A few weeks ago I was invited to take part in Workstock’s first pop-up event which formed part of the Workplace Trends 2014 conference in London. The challenge was quite simple – create a Pecha Kucha of 20 slides with a preset 20 seconds to deliver each – and shake up the staid world of workplace. No problem…
Nervous was an understatement but the energy and creativity which Workstock and its participants created was worth every second. Thanks to Neil Usher for Workstock’s creation and also to Cara Long who wrote short introduction stories for everyone. Here’s my poem:
Over the past 7 years or so we have witnessed the explosion and ubiquitous use of social tools which have for most of us changed both the way we handle our social lives and increasingly our working lives too. The traditional natural and easy divide between work and home has now become blurred as we often find ourselves constantly switched on and accessible to all – permanently. Switching off isn’t easy.
Yet there is increasing evidence that switching off is critical to our health and multitasking which is a result of being constantly accessible damages both our brains and work. As a recent article in Forbes notes:
“Research conducted at Stanford University found that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. The researchers also found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention, recall information, or switch from one job to another as well as those who complete one task at a time…
…Researchers at the University of Sussex compared the amount of time people spend on multiple devices (such as texting while watching TV) to MRI scans of their brains. They found that high multitaskers had less brain density in the anterior cingulate cortex, a region responsible for empathy as well as cognitive and emotional control.”