Organize IT recap for 20th June 2008.
- The amount of sleep you get is a big issue when it comes to your health, and the time you get up in the morning is equally debated in personal development circles. Many blogs argue that getting up early makes you more productive. Been there, tried it, doesn’t work for me. On Monday I am going to be discussing the myths related to productivity and sleep. Until then Time has a great look at recent studies suggesting that sleeping less than 6.5 hours or more than 8 hours is actually bad for you, completely breaking my belief that I was getting an healthy amount of sleep every night. What are your sleep patterns?
- It might surprise you to know that South Park, the often funny, often crude cartoon series (twelve years old and counting!) can actually teach us a few (sensible) things about business. Twenty five whole tips in fact.
- Instant messaging can apparently improve workplace productivity, because there are less distractions associated with it. I personally find this interesting because I’ve always found instant messaging to be very distracting in my personal life, so assumed the same would apply at work (not that I have the option to IM where I am). Nowadays I have totally cut out the use of programs like MSN and very carefully limit my time spent on social networking sites. Do you use instant messaging at work? How do you find it compares to conventional phonecalls and emails?
June 20, 2008 at 07:59PM
I typically get up around 5AM, take an afternoon nap for about two hours, then go to bed around midnight. So, I get a total of about seven hours per twentyfour hour cycle. That’s seems to be right in the target range.
Funny you should mention South Park. I used to think those little foulmouthed kids were nothing more than just another form of in-your-face shock humor. But, when I actually sat down to watch a bunch of episodes in a row, I discovered that the overall message of the series is really quite positive (be decent to one another) – except for poor Kenny getting killed almost every episode. It’s peppered with a lot of tongue-in-cheek socio-political commentary/satire but made palatable to even the Jackass TV show crowd with buckets of blood, vomit, and excrement (a little something for everyone). It pushes us way past our comfort zone to question everything, which can be a very good thing (is there anyone who doesn’t find Mr. Hankey irresistibly adorable yet gut-instinct repulsive at the same time?).
Never got into instant messaging but when I worked in various law offices, I had fifty to a hundred emails a day. So, it just worked better for me to deal with them quickly while they were fresh in my mind and put that ball into someone else’s court as soon as possible. I even stopped whatever I was doing to get this done. Otherwise the little snowballs would turn into an avalanche by the end of the day and people would hunt me down for an in-person response, always taking ten times as long to get the issue resolved than a mere quick email.
Cool topics, as usual!
June 20, 2008 at 11:46PM
Shanel, I’ve heard from various sources (keep in mind this is hearsay, I’m no expert) that piecing together sleep is generally not as beneficial, since REM sleep is not often reached in shorter naps.
I too have had trouble with IM being very distracting, and I often turn it off when working on time sensitive projects.
June 22, 2008 at 02:06AM
Tage, thanks for your concern. I actually dream during my two hour naps, so I think I’m good!