I have been thinking again about computers, again. I started thinking about them because I am finally really convinced that computer use has increased my level of productivity (despite the nearly constant distraction of web surfing). I was always a bit dubious and remember the Mantra “Computers save time” which one was supposed to repeat over and over until it was believed. For years I found the comment a friend inGermany said once (“Computers allow you to do quickly things you otherwise would not have done at all.”) rather funny (because it was true). In otherwords, I really have not been convinced of them as a productivity tool. Instead I thought of them as a distraction except when writing computer programs (I have written in PASCAL, BASIC, and C/C++).
But today I was sifting through my e-mail program trying to sort it out because I get rather a lot of e-mail. I have neglected my in and out box housecleaning for a while since I had a very busy semester. After boredom set in (I get a lot of e-mail remember), I pressed the statistics button on my e-mail program and it told me the following. I have received 21,531 emails. I answer approximately half of these giving a nice round figure of 9135 e-mails sent. This covers a period that begins February 10, 1998 and ends today. This only includes the e-mails I saved, I have thrown out a lot of junk over the years. This is an average of 3,000 e-mails received per year and about 1300 sent. This doesn't give the real picture because the volume of mail (in both directions) has increased enormously in the last few years. For example, I have already sent 1616 e-mails and received 2486 in the first 6 months of 2005.
This is quite astonishing. I had no idea. This amounts to 13 received per day and about 9 sent every single day of 2005. What is remarkable, particularly the outgoing part, is that this is real correspondence. Back before the internet was so popular, I used to write letters. I never averaged 9 a day. Maybe one or two a week to a girlfriend.
I suspect that I am not alone in being quietly turbo-charged toward a huge increase in productive work. I am sure other people, if they took the time, would find something similar. If you put that in perspective, at a rate of $1/letter (probably not far off the mark when you think of postage, paper, pens, envelopes, and remember that much of this is overseas correspondence), the 1616 e-mails I have sent this year will buy a decent computer wich will last for 3-4 years (my last one was 3 and a half when it gave up – the first that I actually wore out before it became obsolete).
Let us put this is pespective. My university really likes memos and things on paper. The fundamentals of the university have not adapted to the electronic age and a lot of paper is pushed around. I am convinced the e-era will be over before we get there. However, since I do all of this composition electronically I still have them all. In the paper correspondence, I have only produced some 234 memos and reqeusts for orders etc. While it is not bad productivity (1-2 memos a week), it is clear that the activation barrier (yes, I am a chemist) to productive work is greater when printing and paper pushing are required than it is for e-correspondence.
What is more, I am not convinced anybody has read all of this correspondence, some vanished into a black hole of sorts. If they wanted to prove to me that they did read it, or look back over any of it now, I doubt they could find it, collate it, and read it. But that is not the case from my end. With a few exceptions, I have every peice of correspondence, every assignment any student has ever sent me, every paper and price quote, all the lab manuals, the marks, as well as a lot of the comments I have made on student work.
Again, this is quite remarkable. The filing cabinet in my office is in hopeless chaos. I try (well sometimes I do) and sometimes can find items in my file drawer, but it might take me an hour or in a bad case an afternoon. If I don't find something, I am never really convinced it isn't in there somewhere. But, I can find nearly anything in my e-correspondence in seconds. I can sift through the 800 MB of e-mail and attachments in seconds. In a worst case, I can search my entire hard drive in a few minutes. Again, this is truly remarkable.
Perhaps you do not believe that this is really productive work and think it is really a distraction. What is the productive work that is covered in this huge volume of correspondence? Ok, let's see how this strikes you. My current out box begins in April of 2005 and continues through to today. It has 325 items in it. 72 of those were sent to addresses with edu or ac (academic) in them. This is mostly e-mail to collegues here and abroad about a variety of academic topics. Some students with campus pipeline accounts are included in this group. 140 went to either hotmail or yahoo addresses of which I estimate 95% is correspondence with students. 29 were to addresses with a .de ending (germany), all but 5 of these were correspondence related to the completion of two papers that were submitted for publication recently. The remaining 50 or so are a mix of correspondence with suppliers (books, chemicals, equipment), colleagues (private e-mail for university staff members), scientific friends (a variety of industry locations), and occaisional notes to family and friends. Looking at this “snapshot” of my correspndence,” I think the big winners are students who recceive 50-60% of the mail in this period. During semesters I have regular correspondence with students. I also on occaision write to former students about a variety of topics (recommendations, jobs, graduate program suggestions, etc.). I should note that the proportion of student correspondence is probably underestimated here because I have already done some housekeeping of my outbox.
So to summerize, I have finally become a believer in computers as productivity tools. I was never so convinced that a computer was anything more than a glorified combination of typewriter and calculator. Now I think it really can boost productivity (it has mine), despite the distractions of surfing (yes, I find it a distraction too).
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