Time to make a resolution: Stop multitasking

It is that time of the year (and decade) where we all make our resolutions for change. My resolution for the New Year is simple.

I will stop multitasking and encourage the end of this practice by all PAKRA employees and partners.

This decade made Multitasking a popular business buzz word (see reference [1]). Having been the consummate consultant, I considered and tried to embrace multitasking.

Growing up in an urban and overpopulated part of the world, I never knew how to work in a quiet place or have ample space to sprawl my necessary possessions. As far as I can remember back, I was able to work in a corner and in all environments. At a very young age, I found out that I simultaneously can:
Task(1) listen to music/noise,
Task(2) drink liquid, and
Task(3) work on one thing and only one more thing.

Task(3) can be -- solve puzzle, chat, write, blog, analyse, code, draw -- name the verb -- I can do it. I can work on front stoop, on subways, or airplanes, or airports or even as a car passenger with Eminem playing -- anywhere where there is some light -- I can work.

Three tasks: drinking fluid, listening and task X -- yep! I can multitask. This led me to believe earlier this decade, that I can be a multitasking pro.

However, over the decade, I realised that there are no task-substitutes for either Task(1) and Task(2) that allows me to create a new combo and maintain the triad of 3 tasks and let me effectively do my task(3).

No more multitasking for me.

Now! to my proselytising spree:
Those of you who use your medical condition to defend that you are more functional and effective by multitasking, we have medical research to support the idea that you are not being effective at all. See reference [2], [3], [4], [5].

Moreover, when you check your emails, play online scrabble, type on your computers (unless you are taking notes) and text during meetings and conversations -- all that you are indicating to me is that: what we are talking about is of no value to you, you rather want to focus on the other task. Stop the disrespect!

Loss of productivity due to lack of focus from multitasking, is only going to get worse in the coming decade. So! let us all abandon multitasking now. Let us simply focus on one task at a time for the next decade.


References:
1. CNN Study (2001): http://archives.cnn.com/2001/CAREER/trends/08/05/multitasking.study/

2. Fast Company (2006): Stop Multitasking


3. Scholastic.com (2007): The Perils of Multitasking-When kids are plugged in, how much sinks in? by Margery D. Rosen

4. Stanford University News (2009): Media multitaskers pay mental price, Stanford study shows, Adam Gorlick

5. Wired Science (2009): Multitasking Muddles Brains, Even When the Computer Is Off

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Crocs: One of the dumbest products of the decade

I recently posted Inc. Magazine's list of the Smartest Products of the Decade, so it's only fair that I also post their list of the Dumbest Products of the Decade. There have been some truly ridiculous products released over the past decade. The list includes Windows Vista, Crocs, and my personal favorite - The Boyfriend Arm Pillow. You must check out the full list here. Enjoy!

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Snuggie: One of the smartest products of the decade?

Inc. Magazine has included the Snuggie in it's list of 21 smartest products of the decade. How can this blanket with sleeves (a backwards bathrobe, if you will) be included on a list that features such items as the Ipod, Blackberry, PayPal, and Salesforce? Consider this: the Snuggie has been a runaway hit resulting in over 5 million dollars in sales and imitators such as the Slanket.

Check out the other 21 items featured on the list of Smartest Products of the Decade here.

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When Social Media Meets Local Networking

There is a growing trend in e-commerce that leverages social media and local networking. One great example of this is the website Groupon, which promotes collective buying power with daily, city specific bargains. These bargains run the gamut from things to do, eat, and see. Their highest selling daily deal to date came from the Chicago pizza chain, Pompei. They signed up with Groupon to offer $10 worth of pizza for $5. They expected a sell a few thousand offers but ended up selling over 9,000 offers to local residents. So, what's the catch? There's no small print or hidden restrictions but Groupon makes one stipulation. Before the "deal is on", a minimum number of people must agree to buy the deal. This then spurs buyers to promote the deal via social networking channels like Facebook and Twitter.

Check out this article from CNNMoney.com to learn more about Groupon and how they recently got $30 million in VC funding!

Merchants think socially, act locally

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Meaning of Heuristics and why it is important today

Heuristics is the big word, yet a lovely word that you and I should care about. It is synonymous to a "rule of thumb". It can be as simple as Pareto Principle or as complicated as adaptive algorithms. We, the humans love our rules of thumb.

We make decisions using rules of thumb. Everyday as you and I use the web, heuristics get built and decisions you make get captured as data. This is certainly one of the premises for PAKRA's existence.

As Frank Schirrmacher discusses in his HuffingtonPost post The Age of the Informavore
: "This is a very good beginning."

Game theorists, economists, psychologists are promoting the value of Bounded Rationality
principles to model decision-making. The main questions they ask are (a) how do you and I make decisions using heuristics? (b) are these decisions optimal, i.e. the best?

From models to computational algorithms to daily web searches to pattern-recognizing analytics that feed our consciousness from places such as Amazon.com (e.g. "Those who have bought PAKRA Games, also bought ... " --> all these are making us learn and make decisions faster.


Frank Schirrmacher writes, "Gerd Gigerenzer, to whom I talked and who I find a fascinating thinker, put it in such a way that thinking itself somehow leaves the brain and uses a platform outside of the human body. And that's the Internet and it's the cloud. And very soon we will have the brain in the cloud. And this raises the question of the importance of thoughts. For centuries, what was important for me was decided in my brain. But now, apparently, it will be decided somewhere else."

The rule of thumb algorithms that were developed on your and my data, in turn learn/retrain our brain. Moreover, as a society, as we all participate, in this reality/digital existence, we redistribute this wealth of learning.

This makes us (PAKRA), believe that "Real Human Learning" is the ultimate monetization of digital bits.

All that is left for you and I to do is answer the following:
(a) how much do we value "Learning" and
(b) how much are we willing to invest/pay in it?

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