The Trouble with Productivity PDF Print E-mail
Written by Jerry West   
Saturday, 12 January 2008
I remember when I worked at the Nuclear Division of GE in San Jose, California in the summer ‘85 after my freshman year of college. My boss, Muriel Dixon, told me the execs at GE stated with the new computer systems they had installed it would plummet the paper usage at GE, which was close to a small forest each year.

The result?

GE’s paper usage went up 6 fold that year. Ooops.

It seems that when we think we will gain an advantage, we don’t. Take the web. It was supposed to make us more productive, but if you don’t watch yourself, it is the biggest time waster around - and some blame Google for much of that.

Take Seth Mnookin for an example. He’s self employed, sets his own ours and even works from home (which I think it mistake #1). He spent time creating a Google Home Page, installed the Google Toolbar, uses Google Bookmarks, Google Reader, Google Books, Google Calendar, and the list goes on…

So he spends three-and-a-half hours organizing his Google Bookmarks one day and then gets distracted poking around Google’s US Government Search. And we haven’t even discussed You Tube yet.

Then it hit him, he wasn’t actually accomplishing anything. It almost seems like we need to “time manage our time management.” If you want to play around the web, fine. But set a timer, or you may find yourself “working so hard” but getting nothing done - and that leads to massive frustration. And there is no bigger killer to creativity than frustration and stress.

 
 
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