The Journal of Marriage and Family has released a study by sociologist Noelle Chesney that indicates that cell phones are detrimental to family relationships. I am becoming increasingly anti-cell phone for this reason. The need to have to be constantly available is incredibly stressful after a while. I think it may be a good idea for families to turn off their phones at certain times of the day as a method of dealing with the invasiveness of this technology.
I haven’t read the article in full just the summaries of it, but I wonder if the author connects this with what Arlie Hochschild calls the reversal of family and work cultures. In her book the Time Bind, Hochschild argues that the division between home and work has changed and many people are finding work to be more relaxing than home. I personally felt this way over the last year or so. When I am teaching, my job is great and very relaxing–I’m able to forget the stressful things like paying bills, but as soon as I leave it is a different story.
The cell phone enters this picture because it becomes impossible to tune work or family out. Having your family call you at anytime on your cell phone can create conflicts. For example, I have had meetings at unexpected times, and if anyone calls my cell phone, they are not going to get me. The person calling is expecting me to be free and suddenly when I’m not available the person gets worried calling every line. This is completely unecessary stress. For some reason we are not able to treat cell phones like home phones.
I also suspect that this problem is much greater for women than it is for men. I can’t speak for other women, but I feel it really makes finding a space of our own, where we don’t have to organize, manage, and care for others, very difficult. I wonder about this with computers too (E.g.–suddenly we have to send photos of little Joe, Joe to Grandma everyweek.). I know this would be an even greater problem if I had kids; in fact, I get a little agitated when I see preteens checking in with parents on their cell phones. In this sense, the cell phone becomes a kind of surviellance tool, so we can keep up with each other. Then there is the whole language of protection and safety–cell phones make us safer, blah, blah, blah.
I know the work/family issues have been played out over and over again in feminist literature, but I think the role of modern communication technologies has been undertheorized, and the more I think about this the more I feel like these technologies are just one more way to exercise social control over women (children and employees too). In a way this is more of a rant, but I do frequently feel this way about my cell phone and some of the other communication technologies. Am I too much of a conspiracy theorist? Do you think this is true?
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We had a cell-phone for a couple of months and we got rid of it. Good riddance. We are just fine without it.
I not to sure of the gender implications of technology use, but I will just give some of my own personal observations on a few technologies and pet peeves. In terms of having a cell phone, I only had one for a short period of time before I lost it:) and never got a new one. Needless to say, I do not miss at all and there are only a couple situations that it would really be useful for in regards to my lifestyle. I kept the cell phone off at work, when driving, and some other times because quite frankly as you noted Rachel it caused me to be disrupted, and although I personally did not receive too many calls, I am pretty sure, if I did and had it on all the time, it would merely just give me unnecessary stress.
The only times I can think of when I would really actually desire to have a cell phone would be, if I or someone else was in an “actual” emergency situation and there were no other phones in the immediate area or when I am on the road and trying to find the location of where a person who I am suppose to meet up with is. A secondary problem with cell phones is that it appears, at least from what I can tell, that there are less public phones available, which makes the cell phones more necessary. One of the strangest and somewhat isolating experiences is to meet up with a group of three or four people to go out with, and just before leaving, seeing that everyone at once is on their cell phones talking to someone else outside of the room.
Another technology that I find is being increasingly used inappropriately in my office is email. It seems that rather than having conversation over the phone many people seem to prefer to just send an email. Now, at least from my perspective email is best at just giving out pure raw information, such as documents, confirming meetings, setting appointments, communicating a fixed message to a group of people, etc. As a conversation device it is highly lacking; however, it seems that some people actual prefer to send out three, four, or more emails rather than just simply picking up the phone and calling the other person. I believe people use just email this way so that they can always have a full record of their “conversation”; however, rather than doing that they can just call the person, clarify the matters easily, and then send out a email, which summarizes the key points.
Part of the reason, I would say for the increased email is the great amount of flexibility given to people at my office, who can work both from different locations and from home. I never work from home because I decided to move close to my work so that the office is only a five-minute drive away and I can also walk to work. What kind gets me thinking, is that if everyone decides to always work from different locations and mainly use email for conversational purposes, it makes easy to justify to out source jobs, even over seas. After all, communication is much better between people when all elements of it in the form of words, tone (voice), and body language are together (e.g. actually seeing and talking to the person) and the next best thing would be the having the tone and the words together (i.e. the phone). If conversations are purely word based, who cares where it comes from and essentially were losing all the productivity advantage of people being close together.
Can’t see I see any gender-specific implications here.
James –
Verbal communication wastes time when the person with whom you need to communicate lacks communication skills. You spend an hour waiting for them to finish hemming and hawing, telling irrelevant anecdotes, babbling to cover gaps in their knowledge, etc. E-mail short-circuits that. Their messaging may still be a waste of time, but the time being wasted is on their end (as they spend an hour writing an e-mail full of hemming and hawing, anecdotes, and babble) – on your end, you spend ten seconds extracting the one sentence of actual information you needed from the person and move on. So many people are inefficient and inconsiderate, and extensive use of e-mail for communication puts the costs of those behaviors on the people who originate them. (“How come nobody will ever return my calls? They just send me an e-mail asking for the July numbers. When will we really talk?”)
Your philosophy of the desirability of broadband communication is admirable (and would work just fine for me) if all I had to interact with was skilled communicators. That is rarely the case. Bottom line, I just don’t have time to chat.
We use cell phones to coordinate between home base and whoever is out running errands (“was it two bottles of Pine Sol or three?”) and to make information-seeking or emergency assistance calls; chatty calls are for the landline. (Well, the internet-line.) This works well for our family; when my kids get older, my wife and I will want them to be in contact with home base. Autonomy is a wonderful thing, but ten year olds don’t get to have much of it.
Like Mythago, I don’t see any specifically gendered behavior going on; women might feel more pressured to be available on the cell, but this is just an extension of women feeling social pressures deeply. What’s new?
I think there is definately a shift but I am not sure if it is bad. 20 years ago when you dialed a phone you dialed a place, now we are about half way through a shift to dialing a phone is dialing a particular person. As we move closer and closer to merging all forms of communication(written, voice, even voice and picture), we as a society are getting less and less patient. Getting a letter a month was a joy at one time. Now, we expect our emails answered within hours, our text messages or phone calls within minutes. If there is an added pressure I believe it is more a perception and impatience than an actual problem. Maybe people who are more upset by not being able to get immediate contact with those they try to reach are more prone to feel obligated to keep the cell phone on and ready 24/7. As for gender related stress differences…it is a stereotype but havent we always shown women as more conversation and telephone oriented. Maybe there is more pressure there simply because of the amount of time spent on the phone.
I am definitely interested in research about the gender-related implications of cell phones, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out there are negative effects on women’s lives. I think the already considerable pressure to get a cell phone is stronger on women because people tend to think it somehow protects them from (sexual) assault (to the extent that someone actually told me ‘if you don’t have a cell phone, then don’t come running to me when you get raped’). This might lead to people overlooking the real problem which is widespread misconceptions and misogynist attitudes. Being able to call the police to report (the threat of) an assault doesn’t do much good if they’re not likely to take women seriously. The Body Shop has recently started collecting old cell phones to give to domestic violence victims, and although I am sure their intentions are good I found myself wondering if it is really helpful. Surely the only real solution is for the women to find a way out of their situation. Maybe I’m paranoid but I was concerned that in the end women will still be blamed; as in ‘we-gave-her-a-cell-phone-it’s-not-our-fault-if-she-didn’t-call-when-she-needed-help’. Whereas in reality, vulnerable women are likely not to have adequate support and that is what they need more than anything. These are just two ways I can think of that cell phones may seem helpful but end up not benefiting women unless people’s attitudes also change. People who say it is just part and parcel of sexist attitudes are right of course, but that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t think about and critically evaluate new ways in which women are discriminated against.
I’ve not noticed any difference in cell usage based on gender. I carry my cell all the time, but this is because at work it is literally the only way my children can contact me in the event of an emergency. In theory, my supervisor is supposed to relate any messages to me, but this system fails more often than not (like the time my daughter fell and broke her foot) thus the cell phone at work.
In fact, I’ve found that phone pretty handy on several occassions. I have no problems turning it off in class, in the car, and I turn it off when I’m at home. On the other hand, my husband leaves his on 24/7 because of his work.
I think there is definately a shift but I am not sure if it is bad. 20 years ago when you dialed a phone you dialed a place, now we are about half way through a shift to dialing a phone is dialing a particular person.
This can actually create real problems in the job that is taking care of kin relationships. In the past you could call the house telephone number and have a chat with all family members at that address. Now you may have to try to reach every one of them separately. This can take a lot more time, and often we are not clear about the fact that the job of staying in touch this way is predominantly a women’s job.
My mom complains about this, as she has trouble reaching her grandchildren when she phones their mum’s cell phone. Then she feels that she should have a special reason before she can call every one of them separately.
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JamesQ wrote:
There are many other reasons why people choose to send email rather than using the phone. For example, to avoid interrupting someone in the middle of a meeting. I hate it when the phone goes when I’m in the middle of something (a meeting, something I’m trying to concentrate on), why should I disrupt the person on the other end of the phone just because it’s a convenient time for me to call? With email, I can send it at a time convenient to me and the recipient(s) can read it at a time convenient to them.
Another reason: choosing words more carefully. Whilst for some conversations, a phone is good as it conveys tone of voice which email doesn’t, if you’re like me and not good at choosing the right words in person then an email can be just the thing to convey what you really mean, you can edit it for as long as it takes to say what you wanted, before hitting the send button.
Asynchronous communication is good for me because it means I have complete control over when I communicate and I don’t get interrupted at a bad moment. It’s why I don’t own a mobile (cell) phone. I can’t imagine something that could be more consistently stressful than a mobile phone.
I’m glad that someone else notices “The need to have to be constantly available is incredibly stressful after a while.”. I hadn’t found anyone else who agrees with me. Everyone else just thinks I’m weird for not having a mobile and can’t imagine why I would find it inconvenient; they delight in pointing out the odd occasion when it would be helpful and put pressure on me to get one. UGH! Wake up folks, I am not on this planet just to be on the other end of a phone just when you want me to be.
When my parents got me my first cellphone, my first thought was “Fuck. Now they’ve got an electronic leash.” And so I kept it turned off most of the time. So, no, Rachel, you’re not the only one to have the “social control” thought. I, like some of the others, haven’t noticed any specifically gendered implications here. But I have noticed themes of protection and surveillance, and those are often tied to gender, so who knows?
The thing about cellphones is that they create the expectation that people be available to talk at all hours of the day, unless something is wrong. So you have to pick up your phone or cause worry.
Why do we always blame the technology for the social customs that grow up around it, and then conclude that the only solution to the social problem is to toss the tech? (The big one for this is TV.)
Cellphones are new. It took decades to see what cheap cars did to American society–McSuburbs, teenage dating patterns, etc. We don’t yet know what 24/7 connectivity is going to create. Some of it will be good, some not so much.
As to whether the load of responsibility and guilt lands more on women, did you think you were living in a patriarchal society or not?
What Jeff said. There is absolutely no need to answer a phone — any kind. Most calls are 75% non-necessary communication, with the pertinent information coming at the tail end of a call. I think it is up to the receiver of a call to choose to answer and then choose the direction that the call is going in.
If someone is wasting my time, intruding on my privacy, bitching at me for no reason, etc., I let them know and hang up. Or I don’t answer.
And in some ways this is gendered. I work with lawyers a lot and it is the secretaries and the paralegals (female) who answer phones and return calls. Most direct calls to male lawyers roll directly over to voice mail. Which is now how I conduct my business. I don’t answer my work phone and my voicemail tells callers to email me. Yet I’m still dismayed at the number of dipshits the leave long, rambling, pointless messages for me that could be covered by a simple “please call me back.”
I feel harried by my cell phone sometimes, and have recently decided that I should turn it off if I have a migraine or something, even though it might irritate my boss to not be able to call me anytime.
I don’t know if the stress of being constantly available affects all women more, but I think it does bother me (a woman) more in ways that set off my anti-housewife alarms. I’d really like to be able to send my husband off on an errand and know that he’ll make whatever judgement calls neccesary, without calling me to check every damn detail. Which is what he used to do, and it pretty much removed the benefits of asking him to take care of something for me. I got around this minor problem by giving him more specific lists if specificity is important, and making it really clear that whatever flavour of jam or brand of dishwashing liquid is fine by me! Of course, it also helped what I realized that it bothered me to feel like I was “in charge” of shopping, and therefore had to be consulted as an expert. I had the fairly typical newlywed fear of turning into Harriet Housewife.
I definitely relate to what a couple of other people have said regarding people freaking out and assuming something is wrong if they can’t get you on your cell, then calling every single number they can think of to “make sure you’re ok”. I had this problem for a while with my cell phone, someone would call me at work when I was in the middle of an experiment, so of course I didn’t pick up. They’d then keep calling my phone every couple of minutes, finally call the lab phone, and be all freaked out. Meanwhile I’m trying to run an experiment and ignore my phone ringing off the hook. I have made it clear to anyone who calls me regularly that if I don’t pick up it’s because I have my hands full, and I *will* call back, unless they keep calling and calling, then I won’t call them back because I will be annoyed. This has worked pretty well, especially because I word it in terms of my job, that I can’t always pick up because I’m elbow deep in lab work, wearing gloves and handling time sensitive protocols.
I’m also reminded of a highly melodramatic boyfriend who once called my house constantly for an hour and a half, letting it ring till the voicemail started, then hanging up. I was out having a driving lesson, and my grandmother was in, but she doesn’t answer my parents phone, so she had to sit and listen to it ring. The boyfriend insisted that he was mad with worry and convinced I’d fallen out of my loft bed and broken my neck, even though he was aware of my driving lesson schedule. I felt it was extremely obnoxious (and silly). A bit off topic I suppose, but anecdotal evidence that you don’t need a cell phone to be harrassed by clingy callers!
This is a really interesting discussion. I had forgotten about the companies collecting cell phones for domestic violence victims. That’s an interesting point.
I also wasn’t thinking about the connect between the outsourcing and working at home.
Side note: Judging from some of the language it sounds like we have a real international group of folks on this thread, which makes me wonder if this is a general problem with post modern societies.
I’ve actually found that cellphones keep me closer to my family. Maybe because I’m a college student and cellphones are an absolutely vital part of my life: having a land-line phone is just too expensive, and I’m rarely in my dorm room anyway unless I’m asleep. My parents and I have a family plan, which is nice because it means I can talk to them for as long as we want, no extra charge for length or long distance, so I keep in touch with them very well. The portable aspect is also nice, because it means I can talk during the 15 minutes between a class and a meeting, or while I’m walking to lunch. For me, a cell keeps me closer to my family, not further apart. My parents also have cell phones because they share one car, so they call each other to arrange trade-off times. So it allows them to be environmentally friendly too :)
Also, when I was in high school, my junior and senior years I had a cell, and it actually considerably decreased my parents’ surveillance. For example, they abolished my curfew, and just expected me to “check in” on the cell if I was going to be out later than midnight. They knew I was responsible, and didn’t worry about me so much in case of an emergency.
In sum, I agree with Jeff: it’s more the social customs than the technology that are harmful. Sure, parents who are extremely strict are going to take advantage of cell phones, but parents who wouldn’t set up extreme surveillance on their kids aren’t going to just because they can. Similarly, people who tend to worry about what’s going on at home when they’re at work, and vice versa, are going to be even more stressed out by cell phones, but people who have never had that problem will be able to just turn the phones off.
Am I too much of a conspiracy theorist?
I don’t think you can be accused of conspiracy theory unless you claim that cell phones were invented for the deliberate purpose of suveillance of women. And even if you do decide to make that argument, you can only be accused of conspiracy theory if you’re wrong.
I agree that the technology is not in and of itself harmful. However the idea of constantly being able to get in contact is very appealing to people who are already control freaks. I am married to one. I have big fights with him if I fail to “buzz him” to let him know that I have arrived safely at work. When cell phones did not exist, I got to work just fine without letting him know and his world did not cave in. He is getting more and more insistent about “buzzing” him when I go anywhere and it is really starting to get to the point that it is causing major havoc. I also don’t like being so reachable from work related stuff. A lot of the people I work with don’t really respect boundaries and end up calling me on the weekend on stuff that could just as well waited until an actual work day e.g. Like the kid example upthread I am starting to feel like I am on an electronic leash.
You might find this article interesting:
How I stalked my girlfriend
Lanoire wrote: The thing about cellphones is that they create the expectation…
No they don’t. People create those expectations.
I use my cell phone for outgoing calls almost exclusively, unless I’m traveling. People know that’s not a good way to reach me.
I agree it isn’t the cellphone itself that is the problem, though maybe since it’s still a relatively new thing we haven’t developed much of an etiquette regarding them yet. There are unwritten rules about calling someone on their home phone – i.e. you don’t call too early in the morning or late at night, you hang up after 8 (or whatever) rings if they don’t pick up etc. Maybe we need something like the settings on instant messenger, where you can set your ‘status’ to ‘away’ or ‘busy’ etc.
I think in situations like Anna in Cairo mentions above – again the problem is not the phone, but the apparently irrational fears her boyfriend seems to have.
I do have a mobile phone but often keep it on silent mode – one reason is because otherwise I forget to turn it off when I’m in classes or in the library or a meeting or whatever, also because I prefer it that way – I can see if someone’s left me a missed call or a message, but I don’t feel harrassed to respond immediately.
I agree with those who are positive about cell phones. I like having no long distance charges so I talk more with my family. Also my friends are all mobile, the only way we get in touch with each other is through cell phones. I think the key is adjusting behavior and expectations to the technology. Most of the time my cell is on silent mode, I may or may not be aware of incoming calls and I choose whether or not to answer.
I can, however, understand the stalker feel of cell phones. My brother and his friend were at my house one afternoon to help me move and each of them received so many “just checking in calls” from their wife/girlfriend that they ended up turning off their phones. Which may explain why I’m inclined not to think that the technology is inherintly biased in relation to sex.
I think that some problems with abusing the technology extend from a lack of security, control and trust. The technology becomes a tool to assuage a person’s feelings insecurity or need to control others. My solution is to provide some of my own control over the technology by choosing when I respond and when I don’t. And when to shut the damn thing off and toss it in a drawer. :)
I also disagree that donating cell phones to abused women is ineffective. While I don’t think a phone can necessarily protect someone from assault, most women in abusive relationships are isolated by their abuser and providing that technology can be a means to give them back some control.
I have found that I need to ban cell phones on Troop campouts. Turns out that there are parents and kids who seem to feel the need to be in touch with Mom (no one’s ever calling Dad) while they are out in the woods. I’m trying to teach them to be independent. When I spoke to one of the mothers about this and asked her to hang on to her son’s phone, she got quite flustered. She seemed to have a hard time with the concept that her son would be out of contact for a 36-hour period without her being able to call him (I and other adults have cell phones and can handle emergency communications).
Amen to that! I much prefer email unless the communication involved requires that both (or all) parties know that everyone is on the same page about something at precisely the same moment – no wondering “did so and so get my message saying I couldn’t make it / what time to be there / it’s been cancelled?” or something like that. I find email to be so much less intrusive – I don’t have to check it until I’m ready to do so, if I check it I don’t have to read it right away, if I read it I don’t have to respond right away unless it’s absolutely necessary… and it doesn’t involve some damn gizmo ring-ring-ringing until somebody or some other gizmo picks up. I don’t even have a cell phone any more, but I feel that way even about my home land line. Part of it might be that my job involves answering the phone on my desk every single time it rings, no exceptions, but I think it’s more about me just not wanting to be bothered when I’m busy or not in the mood to to chat with anyone who decides to ring me up for something that most likely isn’t more of a priority for me than what I’m already doing (and if it is, I’ll probably know it as soon as they start talking to my machine). I have a phone for my convenience, not everybody else’s. (I’m also one of those people that someone complained about above, lol – the ones who reply to phone calls via email instead of another phone call. I do this especially if the phone call was unsolicited, or if I know from Caller ID that it’s someone who can’t be trusted to stay on point during the conversation or respect whatever time constraints I might be under.)
I’ve had some really irritating experiences with people who think I *should* be available whenever they want me for something, and act like it’s a personal insult when I’m not. F’rinstance, someone calling, getting my machine, hanging up, waiting 20 minutes, calling again, getting my machine, hanging up, waiting 20 minutes, calling again… and so on, rather than just leaving a message the first time so I could return later when I was actually, you know, physically present and/or not otherwise occupied. Eventually, if I didn’t pick up for a long enough time, there might be a somewhat peevish message, and then perhaps a half hour later yet another message sounding even more put out that I *still* wasn’t available and hadn’t responded to the first one, because apparently nobody has a life other than the person doing the dialing.
And don’t even get me started on what it was like when I carried a cell phone AND a pager. Try pulling off the highway to return a call to someone who just dialed up your “emergency only” pager only to have them say, “I called you three times at home and there was no answer. I just wondered what you were doing.”
I haven’t carried either the cell phone or pager for years, and I have yet to be in a situation where either one of them would have made a difference in terms of my own safety or convenience. I can see where I might get a cell phone again in the future, but if I do, I probably won’t give out the number (Caller ID might foil that plan in short order, but I can dream). As far as I’m concerned it will be outgoing only. Of course, my old one was supposed to be that way too, in the sense that I never turned it on except for outgoing calls, and my friends and family all knew that, but having the pager took care of that… if someone paged me, they expected to hear back immediately because they knew I had a cell phone. Fortunately the situation that made the pager necessary has long since passed.
I’ve noticed in talking with people elsewhere about this issue that dislike of telephones in general and cell phones in particular seems to be pretty common among introverts, who typically want and need more time “away from it all” than more extraverted folks. And it’s hard to get “away from it all” when “it all” can dial you up direct no matter where you went to get away. I’m wondering – how many here who feel the same consider themselves on the introvert side of the spectrum?
Hi All,
Seeing that I got a couple of replies about by message in regards to email I will just try to clarify. What I was trying to say that using email inappropriately quite often hurts productivity not that email cannot be used as a tool for enhancing productivity. Email is good at sending out pure raw information, such as documents, things in regard to the status of various items, appointments, scheduling, and informational messages sent to a group(s) of people; however, as stated before email is not a very good conversational tool for a couple of reasons.
1. It takes for most people about 10 times along to write up a proper email (e.g. one that uses proper grammar and puts the information in an organized manner) as it does compared to reading an email. In conversation, most people generally can speak much faster than they can type and the amount of time spent listening is usually more or less even. In addition, the overwhelming vast majority of people are superior communicators orally versus how they write.
2. More importantly misunderstandings that arise during communication can be easily resolved quickly and efficiently, and questions prompted during a conversation can be quickly answered. An example, of how inefficient email is in clarify misunderstandings that arise during a “conversation” can easily being seeing how long it takes for misunderstanding in this blog alone to be resolved
Anyways here a few articles on productivity loss do to email and ways that email can be managed better e.g. be used to enhance productivity.
E-mails ‘hurt IQ more than pot’ from http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/04/22/text.iq/ a few excerpts from the article
The survey of 1,100 Britons showed:
Almost two out three people check their electronic messages out of office hours and when on holiday
Half of all workers respond to an e-mail within 60 minutes of receiving one
One in five will break off from a business or social engagement to respond to a message.
Nine out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude, while three out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.
In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King’s College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day. He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points — the equivalent to missing a whole night’s sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.
When the Halo Becomes a Noose: The Dark Side of Email from http://content.monster.ca/8899_en-CA_p3.asp an excerpt from the article:
For example, people who receive 50 emails a day can spend up to four hours sorting and replying. (Management Issues) It’s not far-fetched.
According to Mary Czerwinski, a computer scientist at Microsoft, the delay between handling the email interruption and getting back to the previous task is where the bulk of time and productivity is lost. On average, it takes 25 minutes to deal with the email interruption and then getting back to what you were doing when the interruption occurred. All this ““ because of one email!
E-mail free Friday to encourage verbal communication from http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=4312 two excerpts from the article:
Companies in the UK are now introducing ‘e-mail free Fridays’ to try and reduce the amount of unnecessary material being sent out, and to foster greater interaction between employees. E-mail has swiftly become the staple means of communication in the workplace, but this has had a downside: overloading of servers, overloading of people with information, reduced face-to-face interactions between employees, and reduced productivity.
A recent survey in the UK revealed that 80 per cent of workers use e-mail politically to cover their backs, while a third admitted to using e-mail to avoid resolving a difficult situation face-to-face or over the phone. It is also common knowledge that up to half of all e-mails sent by workers are jokes, quizzes, forwards from friends, etc, which have become known to some in the communications world as ‘productivity viruses’ for obvious reasons. The e-mail free Friday is an attempt to address these problems, all of which are steadily increasing, by banning e-mail communication on that day, forcing employees to take a different approach and to use their time more appropriately.
TIPs on Efficient Email Use from http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/03/efficient-email A few excerpts:
Checking email too often is a significant productivity drain. Email by its very nature isn’t usually urgent unless it’s your entire job, such as answering customer support emails. Here are some tips to prevent email from taking too big a chunk out of your day.
1. Decide in advance exactly when you’ll check email.
Don’t check email haphazardly. You can easily waste 30-60 minutes per day checking email too often. In most cases you should be fine checking your email 3x per day maximum.
2. Use email only for non-urgent communication.
Don’t turn email into an urgency-driven communication tool. It’s not designed for that. If time is of the essence, then pick up the phone. If you have others pressuring you to check your email more often than once or twice a day, such as people that get frustrated if they don’t get a reply from you within an hour or two, then you need to push back. Let such people know that they should never use email for truly urgent communication with you … if they need a fast reply, they must pick up the phone or visit you in person.
3. Disable email checking on program startup.
Don’t set your email program to auto-check email every time you launch the program. You want to be able to send an email at any time during the day without automatically checking email too
4. Log your email usage.
Record the start and stop times whenever you run your email program. Do it for about a week, and see how much time you’re spending on email. Is it worth it? If you’re checking your email more than 20 times a week without a legitimate reason, you’re wasting way too much time.
Other Productivity Recommendations from http://w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html and http://www.ir35calc.co.uk/boost_productivity_for_free.aspx a few excerpts
The six rules for avoiding email tyranny:
1. Turn your email client off. Pick the moment at which you’ll be interrupted.
2. Never criticize anyone in email, and avoid technical debates. Use face-to-face meetings or ‘phone calls instead.
3. Be judicious in who you send email to, and who you copy on emails.
4. Observing some formality is important.
5. Don’t hesitate to review and revise important emails.
6. Remember that email is a public and permanent record.
A simple way to increase productivity
Turn off your phone and email for two three hour sessions each day and watch the increased results in productivity.
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What’s worse than a woman driver? A male driver on the phone, heh heh. Because whatever he’s gassing about can’t wait and the safety of other drivers isn’t as important.
That’s the sexism that I feel bubbling up when I see cell phones in use.
Actually the thing that aggravates me the most is watching a parent of either sex walking along with a stroller and/or children in tow, completely ignoring them while yapping on a cell phone. It happens a lot in our neighborhood and I feel like: so you packed up the kids and took them outside just so you could ignore them some more?
[I have to admit that I hestitated about letting this comment through. Although I think that, in a society that on the whole harms women with sexism significantly more than men, sexist jokes against women are more objectionable, the fact remains that sexist jokes against men are still sexist jokes, and I don’t really approve of them either, or want “Alas” to be a place for such jokes. With all due respect, please don’t post jokes like this on “Alas” again in future. Thanks! –Amp]
I refuse to get a cellphone for a very simple reason. I am an absentminded person who loses things, and a cellphone is a hell of an expenisve thing to be leaving on buses or accidentally dropping into the couch for eternity.
I carry a prepaid call-card as backup for when I’m also too absentminded to carry pocket change. The world will have to be satisfied with that. :/
I use my cell phone for mostly non-typical phone call reasons. (Browsing news stories on lunch break, snapping photos of odd things you see in the street, checking movie times on the way to the theater, etc.) Friends and family long ago learned that if they call me I won’t answer.
Except for my mother, who always calls at work when I can’t answer, and leaves a succession of messages, each more pissed-off sounding than the last.
But I get the feeling she’d be doing this if she were calling a landline answering machine, too. She’s that type of person.
I agree also with the person who likes email. I keep odd hours, and I can send an email to a friend at 3 am when I’m on the computer and it won’t wake them up. If I call them, they probably won’t be my friend anymore.
Yipe! Apologies to Amp and anyone offended by my admittedly sexist joke. I wouldn’t have been insulted if it had been cut from the post or if the moderator had asked me to edit it out. It was a cranky thought and a bad judgement call. I’m sorry about that.
That is one of the reasons, though, why I never use a cell in the car (besides the obvious distraction factor)–I just know that every guy driving by is thinking “woman driver on a cell phone, yeesh.” Like I’m swapping recipes or makeup tips. And I resent feeling responsible for inviting people to think that. The truth is that most people I know, of both sexes, think they are not only great drivers, but that they are so good that a phone call presents no distraction for them–and besides, all *their* phones calls are *important.*
My problem (in the context of this thread, anyway) is that it is a job requirement that I be available 24 hours/day. Other than church and times when I notify them in advance that I’m out on the trail with my Troop and out of the reach of cell towers, a failure to answer my phone is grounds for termination. This is a great difficulty, because I share a characteristic with alsis in being absent minded and leaving things lying around. Also, when I wear my phone on a clip on my belt, I tend to bash it up against things (physical grace is not one of my attributes).
I do not like being on an electronic leash, especially since now my family has the expectation that I’m always reachable, even though they are not. Annoying.
The post on the detrimental impact of cell phone usage rings (no pun intended) close to home (again no pun intended).
Having been part of corporate America (a major bank and a major oil company) I am quite aware of the detrimental affects and effects of being required to carry a pager, or a cell phone, or a laptop computer.
Now days one is chained to every desk that they sit behind. Some rooms only have a throne to sit upon, but you must at least have your cell phone when sitting upon a throne. Big brother has grown up to be the father of all mankind, and tries to be father of all humankind.
Families on the other hand have a need to stay in touch with each because of the many unsolicited verbal commentary’s imposed upon them by emasaries of their father. the relief often timess is to speak to someone in such a manner as to cause the emmasary of their father to depart, talk Christian.
Although I admit this can be frustrating to emmasary’s of their father who control information highways and we are asked to be tolerant of, but it does provide relief to those of a different father, to whom is given no tolerance. What is good for the tolerant is not given to the tolerant, for the dictionary says tolerance is too much of a burden.
I purchased a cell phone for my girlfriend and one for myself so I might better be of service to my help. Opps, I feel my help coming on now, gotta go !!!
– Chaplain Winston
A couple of years ago, my household switched from land line to cell, and I have to say that I feel a lot less compelled to answer my cell than I did the regular phone. Maybe it was in the other room, or I left it at home, or I’d turned it off because I was in a meeting, right? I’ll check my voicemail eventually, so just leave me a message, and I’ll call back. For some reason, I felt like the house phone was something I needed to answer – what if it was an important call for my husband? The cell phone I can set on silent or just ignore.