done online because the weather was constantly changing (to say the least) and, in the end we were very lucky with far less rain than had been forecast.

There were countless decisions, such as where to eat and what to see and do in various towns along the way.  Having the Internet at hand made it far easier to plan the day and make well-informed itinerary changes on the fly.

While I am a recovering news junkie, there were several major events unfolding in the world during the trip (riots in London, downgrading of the U.S. debt rating, just to name two) and I wanted to at least have a semblance of reassurance that the world-at-large was still out there.  A combination of a quick glance at the Wall Street Journal and New York Times iPad apps plus the "Tagesschau in 100 Sekunden" (a 100-second recap of top news by Germany's leading television news program) gave me all the news I needed.

In addition, while I didn't want to overload anyone with too many details of my trip, I did want to share a few choice photos with friends and family and I used a combination of e-mail and Facebook to do so.

Admittedly, there were a few work-related phone calls and e-mail messages that I did have to attend to but those were few and far between and didn't leave me craving for more of the same.  I was able to do what I had to and then return to ignoring work, e-mail, and the Web – and focus on my primary objective, namely discovering new places and things to do and see.

Jonathan B. Spira is CEO and Chief Analyst at Basex and author of Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous To Your Organization.

The Expert Access Radio Show interviews Jonathan Spira

 

 

Jonathan Spira spoke with Steve Kayser on The Expert Access Radio Show

Full interview available here.

Getting Out From Under Information Overload

 

 

Getting Out From Under Information Overload

Jena McGregor

Washington Post

7/31/2011

 

In the 30 minutes it's taken me to open this new Word document, read through three articles about today's post, and decide how to start writing, I've gotten eight new emails. My TweetDeck browser has alerted me to 17 new tweets from the 300-odd people I follow. My phone has rung once, my laptop has popped up a small window telling me my antivirus software is updated, and a text message has arrived on my mobile phone. If the research that says that a 30-second interruption leads to five minutes of recovery time is indeed true, the entire last half hour has been lost, and then some.

And this was all after I decided what I was going to write about. That idea came from my RSS reader—yet another source for news—which pointed me to a blog post over at Leadership Now about the overwhelming amount of information most workers experience in today's "knowledge economy." The post offers a snapshot of a new book on the topic called Overload! by author Jonathan Spira, who runs a research firm that studies worker productivity in our constant-interruption world.

Full article available here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michael McKinney: Overload! Book Review

 

 

Overload! was reviewed by Michael McKinney for the Leading Blog on Leadershipnow.com.

Full article available here.