Clive Thompson has an outstanding article in today’s New York Times called Meet The Life Hackers. He describes the problem that affects so many people today – the complete overload of digital information and interruptions that makes it difficult to get immersed in any project for an extended period of time.
Rather than simply describe the problem (which is where so many articles like this end), Thompson frames the issue as one that has been popularly called the need for “continuous partial attention” (coined by Linda Stone in 1997). He then goes on to describe great research by Mary Czerwinski and Eric Horvitz that directly address this issue.
I’ve ranted in the past about how stupid my computer is. We’re going to see a dramatic transformation in the way our computers “help us” over the next 20 years as more of this research begins to be embedded in the core technology that powers our “personal computing infrastructure” (pci). In the same way that information systems and computer technologies have increasingly developed layers of abstraction, I predict we’ll start to see a similar abstraction layer between us and the rest of the universe that is trying to communicate with us digitally. Instead of forcing us to be the ultimate router and arbiter of the priority of information (and interruption), our pci will learn how we work, gradually augment how information gets to us, and ultimately automate much of the information flow and our response.
We’re already seeing this in some very simple applications. An extremely useful example is the automated elimination of spam. Now – if we could turn these same spam elimination systems - which work automatically in the background (e.g. I use Postini and spam simply disappears – I never think about it anymore) - into “email prioritization systems” (e.g. spam has priority=null, email from Amy or my mother has priority=immediate, email from my partners has priority=high) where the priorities are automatically tuned by my pci based on my behavior things become more interesting. Finally – add one more layer of abstraction – my pci knows when I am ready to received different priorities and presents them to me only when I’m ready (e.g. I always get interrupted by Amy or my mom, I sometimes get interrupted by my partners depending on the thing I’m working on, but it always comes at the top of the queue, etc.) – and you’re really getting into an interesting zone. Of course, delivering it one time on the appropriate device (computer, cell phone, television, carrier pigeon) in the right location is a key part of this.
Once you extend this construct to all digital communication and interaction, you start to get some interesting things happening. Which – of course – is only the beginning of the real transformation. It’s going to take a while, but the way we do things today – and the way our pci works – sucks.
Posted in: TechnologyCOMMENTS (11)
I beat you to this by a half hour.
Nice one. Just wrote a post on information overload.
Not sure if it'll help, but I've just merged and reprogrammed all the vc feeds I try to keep up with and I am saving a lot of time that I wasted clicking through everything on bloglines.
You can see the end result over on our homepage (it's nothing spectacular thought...just a time saving hack, and we'll make it prettier over time).
I agree with you Brad that there is a lot to be done in how information is prioritized....although we'd first need to measure where exactly this time or focus problem (if that's what it is) is most severe.
But yeah...it be nice to get some kind of an "intelligent agent information butler" that'll help us manage and navigate all the stuff we bump into everyday.
An application I've used briefly and found to be useful is Findory. It's still in its early stages of developent, but it uses collaborative filtering to help you find interesting articles in your RSS feeds. Definitely worth checking out.
The best form of automated personal activity manager I've seen is Life Balance (www.llamagraphics.com). This is a Windows/Mac/Palm program that determines your to do list based on how important and urgent a task is, how you want to balance your life, etc.
It's amazing how well it does in showing me the next few things I really should be working on, while making sure I don't miss deadlines or appointments.
It looks like we're seeing the first few of these intermediary applications that can actually help us manage our lives.
This is actually a problem that we are tackling too at Grimaldi Productions with our Mentations software service offering. Eventually, Mentations will be able to learn when you are most receptive to given types of content and will present it accordingly.
100% agree with the comments on ideas around prioritization of communications being more than yes/no. ePostings, explictly, and NeoMeo, by implication, were web 1.0 implementations of that concept- feels like perhaps their time (would have/has) come...
Another related idea is around context- "caller id/subject lines" for everything- see for example Stowe Boyd's comments about a speech I made on this in the IM space. The real point here is that prioritization is not fixed. Some things are easy- the children's school during the day, or the CEO, are always going to the top of the list- but "Ed calling/IMing" is not really enough- why is he calling? Just because he is on the team for project du jour does not mean that he is not calling about a game of tennis next week.
Bottom line- you need a blend of rules and easy low-impact user interaction, but with that in place you can really use your "partial attention" to get more done :-)
Brad,
Would love to have you take a look at my company's product, ClearContext Inbox Manager for Outlook. In a nutshell, we analyze your email history and activity and use that information to prioritize your incoming email in order of importance. We also provide functionality to help automate the categorization and filing process. We're about to start beta-testing on our next product, which extends a lot of this functionality by integrating task/appointment creation and other email-based-workflow features - and starts touching on some of the more advanced functionality you mention.
The pci could take input from your "list of things not to do" (e.g., check your email) and could prevent you from doing them by blocking your phone and your email until you get your project done! (or it could just lecture you on staying focused) It's a mistake to assume that interruptions are all caused externally -- often the enemy is us.
Brad:
While I agree with the overall message that computing needs to become more intuitive, I'm a little puzzled that you don't auto prioritze email already. Outlook rules can be setup to do precisely this. Combine them with search folders and you can not only have the importance changed, but have a folder that collects just those messages (without removing them from your inbox!) and flag them as red, or make them another color etc. What *is* clearly missing is the step where the computer figures out for you what's important and what's not.
Deva - your system is quite handy in that regard - the algorythmic search looks interesting - and the ability to assign importance characterisitics to contacts is great. I am highly puzzled that you setup actual folders for the topics in the rather rigid foldering system. It would seem a bit more elegant to have your system create search folders for the topics. Also - why make them "topics" instead of just "tags"? The categories feature in Outlook is terrible - you just might be laying the groundwork to replace that with a highly useful tag version.
Yes, the rules system is very antiquated and difficult to use and maintain, however, once you went through the initial setup time (which would have to be done in any system absent something like the Clear Context history search) this can be done with Outlook as it is today.
-just a thought
One of the major uncharted territories in practical business is the availability of lots of data and the inability to see what it means at a glance.
TreeMaps and SmartMoney's efforts at presenting what is happening in the stock market at any time is a first good step. http://www.smartmoney.com/maps/
However with companies collecting terabytes of sales, financial and process information, there should be easier ways to see how your organization is doing at any time!
Nari
Craig,
Thanks for your comments. Part of the reason we relate topics to folders is to help people easily organize and archive their email somewhere outside of their inbox. The topics we assign are distinct from Outlook categories, but we agree that there are potential additional benefits to be gained from having multiple tags per message and utilizing search folders. Obviously, there are tradeoffs in terms of usability, compatibility with different Outlook/Exchange setups, and technical/performance issues that also need to be taken into account. We have made some major enhancements to the product in our 2.0 release that will enter beta-testing in November. We hope you and others will have a chance to take a look and provide feedback.
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