PDAs and their boosts to productivity and personal time

A white paper published by BlackBerry cites (at 12) a 2004 study by Ipsos-Reid. Not surprisingly, the study found that those who use a BlackBerry become more productive. “The median and user reported recovering 47 minutes of productive time per day by having BlackBerry connectivity, which annualizes to 196 hours per year.” If BlackBerries were to work that magic for a typical in-house lawyer, at $200 an hour of fully-loaded costs, the savings would equal $39,200 per lawyer. I suppose time on a train, or in traffic, might account for some of the transformation of dross into gold.

Additionally, the median end-user reported recovering 27 minutes per day of otherwise lost personal time. Increased productivity or personal as a result of using a PDA might come from a BlackBerry device from Research In Motion Ltd., a Treo from Palm, the Q from Motorola, or similar devices.