relentlessPR

I found out today that I have maybe have three minutes of your attention before you leave.  I just I hope I make it worth your valuable time.

According to a BusinessWeek article, the average knowledge worker switches to a different task in that period of time, tweeting, IMing, checking email, or maybe even doing some work (if their bosses are lucky). This swap in activity costs 28% of their time and cumulatively $650 billion dollars in productivity a year.

With the low switching cost and the sheer amount of information to be consumed how are you supposed to manage your consumption?  Stephen Davies, of prblogger, recommends (with a tone of sarcasm) that we just stop, don’t read the latest blog post and shut down IM.  But in the knowledge economy, that is a risky gamble, you’re missing out on that which makes you valuable, knowledge.

Hope may be on the way, if you don’t have self-discipline, as Google, Intel, and Microsoft, are working towards to building tools to help keep the distractions at bay, like Gmail’s Email Addict which pauses email for 15 minutes.

But, for the clever PR practitioner, there may be interesting ways to break through the Attention Deficit Disorder.  Have you thought about the twitrelease? What can you say in 140 characters for your client?

(cross-posted with freescribbles)