Blackberries are all the rage. “Push email”* has become the latest multi-tasking tool that keeps Pavlov and his dog in chapter one of Introduction to Psychology.

Unfortunately, the interruptions caused by push email effectively reduce your IQ by 10 points – 2.5x greater than smoking marijuana.** If you’re trying to be productive — to GET SHIT DONE — a drop in your IQ is the last thing that any experienced producer would recommend. So, unless you are deluded into thinking that activity equals productivity, why would you employ push email as a time-saving device when in effect, you would perform better by smoking a joint?

The answer is likely two-fold. First, you’re probably thinking that reacting fast is the same as producing effective results. WRONG. Second, you probably also think that there is such a thing as multi-tasking. WRONG AGAIN.

If you can literally react and get results, then you are truly a genius, up there with Mozart and Stephen Hawking. Unfortunately, based on the number of true geniuses in the human population, the probability of you being one of them is slim.

The fact of the matter is that communication is not a result in itself; it’s a tool to get results – like a pencil or a calculator. Meetings, discussions and email are not work; they’re communication ABOUT work. Communication produces nothing, but it MAY equip someone to ACT, and thereby facilitate producing a result.

All those highly paid consultants pine away abut the importance of communication, when, in effect, if you are required to communicate, it means one of two things: You either have a finely tuned machine where everyone is well-equipped… or the ship is sinking, and no one knows what’s going on.

“So what the hell does this have to do with Blackberries?”

Well, if you’re a Crackberry fanatic — don’t worry, I was once too — then the truth is that you are likely reacting to email in short, insufficient responses because your previous response was also short and insufficient. But you FEEL productive because, you’re not just driving in rush hour, but DOING SOMETHING too.

In effect, however, in order to delude yourself into thinking that typing with your thumbs has made you supremely productive, what you’re really doing is ensuring that the cycle of inefficient communication will continue. And that means that when you’re out for lunch with your wife and your pants pocket starts vibrating, all your Crackberry has done for you is reassure your wife that she’s right: you never listen to her.

So what to do?

1) Push back. Turn off the email notification on your handheld. This’ll reserve phone calls and text messages for interrupting you at random which, these days, is plenty. It’ll also let you distinguish urgent messages from non-.

2) Check email when YOU want to; not when the sender wants you to. If it’s urgent, they’ll call. (See #1.)

(Note: if your co-workers have become accustomed to your Pavlovian personality reacting to HipMail, then it’s probably a good idea to let them know that they should no longer depend on an immediate response. And if it really is urgent and they still email, well… encourage them to further their career by working for a competitor.)

3) Give up multi-tasking. It’s a myth. It’d be better to call it “multi-distracting.” Multi-tasking is based on the idea that we can do more than one thing at one time. We can, I guess, but never very effectively. Usually it means that three tasks will take three times as long to do if done concurrently rather than consecutively.

4) Start gap-tasking instead. In contrast to Multi-Tasking, Gap-Tasking allows you to tick off menial tasks while someone else is wasting your time. This is where smartphones really earn their adjective. Let’s say you’re in line at the local deli… why not kill some email while they make your sandwich? Or the doctor’s office in Canada, where the 21st-century sense of urgency and service is enthusiastically kept at bay. You’re in for a long wait — get those thumbs a-typing.

Even better, when the nurse calls your name, and your in the middle of a thumb-tapping flurry, say, “Just a minute, please. I’ll be done shortly. Thank you for your patience.”

 

* For those unfamiliar, “push email” is what allowed Blackberry to quickly gain so much market share. Unlike their competitors, rather than leave it up to the user to decide when to check email, a typical Blackberry setup automatically downloads your email for you, and then rings or vibrates to let you know that new messages have arrived. Sometimes the messages are important, most of the time they’re not — just like Pavlov ringing a bell when feeding a dog. Eventually the food can be removed and the dog will salivate just by hearing the bell…

** The IQ/pot comparison was taken from The Age of Speed by Vincent Poscente. Great book. You should read it.

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