Take the bull by the hand

Any good writer will appreciate William Safire's “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid clichés like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

See if these don't help when you solution a problem.

Unhealthy news

The health of employed Americans is trending downward in a number of important areas, according to a report by the Families and Work Institute. Only 28% of employees today report that their overall health is “excellent,” down from 34% just six years ago. The researchers also found that men’s overall health has declined more rapidly than women’s. The report discusses the relationship between the workplace environment and employee health, underlining the significant role that employers play beyond providing health insurance and wellness programs.

We interrupt to bring you news

Stanford University researchers published a study showing heavy multitaskers perform badly in a variety of tasks. They don’t focus as well as non-multitaskers. They’re more distractible. They’re weaker at shifting from one task to another and at organizing information. They are, as a matter of fact, worse at multitasking.

Is this really news to anyone, or do some rationalize they do it well? Turns out it really is news. The researchers set out to identify the unusual cognitive gifts multitaskers possessed that made them so successful at multitasking.

They’re still looking.

“Multitaskers were just lousy at everything,” said Clifford I. Nass, a professor of communication at Stanford and one of the study’s investigators. “It was a complete and total shock to me. I was sure they had some secret ability. But it turns out that high multitaskers are suckers for irrelevancy.”

The study tested 100 college students rated high or low multitaskers. Experimenters monitored the students’ focus, memory and distractibility with a series of electronic images of different-colored shapes, letters and numbers.

The study’s results were so strong and unexpected that the researchers are planning a series of follow-up experiments. “It keeps me up late at night,” Professor Nass said. “I worry about both the short-term and long-term effects of multitasking. We’re going to be testing the heck out of high and low multitaskers.”

Experts say we don’t really multi-task, but constantly stop one activity to take on another – who can answer an instant message while carrying on a conversation? Is there a tipping point when we recognize we can’t keep up with IM, Twitter, texting and e-mail?

“The core of the problem,” Professor Nass said, is that the multitaskers “think they’re great at what they do; and they’ve convinced everybody else they’re good at it, too.”

Count me in the group that knows it isn’t.

Solutioning, if only I can orientate

The challenge, at the end of the day, is to ensure we have the bandwidth to optimize.

We all suffer through poorly written internal communication demonstrating the author has fallen in love with bizspeak, where perfectly useful words have been misappropriated for a new use.

How does this descent into undecipherable acronyms and meaningless jargon happen?

Lynn Espinoza, the president of Speak! Communications, suggests it’s because every company has both its own culture and its own language. We all move so fast that it’s more efficient to develop corporate shorthand. These short-hand references are meaningless to the outside world but well understood within the corporate micro-culture.

That works to a point, she says, but says the rationale doesn’t work for the awful jargon, however. Upper management uses jargon to sound powerful; lower levels use it to sound important, she argues.

Whatever the rationale, it impedes effective communication, both oral and improvement. And if we don’t each make an effort to get back to basic English, we’ll be doomed to read pronouncements such as: "It's all a matter of the specifics of who you're looking at and what you're talking to depending on where you are in the world."

Your favorite words or phrases?

7 Twitter facts that may interest only me

• 5% of users account for 75% of all activity, and 10% of users account for 86%

• 21% of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders. These are the percentage of Twitter accounts that have never posted a single tweet.

• Nearly 94% of all Twitter accounts have less than 100 followers.

• March and April of 2009 were the tipping point for Twitter. During these months, Ashton Kutcher launched his quest to get to 1 million followers faster than CNN and Oprah started using Twitter.

• 150 followers is the magic number. Twitter users tend to "follow back" all their followers up until about 150 connections. Then the reciprocation rate fell off dramatically.

• Half of all Twitter users are not "active."

• Tuesday is the most active Twitter day. Tuesday stands out as the most popular day for tweets and re-tweets, followed by Wednesday and Friday.

Yeah, but what do I get out of it?

Another interesting example of how employee demographics are changing the workplace.

A recent study conducted by Kelly Services, a world leader in workforce management services, outlined a global shift in workforce dynamics driven not by pay, but by a desire for fulfilling jobs.

• 51% of Gen Y responders are prepared to accept a lower wage or lesser role if their work contributes to something more important or meaningful.

• 62% of Gen X plan to look for a new job within a year.

• 46% of baby boomers, 35% of Gen Y, and 42% of Gen X say their career goals are not being advanced in their current job.

The overriding theme is people want their jobs to provide a degree of emotional fulfillment, even if it means sacrificing money and status to achieve it. Various employee types and motivation:

• Recognition for work and time structure.

• Recognition of their values and conviction, and are engaged by knowing their opinions matter, their conviction is respected, and that the mission of the organization is being upheld.

• Playful contact, preferring that their interactions be upbeat, fun, and stimulating.

• Knowing that they are unconditionally valued as a person.

• Solitude

• Lots of action in a short timeframe.