Future Workspaces » personal information management

Instruments: Are you ready for the new way of work?

Ruud Janssen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:26:27 +0000

This little test (an interactive MS Excel sheet) scans for your current personal information management strategy, and your collaboration and knowledge sharing attitude. It focuses on those aspects that are affected most by the changes brought about by new, ICT-enabled ways of working. Use this test to examine how ready you are for “the new way of work”.

The test is currently only available in Dutch and can be downloaded here.

Results: Learning from paper to improve digital technology

Ruud Janssen — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 12:11:19 +0000

For decades, the paperless office seems to be just around the corner. However, even with the advent of laptops, smartphones, and mobile working styles, the reality today is that in most offices paper is still everywhere. Apparently, paper is fulfilling an important role for knowledge workers that digital technology still doesn’t.

In 2002 I was part of a group of researchers at the R&D department of Océ that got inspired by the book The Myth of the Paperless Office by Sellen & Harper. As a result, we started a project to study how paper supports knowledge workers in their task management. Today the project is a Ph.D. project carried out by Olha Bondarenko at the Eindhoven University of Technology, in close cooperation with Samuël Driessen from Océ and myself. Over the years we uncovered many mechanisms by which paper supports knowledge work, and we were able to learn valuable lessons for the design of digital document management systems.

Last Tuesday I was asked to present our research for a group of students at the University of Twente. It was a good reason to summarize six years of “desk research” in a presentation. The presentation is available here.

Instruments: “information overload” self assessments

Ruud Janssen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 15:51:24 +0000

Information overload is often associated with uncertainty and work pressure resulting from the abundance of information people are confronted with during their daily work. Information overload therefore takes on the symptoms of work-related stress, something that one person is simply more prone to than another. When this form of stress develops, the strengths and weaknesses of your personality and your personal work style play a key role. These three self assessments (interactive MS Excel sheets) are designed to examine these aspects in detail.

English:

Dutch:

Lessons learned: Coping with information overload

Ruud Janssen — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:30:00 +0000

A growing number of knowledge workers is confronted with the consequences of information overload on a daily basis. In the METIS knowledge management project we performed a pilot study at the petrochemical multinational Basell (now LyondellBasell), where we investigated the causes of information overload and evaluated instruments to reduce the impact of information overload. A leaflet summarizing the study can be downloaded here (English), and a presentation with highlights of the study can be downloaded here (English) or here (Dutch).

Best practices: Efficient task management with MS Outlook 2003

Ruud Janssen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:12:09 +0000

A lot of work comes in via your inbox each and every day. In this booklet, we discuss a number of features in MS Outlook 2003 that you can use to deal with this continuous flow of work more efficiently. As a stepping stone, we use a working method that is often taught in time management and personal efficiency courses for dealing with e-mail. The advantages of this working method include:

Being less dependent on your own memory to remember things
Deciding more quickly about what you’re going to do when
Getting a better grip on your time

The booklet can be downloaded here (English) or here (Dutch).

Info-overload: We have met the enemy and he is us

Marcel Bijlsma — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:38:24 +0000

Wij zijn onze eigen vijand zeggen Spira en Goldes van Basex in hun onderzoek naar information overload. De heren schatten de ellende van improductieve tijd op een schade van maar liefst $ 650 miljard aan de economie (in plaats van de eerder genoemde $ 588 miljard). Ja het zijn de kosten van werkonderbrekingen door informatie-interrupties. Een gemiddelde kenniswerker richt zijn aandacht dagelijks zo’n keer of vijftig op zijn email, blijkt weer uit onderzoek van de firma “RescueTime” onder 40.000 kenniswerkers. De jongens van Basex hebben nu samen met onder andere IBM, Microsoft en Google de Information Overload Research Group opgericht. Lid worden? Niet te snel, want Scientific American komt net met het bericht dat bloggen goed voor je is en dan doe je zelf weer mee aan die informatie-overload. Het is om gek van te worden. (source: frankwatching.com, 23-7-08)

What Productivity Studies Really Show

Ruud Janssen — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:35:53 +0000

“[...] Personal productivity is indeed personal, so always take study result findings around digital life and the ensuing prescriptive solutions with more than one grain of salt [...]” (Source: Lifehacker.com, 23 July 2008)

Bedrijven wisselen e-mail in voor instant messaging (in Dutch)

external author — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 09:02:25 +0000

In 2010 gebruiken meer bedrijven instant messaging dan e-mail voor hun communicatie. Dit concludeert IDC uit onderzoek in opdracht van Nortel Networks. (Source: Automatisering Gids, July 7, 2008)

Mailexplosie verlamt de werkvloer (in Dutch)

external author — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 08:45:57 +0000

Door de explosieve stijging van het e-mailgebruik heeft ruim de helft van de Nederlandse beroepsbevolking wel eens last van een ‘information overload’. Dit artikel uit Inforworld beschrijft ervaringen van managers en medewerkers. (Source: Infoworld, June 24, 2008)

Time defragmenter

Ruud Janssen — Wed, 28 May 2008 14:25:33 +0000

What it is: a more efficient day schedule, by grouping fragments of related work (detached actions) into larger, contiguous chunks.

How it works: a wizard analyzes your to do list (for actionable items) and your and your coworker’s agendas (for schedules and availability) to come up with an optimized schedule that requires fewer context switches.

For instance, it will group all activities that I need to do for the same project or with the same person(s) and plan these in one contiguous time slot.