A day in the life of an information worker: December 3, 2001 issue of New Thinking

December 3, 2001 New Thinking:
A day in the life of an information worker

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December 3, 2001

A day in the life of an information worker

By Gerry McGovern

Being an information worker is a bit like being a hunter-gatherer. Instead of hunting for food you are hunting for information. The life of the information hunter-gather is not easy. For instead of wading through swamps and climbing treacherous mountains, this info hunter-gather wades through search results and stumbles through data fog.

John wakes up, showers, shaves, dresses and has a quick breakfast. He gets into his car and shudders slightly at the thought that he will spend over an hour on a journey to the office that should only take twenty minutes.

John sits at his desk and loads up his computer. Why is it, he wonders, that the faster his computers become, the slower they are to load up? Must be all that important software. He downloads his email. Only 30. John has become expert at spearing the spam into the trash. That got rid of 9. He gives a suspicious glance at 3 others that have no subject line, then ignores them.

There are another 5 from people he knows who suffer from a bad dose of 'cc-itis.' Cc-itis is a disease that is becoming increasingly common in the information worker community. The key symptom is a desire to let as many people as possible know what you are doing. Researchers believe that cc-itis is closely related to 'cover-your-arse' syndrome. John swiftly deletes these 5 emails.

That leaves 13 emails which he opens and scan reads. 10 of these emails he could have survived without scanning. Out of 30 emails, 3 were of real value to him. He's seen worse.

John had bought a new mobile phone. It was very fancy, very sleek, and with lots of functionality. John regretted buying it but he had fallen prey to 'Swiss Army Knife' syndrome. This happens when all you need is a penknife, but you can't resist buying a multi-purpose gadget that does all sorts of things you will never really need to do.

John found that for all its tricks, this new phone had a poor signal in his home. He simply didn't believe it could be the phone's fault because it was expensive and cutting edge. You'd think they'd get the basics right before adding all the extras, he rued. So, he reverts back to his old Ericsson GF788.

One of the reasons he stopped using the Ericsson phone was because of the relatively short battery life. So, he goes to the Ericsson website in search of a battery. He's impressed with the website. He searches. Gets to a page on accessories for the phone. No battery information. Hunts around some more. Gets to another accessories page which has battery information.

As he is completing the Contact form asking where he can buy this battery, he notices that he has in fact ended up in Ericsson Australia. There was absolutely no mention of the word "Australia" in the pages he had searched through. He hunts some more.

John's face goes pale. He has been trapped by a Flash virus. He hits the Back button but can't get out. This Flash virus leeches his time as it blows color bubbles on his screen. An image throbs menacingly at him. For a moment he considers a trip to Telephone Support Hell. He needs a strong, black coffee.

Gerry McGovern

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John's face goes pale. He has been trapped by a Flash virus. He hits the Back button but can't get out.

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