Employees or email-slaves?

While Internet and emails may be boosting co-ordination among workers in an organisation, but on the flip side, they are also increasingly making people slaves to the electronic form of communication and offices less efficient, says an email consultant.

Email Management Solutions managing director Sharon MacNevin said that there is 40 per cent increase in email use per year since 1996.

’’It has grown wild and out of control. Searching for emails can be one of the biggest time wasters,’’ Theage.com.au quoted Sharon, as saying.

Email Management Solutions is a consulting firm that trains businesses on the best ways to reducing time checking inboxes and using workers’ time more effectively in the office. It has found that on an average, an employee spends 14.5 hours a week reading and responding to email.

"That is over two hours a day just reading and replying to your emails,’’ said Sharon.

She further added that workers were not ’’time managing’’ now. She pointed out that before the introduction of email, employees would collect the daily mail from their pigeonhole, and may be the morning mail used to contain internal memos.

"You sorted thorough that mail, worked out what was the priority and what was not important. That was effective management of communication, and we did it well,’’ she said.

Also, she said that memos were written in a concise way, so that everyone understood it, unlike today’s wayward use of email.

"You were told the style of the memo was all about, and it was part of your induction program. There are few protocols as to how you stylise your email, on what you can say. There are email policies about language and no sexual intonations,’’ she said.

She even pointed to the culture of ’NRN’ - No Reply Necessary - on the sent email, in order to avoid replying a ’thanks’ via email.

"NRN gives the person the right not to send a message they got it or not to acknowledge it. You would never go into the tea-room and say thanks to 20 people for the email, would you? Or send a thanks for a memo’’ she said.

Also keeping a regular check on a worker’s email breaks down time management skills and reduces a worker’s productivity.

"If you go from the work at hand and see a little pop up that says you have a new email, you are more than likely going to get trapped and you’ll be in the email cycle. It could take up to a good 20 minutes before you get back to the same point in concentration you were at with the work beforehand,” she said.

Working overtime can give you the blues

Employees working overtime are more likely to face depression and anxiety, according to a new study.

The study led by Elisabeth Kleppa of the University of Bergen, Norway, has revealed that people working for longer hours are at a greater risk of developing depression and anxiety. During the study, the researchers analysed the data on work hours from a larger study of Norwegian men and women.

Symptoms of anxiety and depression were assessed using a standard screening questionnaire and scores were compared for 1,350 workers who worked overtime, 41 to 100 hours per week; and approximately 9,000 workers who worked normal hours, 40 hours or less.

They found that overtime was associated with higher anxiety and depression scores among both men and women.

The scores showed that "possible" depression increased from about nine percent for men with normal work hours to 12.5 percent for those who worked overtime, while in women, the rate of possible depression increased from seven to eleven percent.

In both sexes, rates of possible anxiety and depression were higher among workers with lower incomes and for less-skilled workers. The relationship between overtime and anxiety/depression was strongest among men who worked for 49 to 100 hours per week. Men working more than 48 hours per week are at a higher of mental distress.

The study appears in the June Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM).

How to tell her you love her

Telling her “I love you” is a big step in building a relationship. There are many ways of doing it, but make sure you mean it before you say it to your girlfriend. Plan it all well. Here’s how you can go about it...

FIRST STEP: Decide on when and where you want to tell her. Would you like to do it in a special place? Do you want to say it to her on a certain day? Maybe if her birthday is coming up soon, you’d like to wait and finally propose to her on that special day. You might want to tell her at the restaurant where you went the first time.

SECOND STEP: You have to set the mood and be romantic. Buy her flowers. Flowers often say a lot. You could also buy her a romantic gift, something she would love.

THIRD STEP: Look at her directly, take her hand and tell her how positive you feel about her. Give her examples of things you really like about her. Be
sincere.

FOURTH STEP: In your conversation, convey to her how you feel being with her and how much you enjoy your time together. Be specific about what you value and appreciate about being with her.

FIFTH STEP: Follow these positive statements with telling her you love her in whatever way feels best for you. For instance, “I feel I’ve come to love you” or “I realise I love you” or “I feel so much love for you” or “I’ve fallen in love with you” or simply “I love you.” But hey, don’t hesitate and not say it at all. It’s your big day, be calm and tell her what you feel. After all, there’s been so much preparation you’ve made for this moment. In all probability, she will smile and accept your proposal.

Does online dating end in failure?

Internet dating, which sparks such a rush of emotions between people even before they have met, often ends in disappointment and failure. According to a new study, the initial spate of replies a person gets on net dating sites makes them seem very popular.

The kind of attention is a lot more “than if they had walked into a bar”, said Matthew Bambling of the Queensland University of Technology, who led the study,

“It gives a feeling of being powerful. The online environment doesn’t have the conventions and context of a real life meeting and so online interactions can have a bigger impact on a person,” Bambling noted.

He said this lack of inhibition that online interactions allow means some people are carried away by their feelings and “don’t use their heads as they would in normal social situations when meeting people”.

Bambling said he has seen people in counselling regarding the consequences of making emotional investments in people they had been emailing after meeting them on line.

“They often become quickly emotionally involved and invest in the other person before meeting. After meeting they move too fast because an emotional relationship actually started when they began interacting online before meeting, in which time they build up a fantasy view of the other person,” he said.

“When they do meet, often the other person is not always what they had imagined but if they are already emotionally invested they go out anyway. They can end up wasting a lot of time trying to make it work.”

Bambling said to avoid pitfalls in online dating people should arrange to meet up after the first few e-mails. This helps to avoid over-investing emotionally or building up a fantasy about the other person.

“The main thing to remember is to make real-life contact as soon as possible if you are interested in someone because it is here that you will know if a relationship is a possibility.”

Men and women 'think differently'

A new study has shown that women and men may actually think in different ways, by finding that there are subtle genetic variations between their brains. Researchers from Uppsala University, Karolinska Institute, and the University of Chicago, have determined that there are hundreds of biological differences between the sexes when it comes to gene expression in the cerebral cortex of humans and other primates.

The findings suggest that some of these differences arose a very long time ago and have been preserved through the evolution of primates.

These conserved differences constitute a signature of sex differences in the brain, the researchers said. More obvious gender differences have been preserved throughout primate evolution; examples include average body size and weight, and genitalia design.

This novel study focuses on gene expression within the cerebral cortex – that area of the brain that is involved in such complex functions in humans and other primates as memory, attentiveness, thought processes, and language.

For the study, the researchers measured gene expression in the brains of male and female primates from three species: humans, macaques, and marmosets.

To measure activity of specific genes, the products of genes (RNA) obtained from the brain of each animal were hybridized to microarrays containing thousands of DNA clones coding for thousands of genes.

The authors also investigated DNA sequence differences among primates for genes showing different levels of expression between the sexes.

The results suggested that variation in expression of genes in the brain might be an important component of behavioural variation within as well as between species.

The differences could also explain sex variations in mental health and neurological diseases: women, for instance, are more at risk of depression and Alzheimer’s, the authors noted.

"Knowledge about gender differences is important for many reasons. For example, this information may be used in the future to calculate medical dosages, as well as for other treatments of diseases or damage to the brain," said Professor Elena Jazin of Uppsala University.

Lead author Björn Reinius noted that the study does not determine whether these differences in gene expression are in any way functionally significant. Such questions remain to be answered by future studies.

Anil Ambani eyes coal-to-fuel block -paper

India’s Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG) is looking to bid for mines that will be used to convert coal to liquid fuel, the Mint newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing an unnamed group official.The group has short listed an Australian firm and an American company as technology partners and could bid for three coal-to-liquid blocks in Orissa, the newspaper said.

Group spokesman Venkatesh Somayaji declined comment on the report.

The newspaper said the move could open another front in an ongoing battle between Anil Ambani and his elder brother Mukesh, whose energy group Reliance Industries Ltd, was also in the fray for the blocks.

Reliance Industries had this month claimed it had a right of first refusal for Reliance Communications, controlled by Anil, after the mobile operator began exclusive talks with South Africa’s MTN Group to create an emerging market telco that would rank in the global top 10.

The estranged brothers have sparred since they reached a settlement in 2005 that divided the Reliance business empire between the two.

ADAG has interests in telecoms, power, construction, financial services and entertainment.

Record crude oil prices have kicked up interest in proven technologies such as coal-to-liquid.

Is she not warming up to you?

Your rush hour ends when...you reach home
You’ve rushed home, travelling in the packed metro, rush through dinner to rush between the sheets. You do not even bother to switch on the bedside lights, hurriedly talk dirty and start angling in the dark. You are in such a rush that you do not even realise that she is not ready yet. Have you forgotten the most important rule you learnt when you set out in the first place — that women take time to warm up and cool down. Let’s face it; she still has morsels of the caramel custard you had for dessert clinging to her lower lip. Rather than use that to further the play of love, you are going for the kill right away. If you do not stop in your tracks now, she will be put off sex (with you) for a long time.

You’re not acting in a porn film
Porn sites, even the classic Kamasutra, can teach you a lot. But it’s impossible to master all those painful contortions. Sexologists will tell you that while sex can be flirtatious and meaningless even among committed people, the best moments are those that have some heart.

Dude, ensure that she is comfortable and do not treat her like a porn star. There are two off shoots of this: either she will be completely repelled by your constant requests or may actually turn into ‘rasadevi’ in the bedroom.

Are you being too gentle?
You are a gentleman. She loved that about you right at the beginning. That’s what drew her to you. She loves the fact that you are a conscientious lover; gentle all the way. But (and this might confuse you, as we have just told you that gentleness does take a man a long way in a relationship) women do like it when a man takes charge. Your courtly love is not getting you far. You have made her feel safe and secure with all your genteelness, but c’mon, be a man. Mix up that gentle-lover attitude with some Tarzan-tactics. Arrive at a middle ground to get anywhere close to her heart.

Remember Chandler from Friends?
This is straight off Friends. And is relevant to many men who are a few years into a relationship. In one of the episodes, Joey remarks what a lazy lover Chandler is after he and Monica emerge from a round in the bedroom. Joey can tell what a lazy lover his friend is by the way his hair is plastered flat at the back of his head. Lesson number four for you. Guys, there can be nothing more annoying than being with a non-active lover. Whatever happened to caressing and petting through the act? Or would you rather that she cuddle up with the pillow. Let it be known, many women find that very comforting. The pillow does not talk garbage not does it cavort clumsily around the four-poster.

Finally, where’s the innovation, dude?
When was the last time you were inventive? For most women, sex is not so much about the act as it is about the anticipation. Put on some music, read to her, draw a warm bath and light up some aroma candles as a welcome back home from work surprise, or have dinner ready; basically create an atmosphere of romance. Most men dismiss this
as being overly girly and a dent to their machismo. Let it be known, most women find a hint of the artistic in men very flattering. And then of course, sex.