Collaboration: The $588 Billion Problem

January 3, 2008 from CIO Insight – “As much as e-mail, instant messages, blogs and their brethren technologies have helped knowledge workers better collaborate, interruptions and duplications derived from these forms of digital communication and content are overwhelming workers to the point of distraction.

The result is an egregious lack of productivity that may cost the U.S. economy $588 billion a year, according to a report by Basex, which has tabbed information overload as the "Problem of the Year" for 2008.

"Information Overload: We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us," authored by Basex analysts Jonathan B. Spira and David M. Goldes and released Dec. 19, claims that interruptions from phone calls, e-mails and instant messages eat up 28 percent of a knowledge worker's work day, resulting in 28 billion hours of lost productivity a year. The $588 billion figure assumes a salary of $21 per hour for knowledge workers.

180 View – We are also guilty and too frequently check email and interrupt what we are doing. But we don’t agree with the findings. Most people don’t have the attention span to stay focused on the same thing for hours at a time. They need a break and lots of them. So if we are going to take a break, why not do it in a productive way by collaborating with colleagues, customers, suppliers and referral sources? And even if the email or instant message is with a friend, it’s faster than having a chat on the telephone.