Your Blackberry is making you less productive

Posted on 12. Feb, 2010 by David in Takeaway

Here’s an interesting article on productivity which suggests that your Blackberry is not making you more efficient.

The money quote:

“In addition, a lot of the supposed BlackBerry benefit is destroyed by four factors. First, working on a BlackBerry is less efficient than working on a computer (it takes more time to get the same stuff done), so some of your benefit (time waiting in line) is wasted in lower productivity. Second, checking your email constantly causes you to respond to emails and deal with issues that you could have simply ignored had you waited until you got home or to your hotel (since questions or issues posed in email often resolve themselves if you simply wait a few hours). Third, having a BlackBerry causes you to spend more time on email than you need to, because you can. But people lobby their companies to pay for their BlackBerrys because they want them, and companies often agree because they think they’re getting a more efficient workforce. Fourth, the quality of work you do on a BlackBerry is lower than on a computer. For example, with a computer, you can answer a question by finding a specific data source and actually finding the answer; with a BlackBerry, you are more likely to give an unhelpful answer like “try looking at source X,” which you may have misidentified, and which is less helpful to the person asking the question.”

Of course we’re all about efficiency since what we do all day is try and make things more efficient for our customers here at Buttonwood so I’m thinking of ditching my Blackberry!