Can I Have Your Attention? by Curt Steinhorst

Author:Curt Steinhorst
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119404385
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2017-10-09T00:00:00+00:00

E-mail frequently fails as communication because people equate responsiveness with responsibility. E-mail trumps any other task we should be doing, so we suffer through all of it—the relevant and the inconsequential—to make sure the one e-mail we need doesn't get lost in the noise. This signal-to-noise ratio dooms e-mail to inefficiency.

Yet, though everyone complains about their inboxes, nobody is sending fewer messages. E-mail has proven to be a staple of our digital diets, one that doesn't require an actual conversation or any other heavy social lifting. You can just shoot out a quick note and switch to the next new message. (Hello, dopamine.)

As for instant messaging, it's second verse, same as the first. And the sheer number of messages we send and receive merrily increases.

We like sending and receiving. The noise is comforting. It makes us feel social, busy, and even important. There's evidence that merely anticipating the possibility of a message releases dopamine; it's also released when we anticipate sending a message.

But that cascade of messages threatens to paralyze us. It creates an overload of options, which can push us into decisions against our own interest.4 At work, this can mean a lack of organization that hurts performance. When an employee feels bombarded, he is more likely to retreat to the relative sanctuary of Instagram or Facebook.

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