Most U.S. workers say they feel rushed on the job, but they are
getting less accomplished than a decade ago, according to newly
released research.

Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year,
down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research
conducted for Day-Timers, a maker of organizational products based in
East Texas, Penn.

The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.

"Technology has sped everything up and, by speeding everything up, it’s
slowed everything down, paradoxically," said John Challenger, chief
executive of Chicago-based outplacement consultants Challenger, Gray
and Christmas.

"We never concentrate on one task anymore. You take a little
chip out of it, and then you’re on to the next thing," Challenger said
on Wednesday. "It’s harder to feel like you’re accomplishing
something."

Unlike a decade ago, U.S. workers are bombarded with e-mail,
computer messages, cell phone calls, voice mails and the like, research
showed.

The average time spent on a computer at work was almost 16
hours a week last year, compared with 9.5 hours a decade ago, according
to the Day-Timer research released this week.

Workers typically get 46 e-mails a day, nearly half of which are unsolicited, it said.

Sixty percent of workers say they always or frequently feel
rushed, but those who feel extremely or very productive dropped to 51
percent from 83 percent in 1994, the research showed.

Put another way, in 1994, 82 percent said they accomplished at
least half their daily planned work but that number fell to 50 percent
last year. A decade ago, 40 percent of workers called themselves very
or extremely successful, but that number fell to just 28 percent.

"We think we’re faster, smarter, better with all this
technology at our side and in the end, we still feel rushed and our
feeling of productivity is down," said Maria Woytek, marketing
communications manager for Day-Timers, a unit of ACCO Brands.

The latest study was conducted among a random sample of about
1,000 people who work at least part time. The earlier study surveyed
some 1,300 workers.

Expectations that technology would save time and money largely
haven’t been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor
of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas
State University.

"It just increases the expectations that people have for your production," Downey said.

Even if productivity increases, it’s constantly outpaced by
those expectations, said Don Grimme of GHR Training Solutions, a
workplace training company in Coral Springs, Fla.

"The irony is the very expectation of getting more done is
getting in the way of getting more done," he said. "People are stressed
out."

More here.