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Research study by Gloria Mark, Stephen Voida, and Armand Cardeno, 2012 on impact of work with/without email "ABSTRACT We report on an empirical study where we cut off email usage for five workdays for 13 information workers in an organization. We employed both quantitative measures such as computer log data and ethnographic methods to compare a baseline condition (normal email usage) with our experimental manipulation (email cutoff). Our results show that without email, people multitasked less and had a longer task focus, as measured by a lower frequency of shifting between windows and a longer duration of time spent working in each computer window. Further, we directly measured stress using wearable heart rate monitors and found that stress, as measured by heart rate variability, was lower without email. Interview data were consistent with our quantitative measures, as participants reported being able to focus more on their tasks. We discuss the implications for managing email better in organizations" CONCLUSIONS Our study has shown that there are benefits to not being continually connected by email. Without email, our informants focused longer on their tasks, multitasked less, and had lower stress. It is an open question to what extent the effects we found in our study might be sustainable. How the benefits of reduced email usage might outweigh the known benefits of email in reaching larger numbers of people rapidly with information is not clear. What our study suggests is that the tradeoffs among email usage, work pace, stress, and collaboration need to be more closely explored. There will always be new "zombies" lurking with advances in information technology, and we must continue to be vigilant in assessing the human costs that are incurred when these advances are adopted in the workplace.

Blog by Adam Dachis on Lifehacker on living with technology, 8.31.10. Outlines the problem and provides answers. We're surrounded by gadgets that demand our attention, constantly fragmenting our ability to properly focus on the task at hand. Living with technology doesn't mean we have to live with an addiction, however. Here's how to beat tech burnout. Back when we were tethered to desktop computers, this wasn't such a problem. First of all, technology had yet to proliferate in society at the enormous level it has nowadays, but more importantly we didn't have little computers (read: smartphones) that we could stick in our pockets. Previously we might check out email at a few convenient intervals during the day. Now these tiny little multitaskers are requesting our attention wherever we go. We have many more opportunities to interact with information and so we run into two more dilemmas: filtering an information overload and using our technology appropriately. The Solutions So what do we do about it? Overcoming a tech addiction and avoiding burnout requires work. There aren't any magic tricks that'll pave the road to freedom, but here are some ideas to get you started. Out of Sight, Out of Mind Stop Multitasking Never Apologize Get Organized

TEDxStanford talkl by Cliff Naas about the impact of media multitasking and social interaction and emotional intelligence.

Article by Christine Porath, June 20, 2015, NYT on rudeness and bad behavior and its impact on us. Has two lists: Boors in the Workplace, Behaviors that we admit to Also has paragraph on impact of multitasking and too much technology

funny video by James Hamblin, M.D. on Atlantic on how we constantly multi-task and miss being fully present

Blog by Annie Murphy Paul, June 20, 2013, PBS Next Avenue on 8 things that can make you smarter. "4. Attention You've probably heard about the "marshmallow test," a famous experiment conducted by psychologist Walter Mischel in the late 1960s. He found that children who could resist eating a marshmallow in return for the promise of two marshmallows later on did better in school and in their careers. Well, there's a new marshmallow test that we face every day: the ability to resist the urge to check email, respond to a text or see what's happening on Facebook or Twitter. We've all heard that because "digital natives" grew up multitasking they excel at it, but in fact, we now know there are information-processing bottlenecks in everybody's brain that prevent us from paying attention to two things at the same time. Focused attention is an important internal situation that we must cultivate in order to fully express our intelligence." Another excerpt: "A common example: The ready availability of technology has convinced many people that they don't need to learn facts anymore, because they can always "just Google it." In fact, research from cognitive science shows that the so-called "21st-century skills" that we're always hearing about - critical thinking, problem-solving, collaboration, creativity - can't emerge in a vacuum. They must develop in the context of a rich base of knowledge that is stored on the original hard drive, one's own brain. For tech to make us smarter, we need to know when to put it away.

Colorful, informative graphical mindmap by Jane Genovese at Learning FUNdamentals in Australia for high school students on how to focus in the age of distraction. The branches include taking time to reflect and review, creating rituals/habits, how to work; managing your space, taking a digital technology detox, and help for addicts. From Learning Fundamentals. Also has a presentation for use with with these learning outcomes: By the end of "The Facebook Effect" workshop students will: 1.have developed an understanding of how social network sites (e.g. Facebook) are highly addictive; 2. have developed an understanding of the many benefits of working in a focused manner in a distraction free environment; 3. have access to a range of tools to help them eliminate distractions in their work environment; 4. have a deeper understanding of how multitasking can slow down their mental processes and lead to poorer learning outcomes; and 5. be aware of strategies to enhance their focus and concentration

blog by Chuck Thompson, June 2009, in Men's Journal. To improve your athletic performance and to feel clearer all the time, start with the most fundamental act of life. Excerpt: "We all come into the world with the ability to take full, unencumbered breaths, but as we get older we forget how to breathe properly," says Don Campbell, a journalist turned wellness expert who champions a new movement among doctors and athletes known as "conscious breathing." A host of challenges conspire against our breathing well, Campbell says: "Poor posture, restrictive clothing, bad habits such as smoking, diets that lead to high blood pressure and racing hearts, increasingly rapid and emotionally stressful lives, lack of exercise, multitasking, polluted environments, and slouching in front of computers are just a few of the things that literally take our breath away, creating a lifestyle that's incongruent with proper breathing." Modern life causes the average person to use about a third of his natural lung capacity, while drawing about 15 breaths a minute." Breathing exercises: Relearn How To Breathe Do this exercise five times a day and you'll start thinking and performing better in no time: 1. Inhale deeply 2. Exhale with a short burst (as if blowing out a candle). This helps activate your diaphragm, which most people don't use. 3. Exhale with a long, slow finish to empty the lungs. Breathlessness comes from not expelling enough CO2. 4. Inhale, filling your lungs from the bottom to the top, instead of taking short sips. Most use a third of their lung capacity. 5. Hold for a moment to allow oxygen to saturate the cells. 6. Exhale slowly and completely. 7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 for five minutes. Read more: http://www.mensjournal.com/magazine/you-re-breathing-all-wrong-20130227#ixzz2t8BfTHcj Follow us: @mensjournal on Twitter | MensJournal on Facebook

An article for BBC by Maggie Jackson, September 2009, about our inability to pay attention in an age driven by speed through technology "Still, I'm worried. These digital age wonders will be squandered if we can't think critically, research well, and evaluate the data-floods we now have at our fingertips - and these are precisely the skills alarmingly lacking among both digital natives and older generations. Half of college students can't judge the objectivity of a website. Workers now switch tasks every three minutes, half the time interrupting themselves. As David Nicholas points out, we spend our time online 'power-bouncing' from info-snippet to data-point. And this propensity to rely on point-and-click, first-up-on-Google answers, along with our growing unwillingness to wrestle uncomfortably with nuances or uncertainties, keeps us stuck on the surface of the 'information' age. We're too often sacrificing depth for breadth in the ways we make sense of the world. Yes, we've always had 'power bouncing' and distraction. And surfing or multitasking may have an important place in 21st-century society as strategies of learning. But going forward, we need to do much more than hopscotch across the web, split-focused and pulled this way and that by choice distractions. We cannot mistake fragmented, diffused attention as avenues of higher thought. Instead, we need to do better at cultivating - perhaps resuscitating? - deep focus, keen awareness and meta-cognitive 'executive' attention - the skills crucial to creativity and problem-solving. "

Keith Ferrazzi, May 3, 2012 on running virtual meetings with "use video" as first requirement to reduce multi-tasking.

blog by Eli Dourado on March 6, 2013 on binge learning. Excerpt: A combination of technology (DVRs) and market service providers (Netflix, Hulu, On Demand) have transformed how and when and where we watch "television." I suspect that students want the same things. Technology and market forces appear to be reshaping how and when and where we learn. Perhaps we education providers should pay attention. But the kind of bingeing that people might like to do with online courses is entirely different. Most people who sign up for an online class at Udacity or Marginal Revolution University want to take the class for its own sake, not as a requirement for some broader credential. The point is not to learn and forget-it is to indulge an interest. This seems like a more natural way to learn than traditional educational structures can offer: develop an interest and mercilessly indulge it until another interest supersedes it. It is a method that conserves the mental energy associated with willpower, leaving more of the brain's resources to focus on the material itself. Since it relies on the student actually being interested in the class, it is hard to fit into a physical schooling environment, where classes have to begin on a schedule, go slow enough for everyone to keep up, and run in parallel with other classes. Online education also saves the resources associated with context switching. Humans are notoriously bad multitaskers. Each time a high school student has to change classes, she has to quickly stifle the thoughts and questions raised in previous classes to focus on the current class. She has to expend mental resources remembering where the previous session of the current class left off. And when she returns to the class that stimulated the thoughts that had to be stifled, she may not recall them. Far better to focus on-or even to binge on-one subject until she is at a good stopping point.

Press release reviewing 2014 Accenture study on #listenlearnlead, good findings on benefit/drawbacks of internet connections/multitasking during conference calls, etc.

The scoop on what happens in audio conference calls--Katie Hafner, December 4, 2015. 

Has important considerations for choosing right digital devices based on purpose and nature of work to be done--Robin L. Flanigan, EdWeek, June 11, 2015.

Leo Babauta on single-tasking and how he is going to do a better job with it

article by Jessica N. Abraham-Hogan on trends in mobile app development by Appery.io, a development platform. More mobility, speed, integration of tools, etc.