It is easy to stay connected these days--- thanks to Smartphones that allow us to communicate and access unprecedented amounts of information. We have become obsessed with staying connected at all times. We interrupt ourselves constantly to check our in-boxes, hoping for something more interesting, more fun, or more urgent than whatever we’re working on in the moment. However, checking e-mail interrupts continuity in our thought process and as a result our productivity plummets. E-mail is undoubtedly the world’s most convenient procrastination device.
Depending on how often you are forced to switch gears, it may cause you to lose a significant portion of work time a day. Being a chronic multitasking junkie, you may feel a constant urge to check your email, check what your friends are posting on Facebook, or connect with colleagues on LinkedIn. Constant interruptions are the Achilles' heel of the information economy. The average knowledge worker has a very limited attention span and sets asides whatever they are doing to start something else. It could be answering their cell phone, checking e-mail, sending a Snapchat message, clicking over to You Tube, or posting something amusing on Facebook.
Social media users receive an endless flow of information, often at a rate far higher than their cognitive abilities process the information. Social networking can absorb a lot of time, particularly if you don’t have a focus and are using multiple platforms. Social networking can provide a great way to collaborate with others to get fast answers, and create a social involvement no matter where you are. However, it can serve as a convenient temporary cyber mental escape.
The rapid-fire effect of texting and tweeting quickly becomes an unmanageable flood. Twitter is yet another technological tool to our lives, on top of e-mail and Facebook and everything else that competes for our scarce time. The 140-character update panders to our short attention spans and leads to communicating in a fractured form. If tweeting is our method of speaking with one another, it seems our social conversations have given up narrative and structure and lacking one of the most vital things---actual face to face interaction.
Today’s we are deluged by E-mails, text messages, instant messages, Webcast, corporate intranet, and smartphone notifications. When we are not using these social media tools, we may be checking our e-mail on our smartphones or reading random facts on Wikipedia. In recent years, the term "information overload" has evolved into phrases such as "information glut" and "data smog". Because of our communication technologies, we are all awash in mind-numbing tides of data and drowning in factoids. Information technology may be a primary reason for information overload due to its ability to produce more information more quickly and to disseminate this information to a wider audience than ever before.
The smartphone has become our pocket-sized master. However, if you jump on every e-mail or ping, you will have trouble pursuing your long-term goals. So, for all you smartphone addicts, smartwatch checkers, Google glass wearing-digital glasses everywhere, the next time one of the gadgets on your Batman-belt full of devices starts buzzing learn some restraint and techno-etiquette.
For decades, the ability to switch rapidly from one activity to the next was thought to be the essence of managerial work. You talk on your cell phone, send emails, and jot down notes for an upcoming meeting all at the same time. Yet, multitasking may be counter-productive. The greatest casualty of our mobile, high-tech age is attention. By fragmenting and diffusing our powers of attention, we are undermining our capacity to thrive in a complex, ever changing world.
As social media technologies such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube open more lines of communication, more people might find themselves overwhelmed by all the information. When toggling between Facebook, Google+, Twitter and a handful of other online communities, it is difficult to keep up with the constant barrage of tweets, texts and instant messages.
Multitasking is quite simply seen as the ticket to productivity, even though it is actually quite inefficient. Multitasking is part of a wider value system that venerates speed, frenetic activity, hyper-mobility, as the paths to success. People are drowning in a deluge of data. Consumers don't have the bandwidth to process the fire hose of information coming at them all day.
