Are e-mails a distraction?

It seems ironic barely a week after Christmas, during which (if boxes in the neighborhood's recycling bins are any indication) everyone and their brother seem to be getting the latest gadget, that tuning-out from technology would become a popular op-ed topic. Yet so it has this past week. Yesterday, we discussed a New York Times op-ed  from Sunday by Pico Iyer. In this morning's Times, Roger Cohen takes his own look at the matter in an op-ed entitled A Time to Tune Out. 


Mr. Cohen's approach is different from Mr. Iyer's, but his underlying opinion appears similar. Mr. Cohen begins by describing a new initiative by Volkswagen to limit company e-mail service to its Blackberry users when they are not working. According to the plan, company e-mail servers would only deliver messages up to 30 minutes after an employee gets off work, and again 30 minutes before that employee returns to work the next morning. The idea seems to stem from a renewed desire to help employees maintain some distance between their home and work lives.

According to Mr. Cohen, the blurring of this distinction--as well as the dwindling ability, "to be fully absorbed by and focused on one's surroundings rather than living in some defuse cyberlocation composed of the different strands of a device-driven existence,"--could have some serious costs, the outward manifestation of which he terms the "Inability to Switch Off (ITSO)." Citing several examples, this "inability to switch off" has led several high-level figures (executives, professional sports coaches, etc.) to resign or take extended leaves to recover from what seems to be a kind of mental exhaustion wrought by hyper-connectivity.

As the Volkswagen example (among others) highlights, some in the business world are now taking note of these costs. The most common intervention in Mr. Cohen's examples involve attempts to curb the number of e-mails  employees receive throughout the day (both on and off-hours). The idea goes that if employees know there's no possibility of receiving e-mails at certain times, they'll be less likely to feel the need to check every few minutes.

This seems like a good policy, and other communities may benefit from trying it themselves. For example, my college prided itself on the connectivity of its student body and faculty. The school gives laptops to every incoming student and professor, equipping each with a variety of programs, among them Microsoft Outlook. For those unfamiliar with the program, the default settings for Outlook cause a chime to sound and a message to appear in the lower right-hand corner of the screen whenever an e-mail is received. Presumably, the idea is to give users near-instant updates of their e-mail status.

Such programs have their uses, but now that I've graduated I find I don't miss them. If my college was like any other in the US, most incoming e-mails are not of much use, and deleted basically upon receipt (Outlook's instant updates made this easier). The problem is, such a constant stream of messages can be a real distraction, and sometimes now I wonder if student e-mail is more detrimental than helpful. Perhaps colleges should consider e-mail "amnesty" periods, or at the very least question the supposed benefits of demanding quality work from students while simultaneously distracting them with mountains of pointless e-mail.

It's a tricky issue, considering that connectivity does have benefits. But what is the cost? As Mr. Cohen suggests:

"Connectivity aids productivity. It can also be counterproductive by generating that contemporary state of anxiety in which focus on any activity is interrupted by the irresistible urge to check e-mail or texts; whose absence can in turn provoke the compounded anxiety of feeling unloved or unwanted just because the in-box is empty for a nanosecond; whose onset can in turn induce the super-aggravated anxiety that is linked to low self-esteem and poor performance." 


Something to consider, perhaps.

Happy Tuesday, friends :)