This is a little off-topic, but any worker who fields a daily flood of emails can relate. A newstudy, commissioned by TNS Research on behalf of Hewlett Packard, has found that that obsessively checking and responding to email makes us not only distracted, but dumb.
In 80 clinical trials, psychiatrist Dr Glenn Wilson, from King’s College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day.
He found that the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by ten points – the equivalent to missing a whole night’s sleep – considerably more than the four point fall detected after smoking marijuana.
I’m a little suspicious of the methodology (as are others), and the paranoid part of me wonders if the study could be used to justify limiting workers’ access to email, but it does (excuse me while I check this email) ring (and this one) true (just one more).
