Ready for more productivity factoids? Here's the wrap on this week's Did You Know program:  

  • 33.7M people in the US telecommute at least 1 day a month.
  • Information overload costs US companies $900B a year in lost productivity.
  • More than 7M people have downloaded Office 2010 beta products. (Way more--latest # is 8.5M.)
  • The avg information worker spends 40% of the day processing info, not actually working on the underlying content.
  • 60% of US Information workers say they're more productive & efficient when working remotely.

Notice how we slipped in that one about Office 2010 beta downloads? Here's why:  

Banner for The future of productivity--Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010

If you ever work remotely but need to stay looped in, or if you're trying desperately to get to your actual work under that $900 billion mountain of overload, or if you'd like that work to be your best work ever....in other words, if being productive matters to you, we get it. Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010, released to business around the world on May 12th, are designed to help. Check out the conversations and resources on the 2010 launch site, for ideas on how to lower that 40% processing time so there's more for accomplishing what matters, and learn how folks are already benefitting.   

As for me, none of this week's factoids surprise me. I wrote this post in my home office on a big island in Puget Sound, where I work one or more days a week to break from a killer commute and office distractions (including my slice of that info overload). I rely mostly on Office 2010, SharePoint 2010, my internet connection, and chocolate. From what I've seen, that 33.7M figure is sure to keep climbing.  

To keep up with Did You Know if you're on Twitter, follow @Office and @SharePoint and add the #join2010 hashtag to your tweet stream. Fans on Facebook can watch for status updates and chime in with updates of your own. And here's last week's wrap-up.

 --Holly Thomas

 For free info and templates for Office, see Office.com.