Om Malik on Instant Messaging at Office 2.0

Om Malik on Instant Messaging: "Instant Messaging is an annoyance, not a productivity enhancer."

Ouch. Another pundit who fails to recognize the connectedness benefits of IM.

I personally put personal productivity a distant second after remaining connected to my network of significant others. The social cues of being aware of the location, status, and availability of my closest contacts is enormaously important to me, on a social level, but largely irrelevant from a managerial, Taylorist, efficiency-first mindset.

tags: instant+messaging, om+malik, office+2.0, productivity

Comments

[rick gregory]

Stowe,

I get that, for you, productivity takes second place to being connected, but that doesn't make the principle universally applicable. I'd like to hear whether this is just a personal itch you like to scratch or whether you have fundamentally altered the way you work.

You can scoff all you want at the concept of productivity, but people don't pay me to be connected, they pay me to get stuff done. If I lower my productivity (the amount of work I get done in a given amount of time) then I have to either do less actual work or I have to work more hours at my lower productivity to get the same amount of work done.