Pressed for Time The Acceleration of Life in Digital Capitalism

There is a growing literature on the subject of interruptions by management and information systems scholars. This writing views interruptions as disruptive and negative, raising concerns about lowered productivity and time use. Defined as “a synchronous interaction which was not initiated by the subject, was unscheduled and resulted in the recipient discontinuing their current activity,” interruptions are treated as single, isolated events that need to be managed.27 Studies in this vein typically quantify them in order to evaluate the cognitive cost of interruptions and fragmented work. Research is then directed toward improving the design of technological interfaces, such as e-mail filtering software, in order to assist employees.

There are a number of problems with this mechanistic approach. First, there is an underlying assumption that interruptions divert employees’ attention away from their “real” work. Accordingly, interruptions should be either minimized or, at the very least, the impact of them minimized. Second, employees are largely viewed as passive in the face of these interruptions. Their only response is to attend to the call for their attention. In sum, ICTs are viewed as exogenous, and distinct from the normal dayto-day operation of organizations.

By contrast, I treat technology as integral to doing work: organizational practices are mutually shaped with machines.28 Such human-machine interactions crucially depend on the locally contingent meanings that people attribute to them and, therefore, the way workers interpret these “interruptions” from multimodal media is key. Knowledge workers now inhabit an environment where ICTs are ubiquitous, presenting simultaneous, multiple and ever-present calls on their attention. These mediated interactions can no longer be only framed as sources of constant interruptions that fragment and squeeze time.

This became apparent to me in the course of my own study, which is therefore worth expounding at some length. The research was carried out over a number of years, and it convinced me that the nature of knowledge work itself is changing as workers navigate the media-rich ecology of contemporary ofice life. As there is still a dearth of empirical research on these issues, I will report on my findings here.

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Wanting to explore how work is being organized in and with the full range of ICTs, I collected detailed data on a group of knowledge workers in a multinational telecommunications company.29 The fieldwork took place in the Sydney headquarters, a purpose-built campus colocated with a major university. Designed to facilitate informal interactions between staf of diverse roles and seniority, ofices are open plan with partitions delineating workspaces of one to four employees. When standing in their work area, an employee typically has between twenty and a hundred workers in view.

The study involved shadowing participants at work and recording all episodes of work activity: their nature, location, duration, and the type of technology used. Interruptions were defined as the reason why the person changed their work episode, whether in response to an e-mail alert, phone call, or someone visiting a worker’s desk. Changes in work episodes that were not directly attributable to an outside stimulus are referred to as self-initiated.

So how is multimodal connectivity afecting temporal practices at work? Let us begin by examining the extent to which workdays are fragmented and the nature of the activities carried out in these work episodes. A work episode refers to any of the various activities in which a worker participates: taking part in meetings, talking on the telephone, attending to e-mails on their computer, preparing a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or getting a cup of cofee.

As table 1 shows, workdays are made up of a large number of work episodes—an average of eighty-eight per day—and the vast majority of these (90 percent) last for ten minutes or less. The average duration of work episodes is just under three minutes. Indeed, half of the workday is spent on work activities that last for ten minutes or less. The lack of sustained time knowledge workers spend on a particular work episode fits with common perceptions of fast-paced or intense work.

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But what role do digital technologies play in these frequent changes in activity? Before attributing any role to ICTs for these interrupted work patterns, let us take a closer look at the nature of the work episodes and how ICTs are actually being used.

To my surprise, workers spend most of their time at work (about five and a half hours) engaged in communication activities (see table 2). However, when divided into direct, face-to-face communications and mediated communications (e-mail, telephone calls), over half of it is technologically mediated. While face-to face communication is still very important, ICTs are now integral to the way knowledge workers carry out their work roles. Strikingly, all forms of mediated communication are short, on average lasting less than five minutes.

ICT usage seems synonymous with short work episodes that fragment workers’ workdays. The widespread perception is that technologies are the cause of these short work episodes, as mediated communications interrupt work on a particular task. Contrary to my expectations, I found that these technologies are a minor reason why people frequently change work activities during a workday. By contrast, face-to-face interruptions from other colleagues in the open-plan ofice take place an average of twelve times per day. But by far the greatest initiator of distinct work episodes are workers themselves—being the reason for change an average of sixty-five times per workday.30

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What can one conclude from this? One interpretation is that workers are exerting control over their media-saturated environment and, indeed, taking advantage of ICTs to manage their availability. This runs counter to the common perception that ICTs dictate people’s workdays. But in order to get a more nuanced picture, we need to situate workers’ relationships with ICTs within the everyday work practices of their organization.

Fragmented workdays are not a new phenomenon. They were identified as a key aspect of managerial work in the 1970s.31 What is new is the extent to which attending to mediated communications has become a normal and essential part of work. Knowledge work today is largely organized through mediated communication modes, as information and instructions are delivered via the various devices and applications in workers’ communications repertoire. Given this, the common view that workers experience mediated communications as interruptions to their real work is a misnomer.

Indeed, the participants in my study do not perceive incoming mediated communication as a negative distraction. In many cases it was positive in the sense that the communications informed workers of their tasks for the day and of the progress of matters with which they dealt. When asked, both senior and middle managers typically expressed the view that interruptions actually constituted part of the workflow and were regarded as normal business rather than as disruptive. Rather than being distractions, then, interactions via technologies are an essential part of knowledge work.

Moreover, the capacity of ICTs to store messages electronically in their material memory means that constant connectivity does not inevitably mean constant interruptions. The asynchronous, time-shifting properties of ICTs allow workers greater input into how they respond to contemporaneous messages. They engage in an ongoing process of judging an appropriate level of availability, reviewing incoming information, assessing the priority of this information with respect to other tasks they are dealing with, and reordering and rescheduling their work activities.

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Guiding this process is a complex interplay between the material afordances of the devices, workplace norms, and the decisions workers make as they perform their respective organizational roles.

In the organization I studied, for example, a hierarchy had developed that reflected the level of importance ascribed to diferent modes of communication. E-mail indicated that the communication was not urgent, while a landline telephone call might be more important. However, the use of a mobile device—be it for text messaging or voice communication—signified that the matter was very important and that the recipient needed to be available for that communication. Managers said that if a prompt response was required, then they would expect to receive a text or mobile phone call. Similarly, a call on a landline would not be regarded with the same urgency as a call on the mobile, in which the caller is identified on screen.

Depending on the mode of transmission, then, some electronic alerts are responded to immediately, while others are ignored, at least temporarily. How much control workers exert in the way they respond to these communications is critical and this, in turn, depends on the corporate culture. Interviewees reported that the high value placed on keeping on top of ever-changing priorities in their dynamic company meant that new work issues arise frequently and need to be dealt with quickly. This often requires the reordering and rescheduling of work tasks. Rather than simply responding to new or stored messages, workers stay connected in order to monitor work developments. The ways in which they interpret and behave with ICTs, therefore, can only be understood in their concrete and practical application in the organizational context.

I have reported at length on my study for the light it sheds on the relationship between interruptions, multimodal connectivity, and fragmented, pressured time. Although workdays largely consist of short work episodes, many involving mediated communication, this does not mean that the rhythm of work is set by the pace of machines. ICT-based practices do not ineluctably promote intensification by generating interruptions. My finding, that knowledge workers initiate the majority of changes in their work activity themselves, indicates that they are actively negotiating a whole new communication repertoire and deploying them as everyday tools.

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In other words, the relationship between technology, pace, and connection is much more rich and complex than previous studies have shown. ICTs actually have an ambiguous relationship to the pace of work flow, both impeding and propelling, depending on a variety of local, human/machine contingencies.

I was intrigued to read a study of heavy BlackBerry users that highlights what the authors term the “autonomy paradox.”32 The corporate lawyers, venture capitalists, and investment bankers interviewed overwhelmingly regard “anytime, anywhere” mobile e-mail as enhancing their flexibility, control, and competence as professional workers. Yet, this same pattern of compulsive connectivity also heightens expectations of availability and responsiveness, reducing their personal downtime and increasing stress. The authors explain this paradox—that mobile e-mail both increases and diminishes professionals’ autonomy—in terms of the unintended consequences of collective use. While individuals derive substantial benefits from their mobiles, monitoring and controlling the timing and location of work, the shared practice of continual connectivity fosters expectations of accessibility, escalating engagement with work at all hours of the day and night.33

Consistent with my argument, the authors show how, over time, the collective trajectory of ICT use shifts norms of how work (in this case, professional work) is and should be performed: redefining “what it means and what it takes to be an efective knowledge professional in an era of ubiquitous, always-on, mobile technologies.”34 In contexts where perpetual availability via multiple gadgets is a significant part of professional self-esteem, it may well be experienced as a positive attribute.

Judging how digital technologies will be incorporated into work processes merits continuous inquiry, especially as their very meaning changes over time as people innovate and modify them in their usage. For example, e-mail has already become a less urgent, asynchronous way of communicating, compared to when it was first adopted. Shifting between synchronous and asynchronous modalities, people are developing multidimensional time practices, creating new rhythms of work. The traditional concept of work intensification cannot fully capture this dynamic coconstruction of ICTs and the temporalities of work.

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Multitasking

ICT usage is deeply woven into the texture of workplace culture. One related feature of this new work pattern, which I did not explore in my own study, is the increasing likelihood of performing activities contemporaneously. Multitasking is the final aspect of work intensification that I want to consider here.

As I outlined in the previous chapter, time pressure can take a variety of forms, depending on which aspect of temporality is being squeezed. In addition to the volume of time available and the problem of temporal coordination, I introduced the concept of temporal density. This describes the experiences of juggling and multitasking, that is, the distribution of certain practices within temporal rhythms that create a sense of intensity in their conduct. I discussed temporal density in the context of the time-use literature that charts how working parents, especially mothers, juggle their paid work and domestic tasks. We saw significant growth in parents combining leisure with child care and I speculated that this might afect the distinctive quality of leisure time.

Research on multitasking with digital technologies is in its infancy. High levels of multitasking at work, however, are directly linked to ICT use.35 Multitasking is seen as an eficient way of dealing with interruptions, integrating them into workflow and thus saving time. For example, using e-mail while teleconferencing or attending a lecture has become commonplace. It is justified on the basis that people are able to pay attention to any number of tasks simultaneously.

But several studies indicate that multitasking may actually impair performance. Ironically, “heavy” media multitaskers are more susceptible to distractions and perform worse on cognitive tasks than “light” multitaskers.36 So increasing one’s amount of ICT-based multitasking does not improve ability to master it. In general, the literature on multitasking points to negative outcomes: reduced cognition or performance (even among “digital natives”) or rising work-related strain. Psychologists confirm that humans are incapable of giving their full attention to two tasks simultaneously.37 What people actually do is switch their attention from one task or platform to the next, and such task switching leads to a host of issues, including attention dificulties, poor decision making, and information overload.

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Nevertheless, it may be that all multitasking is not of the same kind, as all tasks do not require the same level of attention. Certainly Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman are sanguine about this, remarking that thriving networked individuals have “multitasking literacy: the ability to do several things (almost) at once.”38 They deal with multiple inputs from family, friends, work and institutions, via multiple devices, “without fuss.” The authors dismiss skeptics by noting that driving a car requires precisely such skills. Clearly they are not worried by the reports that talking on a mobile phone while driving is associated with more accidents!

The notion of multitasking brings to mind the well-known distinction between monochronic time, in which events are scheduled as discrete, separate items, and polychronic time, in which several things are done simultaneously. This distinction has been much discussed by anthropologists in exploring cultural diferences in perceptions of time. Edward Hall argues that the dominant time culture of the United States and Northern Europe is monochronic, and that the contemporary workplace is organized according to this “one thing at a time” assumption. Polychronic time, however, takes over in the home, “particularly the most traditional home in which women are the core around which everything revolves.” Hall even argues that, like oil and water, the two systems do not mix, and that at the “pre-conscious level” monochronic time is male time and “polychronic time” is female time, and women therefore find it hard to conform to the alien time culture of work.39

The gender dualism implied by such dichotomies has been the subject of much feminist critique. Even cognitive psychologists who seek out such diferences have failed to find conclusive evidence that a genderbased predisposition to polychronicity exists at all.40 It would be surprising if it did, as these same psychologists confirm that (male-dominated) managerial and executive work are quintessentially polychronic, compared with nonmanagerial work. Dichotomies aside, the idea that many temporalities coexist and that the human experience of time is not uniform is key to my thesis. One only has to think of the linear temporal logic of capitalist production exemplified by scientific management, compared to the relational time involved in the physical and emotional care of others.

Moreover, we should be wary of assuming that any one particular time orientation is superior to another. On the basis of an extensive review of the efectiveness of polychronicity in organizations, Allen Bluedorn concludes that stress-related findings are mixed and that sometimes monochronic behavior patterns are best, sometimes polychronic.41 Although these organizational studies do not specifically examine the efects of ICTs, they point to the contingent nature of these temporal strategies for individuals and groups.

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Bluedorn thus questions the common notion that polychronic life strategies lead to negative health outcomes. Many studies show that the density of social networks is related to positive health outcomes. The introduction of ICTs that facilitate this kind of relational multitasking is likely to be positive for well-being. For example, Noelle Chesley documents a positive association between personal forms of ICT use and higher ratings of “feeling efective at work.”42 This is particularly the case with cell phones, and it may be that people already in demanding jobs use cell phones to coordinate and reschedule personal tasks to accommodate work, a subject I will explore in the following chapter.

What is clear from these studies is that the personal context in which multitasking takes place is of the utmost importance. Studies of multitasking that do not involve ICTs, which are much more common, confirm this. Multitasking has become pervasive because of the increased demands at work and at home, and mothers, more than fathers, generally experience multitasking as negative and stressful. Shira Ofer and Barbara Schneider found that for both mothers and fathers in dualearner families, multitasking can be a positive experience when in the company of other family members, like a spouse or child.43 By contrast, for both, multitasking at work, although associated with an increased sense of productivity, is generally perceived as a negative experience.

Multitasking as a time-management strategy is, then, a common feature of dual-earner family members’ busy lives. However its usefulness as a concept is hard to gauge. At the very least, it should be distinguished from polychronicity, as the term multitasking implies that performing multiple activities increases productivity, that is a form of work intensification. But the idea does focus attention on the quality of temporal density, and this, rather than the amount of time, per se, is consequential for perceptions of time pressure.

Neither interruptions nor multitasking are new and both long predate the introduction of digital technologies. It is too easy to presume that extensive use of ICTs is the primary cause of time pressure rather than a symptom of structural changes in the conditions of work. The lesson of the above studies is precisely that whether multitasking contributes to or alleviates time pressure depends on the broader social context in which it occurs. And so I would like to conclude on this theme.

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Conclusion

The dramatic restructuring of workplaces in the face of economic forces and heightened global competition has meant that there is often more work to do, with fewer people to do it. Networked workers’ jobs have also become more complex and demanding as they are continually required to update their skills to keep up with the latest technology. ICTs increase the speed and ease with which information can be gathered, processed, analyzed, and shared, fostering a higher volume of mediated communications. In combination with a cultural norm of speedy responsiveness, the pace of work quickens. At the same time, as new technologies become routinized, we are seeing the emergence of radically diferent temporal rhythms and modes of working.

Working practices are always inscribed in the dense materiality of the sociotechnical infrastructure. Today information networks “shape not only the work routines, but also the ways people look at practices, consider them ‘natural’ and give them their overarching character of necessity. Infrastructure becomes an essential factor shaping the takenfor-grantedness of organizational practices.”44 This does not mean that ICTs have efects independent of human actors. Information technologies that augment management control and extend the reach of surveillance also reconfigure the ways in which work is performed, and generate new economic and social arrangements. Indeed, digital technologies are uniquely malleable and open to modification and interpretation by users. An STS lens directs our attention to the complexities and contingencies of technological developments. In doing so, it immediately casts doubt on the determinist view that ICTs, per se, are driving the intensification of work.

That networked workers’ everyday experience of these technologies is riddled with contradictions is hardly surprising. On the one hand, ICTs are a source of personal autonomy and flexibility, enhancing control over one’s availability. On the other hand, in downsized, high-pressure workplaces, these same tools add stress and escalate collective expectations of constant communication and engagement with work. Paradoxically, the more intense pressure people feel, the more they deploy digital devices in order to save time.

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