Does Web 2.0 Drain Productivity

Daniel W. Rasmus writes: According to CIO Insight (read Edward Cone's the article, Is Web 2.0 Too Much of a Good Thing?,  here) the plethora of choices on the web is stealing productive time from workers. First of all, of course it is. It has nothing to do with Web 2.0 and everything to do with workers who will find a way to be distracted by anything new. Computers, e-mail, games. Remember those one button screen flashers that immediately put up a fake spreadsheet when the boss walked by (to cover up a game of on a DOS computer?).

Web 2.0 (and I reiterate how much I hate the term - given my history in aerospace I remember the web when it was .2 so we are way beyond 2.0 now) can be a means of driving productivity, but the real choice is now which tool, but how much exploration. Productivity, to some degree, relies on repetition, finding the right tool and using it ever more effectively, which then drives down the cost of the same act. Switching tools all of the time makes on less productive, but so does ignoring innovation - their might be a better tool that would save even less time. The trick, in this specific case, for productivity improvement is to find something that works and work it to its maximum, for the task which it was chosen for.

I would suggest that you spend 30 minute each week learning, and that means exploring the web as well. If you find a better tool, adopt until you either find a much better replacement or until it fails to meet your needs (because circumstances have changed).

If you want to stay productive, limit the amount of time you spend looking for bright shiny objects, and spend time creating bright shiny insights. Its OK to go shopping for something new, but only if you have the budget.

In productivity, everything has a budget - which is one of the challenges for the knowledge economy - if you can't measure the outcome of knowledge work, how can you determine the best budget for productivity vs. innovation?