To Blog or Not to Blog and What's Work Anyway?

Just sitting down to write my first ever blog post after considering it for eight years (Hamlet was a pretty quick decision-maker really) when I get a Skype message, an email alert pops up and the phone rings. The phone? Who uses the phone anymore? In an article in the August issue of Wired magazine, Clive Thompson writes: "We're moving… toward a fascinating cultural transition: the death of the telephone call." The average number of phone calls we make every year is dropping and our calls are getting shorter. In 2005, the average call was three minutes long, now they're not even half of that. So who could be calling me? Well of course it’s my Mum. Like watching TV, writing letters and reading newspapers made of paper, phoning is something your parents did. 

Ignoring the younger communication tools of email and instant messaging, I show manners to the oldest and give priority to the phone call: “What are you doing?” my Mum wants to know from her self-employed (slacker) management consultant (when will you get a proper job) youngest son. Trying to impress, I tell her that I’m now entering the blogosphere, “I’m blogging, Mum” I tell her. “Ooh, that sounds rude … what is it?”. Good question, Mum! “Well, it’s writing stuff on the Internet that you want to tell people about - what’s happened to you, what you’ve seen or heard, where you’ve been and so on. It’s like a cross between a diary and an opinion column.” There’s a pause, I can hear her thinking of several replies and then “But shouldn’t you be working?”.

So does blogging count as work? The average worker spends more than half of their working time using communication media today. Work is communication. Are you reading this blog at the office? Does that count as work? How we spend our time at work, what communication tools we use and how we use them are increasingly important questions.

Just noticed that it has taken me two hours to write this blog. Yep, two full hours because I have been interrupted by phone calls, emails, instant messages and tweets. Or let myself be interrupted.  Bloggers: Are You Still Multitasking? asks timethief at one cool site: “If you think juggling phone calls, e-mail, instant messages and computer work makes you more effective or productive then several studies say you are wrong.  Their results point in the opposite direction and highlight the fact that the more heavily you multitask the less effective and productive you become. It seems the more multitasking we do the more mediocre the results are. “ The only time we really need to multitask is when cooking. How to kick the multitask habit? “Schedule blocks of uninterrupted time to work in and then carry through and get the work done. Allow no distractions or interruptions – focus”. Now that’s what my Mother would call “working”.

 PS No actual parents were harmed in the writing of this blog