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When Liz Margles learned of her company's new policy of no e-mails on Wednesdays, she was shocked and a bit skeptical.
"What do you mean, I can't e-mail any more?" Ms. Margles remembers thinking. She wondered how she would manage to do her job as vice-president of communications for Loblaw Cos. Ltd.
But after seven weeks of eschewing e-mail on Wednesdays, she's a convert. Not only has she enjoyed talking with colleagues in person rather than by using a keyboard, she's found that without the constant barrage of electronic messages, Wednesdays have become a time for deeper thinking and long-term planning.
"It just sort of unburdens you," Ms. Margles said. "You look forward to Wednesdays."
We all know how BlackBerrys, e-mail and cellphones allow work to intrude and distract us from our personal lives. The brief BlackBerry outage last week reminded many workers just how much they rely on constant communication.
But now there's a growing awareness that these technological tools can distract us from our work, filling our days with interruptions that, while work-related, prevent us from thinking carefully for any unbroken stretch of time.
That's one reason why companies such as Loblaw, Intel Corp. and U.S. Cellular Corp. are enforcing e-mail-free days, or restricting BlackBerry use in the office.
Others set aside time for creative thinking: Google Inc.'s 20-per-cent rule allows engineers to spend one day a week working on ideas that aren't in their job description. Gmail and Google News both grew out of ideas conceived during 20-per-cent time.
Such structured programs acknowledge that something's missing from the status quo for most office workers - time for creativity and strategy, uninterrupted by a smaller tasks and electronic communications.
Of course, e-mail only intrudes on our workday to the extent we allow it. Many workers are secret accomplices in their own distraction. After all, it's much easier to fire off 10 e-mails than to sit down for an hour and think hard about how to turn around your division's performance.
"People like to be busy," said Toronto productivity expert Mark Ellwood, president of Pace Productivity Inc. "And people measure their busyness by how many of these interruptions we get."
There's a difference between looking busy and being productive, Mr. Ellwood noted. When they actually record their every minute at work, he said, most people learn they're spending much more time on low-priority tasks than they thought and not enough time on their core responsibilities.
Ken Siegel, a psychologist and management consultant in Los Angeles, encourages his executive clients to institute e-mail-free days in their offices. He said responding to e-mails too often takes the place of real work.
"People can spend all day clearing their e-mails," Dr. Siegel said. "They equate a clean inbox with a clear mind and it's not the same."
Most office workers operate in "a pattern of chronic distraction," Dr. Siegel said. Research backs him up. Employees working on a computer typically check e-mail 30 to 40 times an hour, according to a study by researchers at Glasgow University and Paisley University in Scotland, and one-third feel stressed by the number of e-mails they receive and their perceived obligation to respond quickly.
The problem with constant interruptions throughout the workday is that multitasking doesn't really work. A landmark 2001 study found that the "time cost" of switching tasks, say from writing an article to checking e-mail, are more significant than previously thought. In 2006, University of California at Los Angeles researchers used MRI brain-mapping technology to determine that multitasking hurts one's ability to learn and remember information. So trying to get more done by constantly cycling through different screens on your computer will actually hurt your productivity.
Mr. Ellwood wages a constant battle trying to persuade people that they can change how they spend their time and concentrate on one thing for unbroken stretches.
"There's a great sense of resignation out there," Mr. Ellwood said. "You may not be able to control everything, but you control more than you think."
No e-mail days work only when the directive comes from the top and when high-ranking executives embrace and follow the rule, Dr. Siegel said. When it works, he said, employees "are able to focus on what matters more."
That's been the case at PBD Worldwide Fulfillment Services, a Georgia-based company that started No E-mail Fridays two years ago. Chief executive officer Scott Dockter says inspiration struck as he was typing his eighth e-mail exchange on the same subject with his assistant, who sat six metres away.
"We were wasting each others' time and, more importantly, we were not communicating," Mr. Dockter said. "It seems like a simple concept, but we just lose sight of it with all these gadgets."
It took about three months to overcome resistance to the idea, Mr. Dockter said. At first, employees would queue up e-mails to send at 12:01 a.m. on Saturdays. "That urge to go check your e-mail, it's almost like an addiction," he said.
But people began embracing the concept once they saw how much more work they were getting done on Fridays. Now he's getting fewer e-mails throughout the week. And when his Treo crashed on a business trip recently, it was no big deal.
"That's the ultimate beauty," Mr. Dockter said.
Deep thoughts
Want to break free of distractions, but don't know how?
Here are some radical ideas:
Get over yourself. Receiving lots of e-mail doesn't mean you're important. "People who brag about getting a hundred e-mails a day, I think there's something wrong with that," productivity expert Mark Ellwood says.
Turn off your automatic e-mail notification.
Block e-mails on which you are cc'd. "Anything you really need to know finds its way to you," management consultant Ken Siegel says.
Most people don't need the
Internet at their desk all the time. Cut yourself off.
Rebecca Dube
