Looking for Creative Lawyering? Try a Technology Turn-off.

If you and your students are striving for creativity, shut off the e-mail and the telephone.  Ina Fried, a staff writer for CNET News.com, reports in a recent article that those constant e-mail and phone interruptions take an intellectual toll.  "The typical office worker is interrupted every three minutes by a phone call, e-mail, instant message or other distraction.  The problem is that it takes about eight uninterrupted minutes for our brains to get into a really creative state." 

Looking for strategies to fight back?  Dan Russell, an IBM researcher suggests eliminating auto-alerts that announce the arrival of each new e-mail.  Russell reads his unread e-mail messages only twice a day.  He reports that this simple change alone "cut the time he spends on e-mail in half."

Managing technology, lest it manage us, can be a revolutionary act, particularly in an era when lawyers (and law students) expect others to check their e-mail several times daily.  All of Dan Russell's e-mails include this signature line:  "Join the slow email movement! Read your mail just twice each day. Recapture your life's time and relearn to dream."

For more ideas on fighting information overload, check out Sabrina Pacifici's blog on law and technology.  (Thanks to Legal Blog Watch for pointing this one out).

As for me, I confess: I'm a compulsive e-mail checker, but I'm working my way up to slowing it down. [PM]