I.T. Can Steal Your Time

By Steve Roberts

It’s official; Windows Vista is now shipping, along with the other Microsoft flagship product Outlook 2007, and you’re not a MS fan then? Novel, Google, Apple and other would-be-MS-iconoclasts have a plethora of products to integrate, streamline and organize your personal and professional lives. When you complete your productivity suite with ‘smart phones’, or ‘Blackberries’, ‘iPhones’, or other PDA’s (personal digital assistants), you and your business are now officially plugged in, wired, synced, or any other number of terms describing your information connected status. Your business savvy is measured according to your ability to be connected to a constant stream of incoming and outgoing information, arriving in the form of email, text messages, instant messages, attachments, personal and team calendars and whatnot. The question is; are you more efficient?

Efficient is usually defined as “effective action without waste of effort, time, and expense”. There are two key parts to the definition, effective and without waste. Before you answer the efficiency question take this short survey. (Answers are Yes, Sometimes, or Never)

• I regularly check or read mail/messages during staff meetings.

• …during a meal with family or friends.

• …during a private meeting with a boss, employee, or co-worker.

• …during a sales or customer meeting.

• I have configured my PC to alert me when a new message/mail arrives.

• I have configured my Phone/PDA to alert me when a new message/mail arrives.

• I stop my current work to check/read new mail/messages due to alerts.

A score of 3 yeses or less indicates a good practitioner of IT discipline, between 4 and 5 yeses indicates an impending need for IT discipline, and greater than 5 yeses indicates that you have abdicated control over information and IT stimulus now reins in your place. This is far from scientific, but before you start with justification about how important your work and your availability are, read on.


In Proverbs (14:23) it says; “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” A modern translation of this ancient wisdom might read, “All effective work brings a profit, but mere activity leads only to poverty.” As a nation we are still number one in productivity, and we are working more hours to maintain our lofty position. According to Bradley S. Klapper, an Associated Press writer; “American workers stay longer in the office, at the factory, or on the farm than their counterparts in Europe and most other rich nations, and they produce more per person over the year.” Mr. Klapper goes on to report that our increased productivity; “… has a lot to do with the ICT (information and communication technologies) revolution.” No doubt. But, just as Moore’s Law (computing speed doubling every 18 months) appeared to be doomed because the miniaturization of circuits was pressing the limits of quantum mechanics, so does our IT-induced productivity appear doomed when pressed against the 24 hour day, 52 week year. At some point working longer and working through the weekend, or working on our vacations won’t keep us at the pinnacle of productivity.

A healthy view of technology is as that of an information resource, and as with any resource, natural or otherwise, information resources can be measured like energy; that is, we measure its energy potential. A gallon of gasoline contains 1.3x108 joules of potential energy. Unharnessed, it is at best underutilized, (imagine simply burning the gas in a container to heat an outdoor area), and at worst it can be a bomb, (imagine a gallon of fumes sparked in an enclosed area). But harnessed, this same gallon of gas can propel your automobile a great distance. IT discipline is putting into place those harnesses that will allow you to extract the maximum benefit from your information resources.

I encourage you to adopt great technology to remain productive and competitive in our ICT savvy world, and, along with your technological ensemble, adopt a set of guidelines to harness your IT potential. IT Discipline is not simply time management; rather it is a structured approach of integrating IT into your business process while leaving you, the human, in charge.

Consider these simple points when writing your IT guidelines:

• Determine what information is important or urgent, and disregard the rest.

• Set time aside to review and categorize new information.

• Set aside planned work times and don’t allow new information distraction.

• Create a meeting policy regarding non-meeting distractions.

• Set your own standards for person-to-person meetings; don’t answer your phone, read your mail, or otherwise diminish the value of interpersonal contact.

• Reduce information alerts to bare essentials.

Your work should not be mere work; make your work effective by the application of IT discipline and add to your bottom line today.

About the Author
Steve Roberts is the founder of Restaurant Magic, a Tampa based software-development company specializing in enterprise-level business and reporting systems for large restaurant organizations. Steve can be reached at: sroberts@restaurantmagic.com