Business growth: Dealing with digital distractions
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“Two guys walk into a bar” is how the joke usually starts, but this time they sit down at the bar and do not say anything; they take out their phones and just stare at their screens. That is the age in which we live. The next time you go into a restaurant, make your own observations and see who is actually talking to someone else, versus looking at their phone or some other digital device.
Productivity is dramatically declining as a result of needless co-worker interruptions, meaningless meetings, and the constant “ding” of our cell phone. A recent study by the consulting firm McKinsey indicated “high-skilled workers spend 28% of their work hours reading and then replying to e-mail messages.” That percentage does not include any reference to accessing social media platforms.
The phenomenon is called time fragmentation, fragmented leisure, or digital distraction. Whatever term you want to use, the problem is fast becoming one that results in, not only being distracted, but pushing people into more and more social isolation. As a business owner or manager, the reality of digital distraction is that it causes significant job disruption.
According to Ashley Whillans of the Harvard Business School, digital distractions “have crushing effects on our happiness, our social relationships, and our physical health. Time poverty silences our laughter, steals our joy, and depletes our personal well-being.” With a quote like that, it does not leave much more to the imagination, except to say that understanding the problem puts you on the road to providing a solution, or at least in developing a framework for avoiding the problem in the first place.
The brain of a person looking at the screen of any digital device is able to stay focused for a whopping 44 to 50 seconds. Capturing that segment of time and using it to your advantage is critical to your company. According to a recent study issued by on-line learning company UDEMY, everytime one of your employees is distracted enough to look at their phone or other personal digital device, it takes them over twenty minutes to re-focus on their task.
TEDx Speaker and author of the book “Homo Distractus,” Dr. Anastasia Dedyukhina, has suggested five ways to maximize the effectiveness of your communication with an intended recipient.
1. Keep the ‘main thing’ the main thing. “People are paying the most attention at the beginning of your message. Deliver the main message within the first 40 words to ensure it is received. In a short text, this is easy. In an email, don’t start with the back story: Cut to the chase.”
2. Be clear and to the point. “Aim for a reading level of around eighth grade……. if you write for a twelfth-grade level, your readers will either skip your message or save it for ‘later’ which may never happen. Use MS Word’s Check Readability Statistics function to determine your document’s grade level. Clean up your word choice. Write use instead of utilize, and before instead of prior to.”
3. Be concise. “No one has patience for roundabout language. Purge quaint phrases and buzzwords. Don’t write at the end of the day; instead, write, in the end, or ultimately. Shun low-hanging fruit: embrace opportunities. Avoid unnecessary words in phrases like personal belief, plain fact, or advance reservation. Instead, write belief, fact, or reservation.”
4. Simplify your sentences. “Long sentences bore people. Maintain an average sentence length of around 20 words as measured by MS Word’s Check Readability Statistics function. Include a maximum of two clauses beginning with that, which, or who. Don’t glue together two word gobs with and or but and imagine that your readers will follow your train of thought. They won’t.”
5. Break up the text. “Subheads, bulleted lists, and blank spaces all add to your readability. By varying the visual format of your message, you make it easier for readers to skim and look for keywords.”
As humans, when we jump from one form of stimulus to another and we do not process what we have read; it is in opposition to how our brains normally process information and retain it. Since this ‘skimming’ approach for information is proving to be universal in nature, it is important for business owners and managers to realize it and use these five points to communicate what needs to be communicated in a concise manner. Hopefully, they will help your company grow.