Convenience can be a collective trap

Article from Dan Mercer that’s an obvious must-link from this blog. His opener sets the stage: In her book Attention Span, UC Irvine informatics professor Gloria Mark describes a study in which her team shut off email for a group of office workers for a week, then compared their behavior to the previous three weeks. The participants experienced notable benefits, including lower stress (as measured by heart rate) and reduced task switching. They also reported a sense of freedom and a healthier pace to their work. But the big idea is that it only worked because they all did it. If just one of them did it, they’d be left out/behind instead of getting the benefits. It them quotes/jumps to a major conclusion: Email is a much bigger problem that needs to be tackled at the organizational and even societal level. I need to read the book and understand more, because there are just glaring obvious limits to this. If you took these office workers and sealed them into isolated caves where they…