The myth of time management: New technologies, distributed selves, and the accelerated age of...
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Transcript of The myth of time management: New technologies, distributed selves, and the accelerated age of...
The myth of time management: New technologies, distributed selves, and the accelerated age of anxiety
Dr. Brad MehlenbacherCollege of Education
NC State University (USA)[email protected]
Thomas Jefferson Scholars Meeting 2015March 23, 2015
Mehlenbacher, B. (2010). Instruction and Technology: Designs for Everyday Learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Excerpts from:
Managing time Suddenly, “time” and timing” are everywhere. Speed,
acceleration, just in time, and Internet time are just a few concepts making headlines in the popular press. Academic journals also have seen a proliferation of research papers on time and timing
New terms, metaphors, and theories are emerging (e.g., time famine, polychronicity, chronos and kairos, temporal linkages. As the pace of research dramatically accelerates, time and timing have moved from the background to the foreground
Ancona, D. G., Okhuysen, G. A., & Perlow, L. A. (2001). Taking time to integrate temporal research. Academy of Management Review, 26 (4), 512-529.
Adopted from:
New technologies
Connectivity and communication technologies Technology is anything that disturbs normative time and
space, either in terms of our perception of the passage of time or our sense of what is real and what is artificial
Go2Web20: Web Applications Index. Available online: http://www.go2web20.net/ Louis C.K. Hates Cell Phones, Youtube.com. Available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c
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Life is tremendously sad
To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.
Watts, A. W. (1951). The wisdom of insecurity: A message for an age of anxiety. NY, NY: Vintage Books.
Adopted from:
Managing multiple work-learning worlds
Gleick, J. (1999). Faster: The acceleration of just about everything. NY, NY: Pantheon Books.Ong, W. J. (1982). Orality and literacy: The technologizing of the word. NY, NY: Methuen, pp. 82-83.
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Phase Transition: “The controlling factor here is not heat or energy but pure connectivity”
“Night now, Daddy, you go ‘puter email” (Eleanor, 2 years old)
“But where’s my email?!” (Frances, 4 years old)
Work Learning Leisure Learning
Higher Learning
“Alienation from a natural milieu can be good for us and indeed is in many ways essential for full human life. To live and to understand fully, we need not only proximity but also distance…. Technologies are artificial, but — paradox again — artificiality is natural to human beings. Technology, properly interiorized, does not degrade human life but on the contrary enhances it”
New & old settings for work
Asaola, O. S. (2006). On the emergence of new computer technologies. Educational Technology and Society, 9 (1), 335-343.
Adopted from:
“2001 © Future@Work
Fordist (Old) ICT (New)
• Energy-intensive • Information-intensive
• Standardized • Customized
• Rather stable product mix • Rapid changes in product mix
• Dedicated plant and equipment • Flexible production systems
• Automation • Systemation
• Single firm • Networks
• Hierarchical management structures • Flat horizontal management structures
• Departmental • Integrated
• Product with service • Service with products
• Centralization • Distributed intelligence
• Specialized skills • Multi-skilling
• Minimal training requirements • Continuous training and re-training
• Adversarial industrial relations; collective agreements codify provisional armistices
• Moves towards long-term consultative and participative industrial relations
• Government control and planning and sometimes ownership
• Government information, regulation, coordination, and vision
• Capital intensive (funded by the government or through loans, etc.)
• Phased investment (by individuals, venture capitalists, etc.)
• Emphasis on full-time employment for adult (16-65) male workers
• More flexible hours and involvement of part-time workers and post-retirement people
Higher education cultures
Hanna, D. E. (2003). Organizational models in higher education, past and future. In M. G. Moore & W. G. Anderson (Eds.), Handbook of Distance Education (pp. 67-78). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Adopted from:
“Access to education from any location, at any time, for any age, and in many ways is critical for individual and collective well-being” (Hanna, 2003, p. 68)
Collegial Managerial Entrepreneurial
Orientation to change Leadership Values Decision-making
• Conservers • Stewardship • Faculty program • Restricted, shared
internal
• Pragmatists • Preservation • Administrative
efficiency • Vertical, top-down
• Originators • Visionary • Client-oriented • Horizontal, shared
with stakeholders
Support structures Key messages Communication strategies
• Program-driven • Quality • Internal
• Rule-focused • Efficiency • Vertical, formal
• Learner-focused • Market-driven • External/internal,
horizontal, informal
Systems and resources Key messages Alliances
• Duplicated according to need
• Stick together • Value not easily
recognized
• Stable, efficient, and pre-organized
• Don’t rock the boat • Unnecessary
• Evolving “as needed”
• Seize the day • Sought out and
implemented
Organizational features
• Specialized • Segmented and vertical
• Integrated and cross-functional
Budgets Actions New programs
• Stable, priority programs
• Evolutionary • Complement
existing programs
• Tightly controlled • Targeted • Fit existing
structures
• Fluid, opportunity seeking
• Revolutionary • Make new markets
or force new structures
Competition • Avoid competition • Minimize competition through regulation
• Exploit competitive advantage
Strategies • Improve quality • Improve efficiency • Establish new market “niches”
Faculty and staff values
• Independence • Authority and predictability
• Collaboration
Rewards • Individual • Functional • Organizational
Generational overviews
Coomes, M. D., & DeBard, R. (2004). A generational approach to understanding students. New Directions for Student Services, 106, 5-16.Oblinger, D. G., & Oblinger, J. L. (2005). Educating the Net Generation. Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE. Available online: http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?PAGE_ID=5989&bhcp=1Sadlek, S. (2007). The new recruit: What your association needs to know about X, Y, & Z. Andover, MN: Expert Publishing.
Adopted from:
“After 2001, Generation Z, V, C, and the New Silent Generation (Sladek, 2007, p. 18)
Name/Born Matures (1900-1946) Silents (1925-1942)
Baby Boomers (1946-1964) (1943-1960)
Generation X (1965-1982) Thirteeners (1961-1981)
Millennials Generation Y (1982-2001)
Description • Greatest generation • Me generation • Latchkey generation • NetGen • Echo Boomers • Thumb generation
Demographic • 25.8% of universities (1998)
• Middle-aged • Leadership
postions
• 18% of universities (1998)
• 6.9M, 44.2% in 2002
• 13.3M in 2012
Attributes • Command and control
• Self sacrifice
• Optimistic • Workaholic
• Independent • Skeptical
• Hopeful • Determined • Sheltered, special • Team-oriented
Likes • Authority • Family • Community
• Responsibility • Work ethic • Can-do attitude
• Freedom • Multitasking • Work-life balance
• Activism • Technology • Parents
Dislikes • Waste • Technology
• Laziness • Turning 50
• Red tape • Hype
• Anything slow • Negativity
Technology • Handwritting, some word processing
• E-mail • E-mail • Office computing • Web 1.0
• Web 2.0
Ill-structured problems & complex work
Mehlenbacher, B. (2010). Instruction and technology: Designs for everyday learning. Cambridge, MA: MIT P.
Adopted from:
General problem-solving tasks for the 21st Century Allen’s (1996,
p. 13) task behaviors
Association of College & Research Libraries’ (2000) information literacy abilities
Mehlenbacher’s (1992, p. 37) online tasks
Norman’s (1990, p. 48) human activities
Define information goal (e.g., Where do I begin? What is expected of me?)
Recognition of the problem
Determine the extent of information needed
Set an information goal to represent task (combine prior knowledge and information goals)
Form a goal
Navigate and select information (e.g., Where am I in this process? When am I finished?)
Identification of alternative courses of action
Access the needed information effectively and efficiently
Navigate to new or related topics and
choose relevant topics
Form an intent Specify actions Do actions
Scan for relevancy and focus (e.g., What do I do now? What do I do next?)
Evaluate information and its sources critically
Scan the informati o n See what happens
Understand and interpret information (e.g., How do I interact with the materials? How do I get more/less information?)
Incorporate selected information into one’s knowledge base
Attempt to understand the information (read the online text and graphics)
Interpret it
Evaluate information goal and success of inquiry (e.g., How am I doing? Did I achieve my goal?)
Evaluation of the alternatives in order to select a course of action
Evaluate information and its use
Revise information goal based on feedback
Evaluate outcome
Apply information to various contexts (e.g., Does the given solution apply to this particular case? What changes or modifications are required to apply what I have learned?)
Use information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose Understand the economic, legal, and social issues surrounding the use of information, and access and use information ethically and legally
Evaluate outcome
Our problems have changed
Our problem situations are unstable, demand flexibility and a creative ability to organize across similar but always different problems and demand that we understand, argue, and evaluate our work both conceptually and pragmatically (Schön, 1983).
Schön, D. A. (1983). The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. New York, NY: Basic.
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Our understanding of knowledge has changed
Our understanding of knowledge has changed: knowledge is no longer represented in the form of lists, primary sources, controlled areas of expertise, or fixed private states of understanding; instead, knowledge is contingent, framed by higher-order and changing structures, publicly distributed, and drawn from multiple, emergent sources (Resnick, Lesgold, & Hall, 2005).
Resnick, L. B., Lesgold, A., and Hall, M. W. (2005). Technology and the new culture of learning: Tools for education professionals. In P. Gårdenfors and P. Johansson (eds.), Cognition, Education, and Communication Technology (pp. 77–107). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
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Our organizations have changed
Work is characterized by downsizing, automation, flattening of work hierarchies, increasing numbers of relationships between companies, continual reorganization, the breaking down of silos or stovepipes in organizations, and the increase in telecommunications (Spinuzzi, 2007).
Spinuzzi, C. (2007). Introduction to TCQ Special Issue: Technical communication in the age of distributed work. Technical Communication Quarterly, 16 (3), 265-277.
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Our definitions of expertise have changed
Expertise is contextualized and social (Lave & Wenger, 1991).
Expertise comes in many different forms, e.g., in the ability to think critically or creatively or practically or wisely (Sternberg, 2003).
We can be both experts and novices simultaneously (Brown & Duguid, 2000).
Brown, J. S., and Duguid, P. (2000). The Social Life of Information. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press. Lave, J., and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. (2003). What is an “Expert Student?” Educational Researcher, 32 (8), 5-9.
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Balancing proximity & distance
Contemporary conditions include fragmentation, diminished attention, interruptability, multitasking, dual processing, polychronicity, information overload, pseudo-attention deficit disorder (Lohr, 2007)
“Employees are said to spend about 50 to 90 minutes a day managing email” (Van Waes, 2003, p. 279)
How do I balance work with personal time, research, instruction, and extension, access with protected time, community interests with individual priorities, service goals with self?
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The social life of information. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School P.Lohr, S. (2007). Is information overload a $650 billion drag on the economy? New York Times, December 20. Available online: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/is-information -overload-a-650-billion-drag-on-the-economy/?scp=1andsq=information+overloadVan Waes, L. (2003). Use and misuse of email. Document Design, 4 (3), 279-280.
Adopted from:
E-mail is pervasive & ubiquitous Email “has evolved beyond a
passive communication system” (MacKay, 1989, p. 395)
Email “is woven into the general system of coordinated activity” (Wattenberg, 2005, p. 144)
74% of American adults use Internet; 69% online daily
91% of them use e-mail 71% of workers regard email as
“essential” for their everyday work (Whittaker, 2005, p. 49).
MacKay, W. E. (1989). Diversity in the use of electronic mail: A preliminary inquiry. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 6 (4), 380-397.PEW Internet & American Project. (2009). Online Activities and Internet: The mainstreaming of online life. Available online: http://www.pewinternet.orgWattenberg, M., Rohall, S. L., Gruen, D., & Kerr, B. (2005). Email research: Targeting the enterprise. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 139-162. Whittaker, S. (2005). Supporting collaborative task management in email. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 49-88.
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Knowledge workers average checking email 50 times/day, instant messaging 77 times, and visited over 40 websites
Email volume has doubled over last 5 years, to 40B person-to-person emails everyday (IBM Podcast, 2008)
Characterizing your e-mail use How many messages did you
send today? How many messages did you
receive today? Is this a typical day? How many mail folders do you
have? How many messages are in
your inbox? Is this typical? How many distribution lists do
you subscribe to? How often do you read your
email? Do you read all of your email?
MacKay, W. E. (1989). Diversity in the use of electronic mail: A preliminary inquiry. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 6 (4), 380-397.Whittaker, S. (2005). Supporting collaborative task management in email. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 49-88.
Adopted from:
What percentage of messages do you wish you had never seen? (MacKay, 1989, p. 396)
Do you keep reminders? Do you keep an
electronic or hardcopy calendar?
Do you keep a separate to-do list(s)?
Can you identify messages related to most important work tasks? (Whittaker, 2005).
Employing simple email tactics
Regularly scanning the inbox; often scrolling up and down Turning off ping; avoiding dependence on constant email updates Learning keystroke shortcuts and exploring your email application Sorting, by sender, flags, other prioritizing systems, to find items
more easily than in the default time-and-date-based view Deleting items to clean-out irrelevant, distracting content in the inbox Storing currently relevant items in task application Marking email messages as unread (or critical or important, etc.) Storing items in appropriately labeled email folders and subfolders to
be worked on together in the future Archiving messages in email folders for reference Inspecting or searching in folders in email and using other technical
or nontechnical methods of keeping work prioritized Making a calendar event to remind oneself to do something (Bellotti,
et al., 2005, p. 102)
Bellotti, V., Ducheneaut, N., Howard, M., Smith, I., & Grinter, R. E. (2005). Quality versus quantity: Email-centric task management and its relation with overload. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 89-138.
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Working with email strategically Identify essential information Produce accurate, brief, clear
messages Consider alternative media Keep relevant content at hand Preserve the ongoing work-state
of incomplete activities Save content that might be
needed again in the future Find things in the overwhelming
and generally growing mass of content
Prioritize the “must-do’s” against the “would-be-nice-to-do’s”
Get rid of irrelevant content (Bellotti, et al. (2005, p. 101)
Bellotti, V., Ducheneaut, N., Howard, M., Smith, I., & Grinter, R. E. (2005). Quality versus quantity: Email-centric task management and its relation with overload. Human-Computer Interaction, 20 (1/2), 89-138.
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Minimize copying (consider audience, purpose, goals)
Organize according to priorities: from direct report, messages to you, to you and others, and copied to you
Streamline workflow
Remembering netoric, not netiquette
Albion.com, & Ross, S. T. (2004). Netiquette. Available online: http://www.albion.com/netiquette/book/index.htmlLanham, R. A. (2002). The audit of virtuality: Universities in the attention economy. In S. Brint (Ed.), The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university (pp. 159-180). Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
Adopted from:
Remember the human, that is, your audience, their time constraints, work patterns, communication styles, organizational habits
Set high-level priorities for your work and personal life
Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life
Know where you are in cyberspace and for how long and what purposes
Respect other people’s time and bandwidth
Make yourself look good online Share expert knowledge Help keep flame wars under control
(reflect) Respect other people’s privacy Don’t abuse your power Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes
“The digital medium is not a neutral conduit any more than print was…. The rhetoric of digital expression is already in use across academic life, at least in embryo, and its implications are clear enough and profound” (pp. 175-176)
Internalizing netoric
Felder, R. M. (2006). A whole new mind for a flat world. Chemical Engineering Education, 40(2), 96–97.Putnam, R. D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Adopted from:
Knowledge work is creative, entrepreneurial, holistic, multidisciplinary, global, interpersonal, relational, self-directed, and flexible (Felder, 2006, p. 96)
“The proportion of us who say we ‘always feel rushed’ jumped by more than half between the mid-1960s and the mid-1990s” (Putnam, 2000, p. 189)
Issues for healthy digital living
Separating private from public
Managing multiple selves Organizing records of past
activities Operating in multiple
spaces Working with people who
are inattentive, time efficient, cost driven, service and convenience oriented
Negotiating time and space Designing for many
modalities Prioritizing intentions and
event actions Distinguishing multitasking
and polychronicity from inter-ruptability, information overload, and pseudo-attention deficit disorder
Questions?
Technology inserts itself between perceptions of time and notions of self
Almost everything we call “progress” is actually measured by the degree to which it enables us to conduct ourselves without the need to bring thought into conscious relationship with movement or feeling
Needleman, J. (2003). Time and the soul: Where has all the meaningful time gone—and can we get it back? San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler.
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