On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Why Technology Wont Solve All Your Productivity Problems -- and What Will

On the Job by Anita Bruzzese Why Technology Won't Solve All Your Productivity Problems -- and What Will For a while now, youve noticed that you are falling more and more behind at work, even though youre exhausted at the end of the day because youve been so busy. Its not like youre goofing off you just have too much to do! So, you figure maybe a couple of the new apps youve heard about will do the trick as theyre designed tomake you more productive, organized and efficient. But at the end of the week, youre still not caught up at work you think you might even be more behind. To top it off, youre even more exhausted and stressed because you cant seem to get a handle on your workload and balance it with your personal life. It might help to realize youre not alone, which is why there is such a surge in the popularity and number of productivity self-help books. One of those, Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business has landed author Charles Duhigg on the bestseller lists. I think we are living through a period of economic change on par with the Industrial Revolution, says Duhigg, a Pulitzer-prize winning investigative reporter forThe New York Times. There is a certain amount of anxiety generated by such a big change. Its exciting but its not easy. What most of us have discovered, he says, is that while technology is wonderful, it doesnt solve all of our problems. Thats because we may believe that if we use technology to work longer days, to perform more tasks and to be more connected than ever before, we will find success and satisfaction. But the truth is that only when we use technology and data to meet our specific needs is it helpful. Sometimes the best thing you can do is slow down and make sense of the data coming at you and not get overwhelmed by it, Duhigg says. In addition, leaders can help teams be more productive by allowing them to interact with data in ways that will help them retain the information better. For example, medical schools have the see one, do one, teach one philosophy because they know that allowing students to interact with patients is the way to help them best learn and then further cement that information by teaching it to others, he says. Its not always because you want to teach someone else, but it does help it (information or process) to sink in, he says. Further, technology can be helpful and improve your daily work only when you can see the data embedded in those decisions and then use it somehow tolearn from it, he says. In his research of how companies and individualsget more done, Duhigg finds: Speaking freely matters.Teams are more effective when members feel itssafe to say what they thinkand everyone gets equal air time. Its also important that team members are sensitive to the feelings of others. Leaders have to be careful that they dont reward the loudest in the group or fail to answer questions. By showing (read more here)