The Future of E-mail and Office Productivity: Pattern Recognition & Adaptive Filtering

As we put together the OrganizingLA Blog several times each week, and work to meet the needs of our residential and business organizing Clients, we're relying on our PC to keep up the productivity.  It's imperative to take advantage of all things new and improved (within reason of course) and we like to experiment with new technology or techniques whenever possible.  But if technology moves this fast, we wonder, "where will we be in, say, 5 or 10 years?"

That's why we read this Computerworld Singapore's November on-line article with great interest.  Propaganda or not, there were some shocking statistics quoted in the Microsoft "A New World at Work" article -- and not so surprising from what we see on the front-lines, folks complaining that they're constantly interrupted and their productivity is being hampered.  Here's a quote:

"The typical information worker in North America gets 10 times as much email as he did in 1997, and that number is expected to increase to 50 times over the next four years. Analyst firm IDC estimates that information workers spend 2.5 hours a day just looking for data they need – 30 percent of their working day. It’s not that there is too much technology, but technology today is still not smart enough. It has not reached the full potential of its capabilities to help realize the full potential of the information worker. Right now, information workers are simply overwhelmed.

The solution is therefore to build smarter technology. Instead of just focusing on tracking information, managing documents and gaining access to data, the next-generation software technologies will focus on better collaboration, business intelligence and insights, automation and many other “space age” capabilities that will bring the productivity of the information worker to new heights."

So, where is Mr. Bill Gates heading with the solution?  It's called "Pattern Recognition and Adaptive Filtering:"

"Rules and learned behavior will soon be able to automate many routine tasks. Software will be able to make inferences about what people are working on and deliver the information they need in an integrated and proactive way. As software learns one’s working preferences, it can flexibly manage interruptions – if the information worker is working on a high-priority memo under a tight deadline, for example, software should be able to understand this and only allow phone calls or emails from, say, one’s manager or spouse."

Can you imagine?  Click here to read the story. Do Blog readers see this helping them in their quest for higher levels of productivity?  Do you think this is more of a business office tool than a home office tool?