David--

The study results could also be what the Air Force calls Task Saturation. When one is faced with a large volume of tasks, which is what you might see when you look at your backlogged email inbox, humans can shut down. Some, in an effort to deal with the tasks, begin to compartmentalize and channelize, meaning that they begin to concentrate on their email to the exclusion of all other communication and input that is still coming their way. This is why perfectly good pilots sometimes fly good airplanes right into the ground. In our lives, it means that we will not perform well on other tasks and responsibilities while we are struggling with that inbox.

The solution? The Air Force provides tools and systems that pilots are supposed to fall back on in times of emergencies when task saturation can immobilize a pilot. They pull out their emergency checklists and start taking actions.

I wonder what the difference would be between study participants who used a processing system, like GTD, and those who were simply thrown chest-deep into their email inboxes without a good system. I'd bet there would be a measurable differnece in their results and conclusions.

Very interesting. GTD is certainly our permanent emergency checklist - ref Bert's comment - and an excellent one it is.

For me, the problem has been the cross-over between phone calls and email. You know what it's like, you're on a call with someone who's a little long-winded so you open up a new email and start reading it, or start drafting a response to one in your action folder.

I used to pride myself on saving precious minutes this way, and embarrasingly it took me for ever to realise that actually it was costing me time, because I was doing neither task well - the IQ drop referred to. I would often misunderstand the contents of an email or have to ask the caller to repeat themselves. Not to mention that my behaviour with the caller was discourteous, even if they didn't know what I was doing.

So I think it's to do with giving full attention to the task at hand - mind like water - then we maintain intelligence and focus.

When I read the original article, the two words that jumped out at me were "distracting technologies," with the offender being the first one. Actually, I think distracting ANYTHING is the problem. As a school principal, I think our school secretary's greatest strength is protecting my time by screening the phone calls and drop in visitors.
Frank

I wonder if the effect is impacted (either way) by getting your inbox to empty every day ?

Maybe it makes you feel better because it's like being stoned? Hmmm... ;^)