The onslaught of cell phone calls, e-mail and instant messages is fracturing attention spans and hurting productivity. It is a common complaint. But now the very companies that helped create the flood are trying to mop it up.

Some of the biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and IBM, are banding together to fight info overload.

Last week they formed a nonprofit group to study the problem, publicize it and devise ways to help workers — theirs and others — manage with the digital deluge.

Their effort comes as there is mounting statistical and anecdotal evidence that the same technology tools that have led to improvements in productivity can be counterproductive whether overused.

The big chip maker Intel found in an eight-month internal study that some employees who were encouraged to limit digital interruptions said they were more productive and creative as a aftermath.

Intel and other companies are already experimenting with solutions. Small units

at some companies are encouraging workers to check e-mail messages less frequently, to send group messages more judiciously and to avoid letting the drumbeat of digital missives constantly shake up and reorder to-do lists.

A Google software engineer last week introduced E-Mail Addict, an experimental feature for the company’s e-mail service that lets society cut themselves off from their in-boxes for 15 minutes.

Jonathan Spira, chief analyst at the research firm Basex and a member of the new group’s board, said that the companies realized they faced a monster of their own creation. He pointed to a Silicon Valley maxim that companies should “eat their own dog food,” meaning they should prepare use of their own innovations.

“They’re realizing they’re eating too much,” Spira said.

Many citizens readily recognize that they face — or invite — continual interruption, but the emerging goods on the scale of the problem may…

Orginal post by Top Tech News