I'm Not Slacking Off - I'm Thinking
When was the last time you had time at work to just sit and think? No phone calls, no e-mail, no meetings - just thinking?
In her recent Ask Annie column on Fortune.com, Anne Fisher offers a commentary on why slacking off at the office may be the best way to beat the competition. According to Fisher:
"Consider that for most industries, the U.S. can't hope to be the low-cost producer in a global economy. With innovation now our main competitive strength, creativity is crucial for anyone who wants to move up.
But it's really, really hard, if not impossible, for the human brain to come up with fresh new ideas when its owner is overworked, overtired, and stressed out. And in today's wonderful world of nonstop work, 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights."
Fisher also cites a University of Michigan study that demonstrated that multi-tasking actually reduces efficiency 20% to 40%.
How many of you are under pressure to find a better way to do your job, to implement continuous improvements, to think out of the box? Yet, when was the last time you or someone you work with came up with a really good or creative idea? An idea that wasn't simply a slight tweak of an exisiting process or policy?
In her column, Fisher points out that the danger of our current time traps were identified by Peter Drucker in his classic The Effective Executive which was written over 40 years ago.
"The late Peter Drucker agreed. He wrote in The Effective Executive (an eerily prescient 40 years ago), "All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done." Gulp.
Moreover, in Drucker's view, simply working longer and longer hours won't help. "To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive...needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks," he wrote. "To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours."
Hmm, small dribs and drabs of time...and, just think, the BlackBerry hadn't been invented yet."
Maybe it is time for all of us to shout TIMEOUT!!!! To actually set aside time to think. And when a co-worker asks why you are "slacking off" you can reply, ""I am not slacking off -I am THINKING!"
To read Anne Fisher's entire column on Fortune.com click here: Be Smarter at Work, Slack Off
Posted by Denise Knutson, Senior Consultant, The H.S. Group
In her recent Ask Annie column on Fortune.com, Anne Fisher offers a commentary on why slacking off at the office may be the best way to beat the competition. According to Fisher:
"Consider that for most industries, the U.S. can't hope to be the low-cost producer in a global economy. With innovation now our main competitive strength, creativity is crucial for anyone who wants to move up.
But it's really, really hard, if not impossible, for the human brain to come up with fresh new ideas when its owner is overworked, overtired, and stressed out. And in today's wonderful world of nonstop work, 40% of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weeknights."
Fisher also cites a University of Michigan study that demonstrated that multi-tasking actually reduces efficiency 20% to 40%.
How many of you are under pressure to find a better way to do your job, to implement continuous improvements, to think out of the box? Yet, when was the last time you or someone you work with came up with a really good or creative idea? An idea that wasn't simply a slight tweak of an exisiting process or policy?
In her column, Fisher points out that the danger of our current time traps were identified by Peter Drucker in his classic The Effective Executive which was written over 40 years ago.
"The late Peter Drucker agreed. He wrote in The Effective Executive (an eerily prescient 40 years ago), "All one can think and do in a short time is to think what one already knows and to do as one has always done." Gulp.
Moreover, in Drucker's view, simply working longer and longer hours won't help. "To be effective, every knowledge worker, and especially every executive...needs to dispose of time in fairly large chunks," he wrote. "To have small dribs and drabs of time at his disposal will not be sufficient even if the total is an impressive number of hours."
Hmm, small dribs and drabs of time...and, just think, the BlackBerry hadn't been invented yet."
Maybe it is time for all of us to shout TIMEOUT!!!! To actually set aside time to think. And when a co-worker asks why you are "slacking off" you can reply, ""I am not slacking off -I am THINKING!"
To read Anne Fisher's entire column on Fortune.com click here: Be Smarter at Work, Slack Off
Posted by Denise Knutson, Senior Consultant, The H.S. Group
posted by The H.S. Group at
7:15 AM
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