Efficiency Overload

May 8, 2008— -- When the elevator call button is lit, do you hit it again to enforce the demand? When it finally arrives, do you punch the "close door" button to speed things along? If so, you are in the majority.

"They all think they're the most important person in the building and the elevator should be waiting for them," Sean Moran says with a laugh. He is in charge of the vertical transportation at 7 World Trade Center, one of the most advanced elevator systems in the world.

Designers at the Otis Elevator Co. have studied our collective patience over the years and found that it is shrinking fast. In big American cities these days, the average person waiting for an elevator starts to get anxious in under 30 seconds. A minute is considered an eternity. How did this happen? Ever since Thomas Jefferson invented the automatic double doors, efficiency has been an American obsession.

The Industrial Revolution was supercharged when observers with stopwatches began scrutinizing every process from the factory to the home. The Remington Typewriter Co. posted signs over workers' heads: "To save time is to lengthen life."

That sentiment gave rise to everything from microwaves to remote controls, sound bytes to speed dating. And the Digital Revolution has only quickened the national heartbeat.

In the mid-1990s, a little more than 10 percent of Americans had a cell phone. It's more than 80 percent today. Computers are 10,000 times faster than those of 30 years ago, and whether it's for work or play, trying to drink from this fire hose of information creates a need to multi-task. More than half of Blackberry users admit to checking e-mail in the bathroom and in bed.

"When you start to account for the fact that someone might be watching television and using the computer at the same time, you start to find that they're able to accomplish about seven more hours of activity in any given day," says Patrick Moriarty of the consumer research firm, OTX.

But just how productive is a 31-hour day? Studies have shown that when the quantity of activity goes up, quality goes down and stress takes a toll.