The Cost of Not Paying Attention

While working on the Juggling Elephants "Train the Trainer" program, I came across a fantastic research abstract entitled The Cost of Not Paying Attention-How Interruptions Impact Knowledge Worker Productivity. Consider some of their findings:

-Unnecessary interruptions cost U.S. businesses $588 billion per year.

-Twenty-eight percent of a knowledge worker's productivity may be lost to unnecessary interruptions such as instant messaging, spam e-mail, telephone calls and the web.

The abstract offered three great solutions to minimize such losses. They were:

-Training knowledge workers to prioritize work at hand

-Providing them with discretion to turn off technology

-Separating themselves from technology to do work