What happened to discipline at the office?

In an article recently written in the Boston Globe, here were some astonishing research findings:

Office distractions eat up 2.1 hours a day for the average worker.

Employees devote an average of 11 minutes to a project before being distracted.

It takes workers 25 minutes to return to their task, if they return at all.

People switch activities every 3 minutes on average. 

Fifty five percent of 1,000 respondents in one survey said they check email messages either immediately or shortly after the message arrives.

Curbing these distractions in a highly stimulated, technologically advanced society has become overwhelmingly challenging.  It is probably hard for many of us to think back to what we did before we had many of these distractions eating up our work day. The most interesting part about this is that we are voluntarily interrupting ourselves most of the time; Perhaps it is our increasing lack of self-discipline to stay focused on a task for a long period of time, before hastily clicking our personal in-box, making a personal call, chatting with our cubicle neighbors, or doing anything else that may inhibit our work-place productivity. 

Comments

[etsaman]

Could it be that most people get really bored with their jobs? I mean, sitting in a cubicle staring at a box cannot be the most stimulating activity we can think up. Do these distractions prevent us from developing mental illnesses? Are we not social beings that need to remind ourselves of our importance in our society?

[Luc]

This is a HUGE issue - likely tied hand-in-hand with the increase in stimulant ADD meds prescribed to adults. Is your co-worker really productive because he/she's dosing amphetamines and a power bar for breakfast? Caffeine is already the most abused stimulant on the planet. Is ADD really a disease or a marketing coup that would make PT Barnum jealous?