From Rick Tehrani, president and publisher of TMCNet, comes this gem about the productivity-enhancing potential of visual voicemail:
. . . the ability to be talking with a caller and receive voicemail messages as text while still talking is an amazing productivity booster. A busy executive can be on the phone while forwarding voicemail messages as action items via e-mail. Others in an organization can respond to these voicemails while the executive continues speaking.
Now, don't get me wrong: I think that, like many new technologies, there's a time and place for visual voicemail. Hell, if nothing else, not squandering the salad days of your life listening to the dreaded,
For more message options, press 0. To continue wasting minutes on your calling plan, press 6. To be put on hold indefinitely, press *8
is worth the price of visual voice mail alone.
But I'm pretty sure that talking with someone and reading voice mail is not an "amazing productivity booster." This is just another opportunity to fall victim to the siren call of multi-tasking. And it doesn't work. Period.