What’s on the iPod: Brain Damage by Pink Floyd
Daughter and I will be driving north right after her dental appointment today. It will be so nice to see the parents, and to see the “neighbors” at the other cottages along the river. They become part of your heart, and another reason why a place becomes so special.
While I’m gone, I’ll be disconnected. It’s my favorite time of year — that time when Internets and cell phone service disappear and when I remember what it’s like to slow down mentally. It takes just one trip out on the boat to switch gears, and I intend to do just that. I had a wonderful, relaxing time in Vancouver and Alberta, but the work that followed was plentiful and the schedule intense. Time for a mini-break.
I was thinking about all the technology I use in a day. No, I won’t bore you with the list. But I organize nearly everything on a calendar, in a Google Doc, or on a cell phone. It’s amazing, and maybe a little worrisome. Technology is not perfect, and things fail. Power goes out. Servers crash. Hard drives fry. Phones get lost or broken. Even the cloud, which is supposed to be secure and stable, could experience a crash –the servers holding all that stuff have to reside somewhere, and there isn’t a place on earth that’s immune from problems.
Maybe that’s why when someone suggests new technology to streamline my life, I tend to take a step back. I’m all for making my work and my life easier, but I wonder at what point does the technology become the job? When does the transition from useful tool to time-sucking aberration happen? And do we have a saturation point for technology?
I say this because there was a point in my quest to learn the top social media tools and work management technology that I stepped back and realized I wasn’t making my life easier –I was simply transferring my stress to the cloud. Here are my latest stress-inducers:
Google Docs. I love them for sharing and for storing must-have communications. In one case, Anne and I had too many emails between us as we built the Five Buck Forum and planned marketing and upcoming webinars. I made a Google Doc and listed all the things we were losing in emails. There. Done. Easy to find, right?
Then that one document turned quickly into six documents. I couldn’t find this, she couldn’t find that. We’d merely transferred our madness to Google. What we needed was organization, not one more document.
Google+. I wanted to love it. I hopped on board when there were a handful of people and the conversations were easy to track. Now, I can’t say I go there much at all because I’ve not taken the time to figure out how to filter what I want to see from what doesn’t apply. There’s a lot of noise. I’ve stopped following back just anyone and have stuck with people I’ve heard of or whose business correlates with what I do. However, there’s an upcoming webinar on Google+ that I intend to take. I see the value in it, and using it correctly is the key.
Smart phones. It took forever for me to succumb to the smart phone, but when I did, I fell in love. And I created some bad habits. I did spend too much time in the Canadian Rockies checking emails that didn’t need to be checked (though I did score a ton of work that way). I’m easily distracted by “Let’s look it up!” responses. I’m glad my husband, who is anti-cellphone, says “No, let’s not” every time or my habit would be worse. Fact is I don’t need to know who won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1987 (Sean Connery for The Untouchables), nor do I need to know how birds mate or what’s considered the cleanest beach in the country (Huntington Beach, Calif.) or why it never rains in Southern California like the song suggests (because it would ruin the song if it did). I didn’t care enough before the smart phone to look it up — why start now?
It all boils down to sensible use. In all cases, I’m guilty of either not using the technology in the most efficient way or of not learning it well enough to have it make a difference. That is definitely a fail on my part.
How has technology failed you, or vice versa?
Let's put it this way: A few months ago my sister was here to pick up her dogs, and while we were out for lunch we decided to see if a certain store carried a specific product. She handed me her iPhone (blank screen) and said, "Call them."
1) I didn't know how to turn the phone on.
2) After she turned it on, I still didn't know how to use it.
3) After she talked me through making the call, I didn't know how to disconnect the call when it was time to hang up.
4) I didn't know how to turn the phone off – or even if I needed to.
Thankfully my niece and nephew weren't there since 7- and 8-year-olds know it all and enjoy mocking their technology-impaired elders.