1
You scan your e-mail while you're on the phone in search of a file buried in your in-box, just as a co-worker hands you a report to read before a meeting that's already started.
Get the feeling too many days like this could make you crazy?
You're not alone. For many people, that's a description of many moments in a typical workday. Having to deal with the ever-increasing amount of information and tasks competing for attention is literally driving us to distraction, experts warn.
Call it ADD in the workplace. Dr. Edward Hallowell has.
"Today, the symptoms of attention deficit disorder seem to describe just about everybody in a career," says Dr. Hallowell, the author of CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap!
For two decades, he specialized in treating children with ADD. In the past three years, he's seen an increasing number of adult executives with the same symptoms: chronic inattention, disorganization and inability to focus long enough on tasks to complete them.
What's happening?
"With the proliferation of wireless devices, e-mail and websites, we've been caught up in a dust storm of information competing for our attention," says Dr. Hallowell, a former professor at Harvard Medical School and now director of the Center for Cognitive and Emotional Health in Sudbury, Mass. "Meanwhile, we're being told that multitasking is a valuable skill, so we try to keep two or three balls in the air simultaneously."
But the brain isn't wired to handle this rush of competing chores. "As you try to do more tasks, you're not likely to do them as well because you can't think in-depth on any of them," he said in an interview.
The effort of shifting from task to task takes a physical toll as well. "In handling so much, you are likely to find yourself continually weary and achy, and you become rude and pre-emptory with others," he says.
Unfortunately, we can't turn back the clock to a simpler time. "But you can step back and realize that you have given away a lot of control that you can take back."
How do you do that?
It's a matter of finding a personal comfort level amid all the chaos "and make sure that all the mayhem is working for you, rather than against you," says Carolyn Harvey, co-author with Beth Herrild of the new book Comfortable Chaos.
Once you determine how much chaos you can comfortably allow into your day, you then make choices to stay within those limits, says Ms. Harvey, who runs Seattle-based career consultancy Quest for Balance Inc. with Ms. Herrild.
Everyone's "coefficient for chaos" is different, the authors say:
People highly tolerant of chaos are energized by activity and afraid of missing out on something. These people will schedule back-to-back meetings and try to keep multiple projects going all the time. But they need to assess whether they are giving their fullest attention to the most important tasks or just rushing superficially from one task to the next, Ms. Harvey says.
Someone in the mid-range of chaos tolerance likes the rush of a good challenge but also needs time to take breathers and regroup between battles. "This type of person could be more comfortable scheduling meetings that last only 50 minutes, rather than an hour, so they have time to relax for a few minutes and think about what they've just done before gearing up again," Ms. Herrild says.
People with low tolerance for chaos are most comfortable interspersing intense work with an equivalent time to recoup. They may want just two or three things to handle in a day, but they complete each one before going on to the next. This type may actually get much more accomplished than a high-chaos person because they are less likely to have to try to remember where they left off on a task, Ms. Herrild says.
So how do you take control to stay within your comfort level?
The biggest changes come from setting limits on the barrage of information, Dr. Hallowell says.
He says he personally freed up a couple of hours each day by shutting off his personal digital assistant and cellphone during work hours, and setting fixed times in the morning and evening to check e-mail.
"I don't blame technology. I blame the way we use it. You need a system to confront what I call screen-sucking -- literally being constantly drawn to a new hit of information.
"You don't have to have the cellphone on while you're having dinner; you don't have to answer every e-mail the minute you get it. And there is no reason that you have to deal immediately with every interruption that comes up."
