SóProvas

ID
28864
Banca
CESGRANRIO
Órgão
CAPES
Ano
2008
Provas
Disciplina
Inglês
Assuntos

How to dig out from the information avalanche
Majority of workers feel overwhelmed by deluge of data,
survey finds
By Eve Tahmincioglu
updated 8:18 p.m. ET March 16, 2008
Don't expect Shaun Osher, the CEO of Core Group
Marketing in New York, to answer your e-mail right away.
He has stopped responding to e-mails every minute and
only checks his e-mail account twice a day. He also started
turning off his BlackBerry during meetings.
This tactic has made him so much more productive
that earlier this year he held a meeting with his staff of 50
and "strongly suggested" that they stop relying so heavily
on e-mail and actually start calling clients on the phone.
And, he requested his employees put cell phones and
PDAs on silent mode during meetings, as well as curtail
the common practice of cc-ing everybody when sending
out an e-mail. "There was so much redundancy, so much
unnecessary work," he explains. "One person could handle
an issue that should take two minutes, but when an email
goes out and five people get cc-ed, then everybody
responds to it and there's a snowball effect."
It's not that Osher has anything against technology. In
fact, he loves it. The problem is, last year he realized he
was inundated with so many e-mails and so much
information in general that he began to experience data
overload. "In the beginning, e-mail and all this data was a
great phenomenon, revolutionizing what we do. But the
pendulum has swung way too much to the other side," he
maintains. "We're less productive."
Osher isn't the only one out there under a data
avalanche. Thanks to technological innovations, you can
be talking to a customer on your cell phone, answering a
LinkedIn invitation on your laptop, and responding to email
on your PDA all at the same time. Besides, during
tough economic times, who will want to miss any
information when your job could be on the line if you indulge
in the luxury of being offline? Turns out, seven out of 10
office workers in the United States feel overwhelmed by
information in the workplace, and more than two in five
say they are headed for a data "breaking point," according
to a recently released Workplace Productivity Survey.
Mike Walsh, CEO of LexisNexis U.S. Legal Markets,
says there are a host of reasons we're all on the information
brink: "exponential growth of the size of the information
'haystack,' the immensity and immediacy of digital
communications, and the fact that professionals are not
being provided with sufficient tools and training to help
them keep pace with the growing information burden."
Ellen Kossek, a professor from Michigan State, believes
we are less productive in this age of 24-7 technology, and
our multitasking mentality has spawned a "not-mentallypresent"
society. "We're becoming an attention-deficit
disorder society switching back and forth like crazy,"
Kossek says. "We're connected all the time. We're
working on planes, in coffee shops, working on the
weekends. Work is very seductive, but yet we're actually
less effective."
The key to getting your head above the data flood,
according to workplace experts, is managing and reducing
the information you're bombarded with.

© 2008 MSNBC Interactive - (slightly adapted)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23636252/

Check the only alternative that presents a statement that is INCONSISTENT with the arguments and reasoning introduced in the text you have read.

Alternativas
Comentários

  • A) WRONG (62 percent of professionals report that they spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what they need; 68 percent wish they could spend less time organizing information and more time using the information that comes their way.)  - The alternative is wrong, once the passage is according to the text once both the yellow passage as the texts holds the contention that, amount of informationstole work time.

    B) WRONG (Workers admit that not being able to lay their hands on the right information at the right time impedes their ability to work efficiently; 85 percent agree that not being able to access the right information at the right time is a huge time-waster.) - The alternative is wrong, once the passage is according to the text by saying amount of information cause embarassment for finding the right information in the needed time.

    C) RIGHT (More than 80 percent of the survey participants admit they have no problem in handling increases in information flow because they have learned to sort the important messages.) - The alternative is right, once the fact of 80% a survey participants admits that the amount of information brings no problem, turn the contentions defended on the text INCONSISTENTS, once it goes against the main idea raised by the text.

    D) WRONG (While an average workday for white-collar workers is 8.89 hours, the survey finds that, on average, 7.89 working hours are used conducting research, attending meetings, and searching for previously created documents.) - The alternative is wrong, once the passage, by saying the survey constated a signicant quantity of hours is used to reseach, or search previous documents, being according to the idea shown in the text.

    E) WRONG (Though white-collar professionals, in general, spend an average of 2-3 hours daily conducting online research, at least one in 10 spend four or more hours with the same task on an average day.) - The alternative is wrong, once the passage affirms an employer can spend 2/3 hours daily in on-line research, which encounters with the main idea defended in the text.

  • c-

     

    It's unlikely that 80% of the surveyed people would have no problem handling an upswing of incoming information according to the idea conveyed in the text: the author's proposes eliminating unnecessary contact with information, limiting it to only when work productivity isn't hindered.