I adore gadgets. I have bought pretty much every sort of smartphone right from the Treo through Windows smartphones to my shiny new iPhone 4. And I adore tools too. I must have acquired each available to-do app on the market. So with all these productivity tech and tool purchases you'd have thought I'd become ultra productive, right?
Well, in that I can now fill my down time with activities, yes.
If I'm on the train or in a taxi I can read my e-mail. Using my online CRM I can browse my client and prospect details anytime, anywhere, anywhere. If I'm in the middle of nowhere I can still keep in contact with my Twitter mates.
But the truth is that none of these activities are particularly urgent for my business. They're not unimportant. But they're not critical. Essentially, the tools have made me more profitable at the mundane. They've allowed me to do admin when I wouldn't previously have been doing anything.
Or would I?
If I look back at what I really used to do when I was sitting on a train, or in a taxi it turns out I wasn't doing nothing. If I was on a train then usually I'd be reading. Learning useful stuff. Or considering a client or project perhaps planning or taking notes. And in actual fact this is crucial stuff. Really taking the time to think about my work and my clients or to enhance my knowledge and abilities. Way more important than answering mails, tweeting or doing admin.
The indisputable fact that I am always online with my iPhone means that I now spend some more time reacting to events (email, tweets, even phone calls) than I do actively thinking and planning. My capability to obtain access to this steady electronic stimulation has squeezed out the quiet time where I used to actually do some of my best thinking.
And it gets worse.
Being constantly online has conditioned me now to test my email when I am a little bored to see if something fascinating has come in. And usually it has. Not something critical. Possibly nowhere near as vital as the document or the plan or the idea I was supposed to be working on when I got a bit stuck. But fascinating.
And if there's nothing fascinating on e-mail I'm sure there will be on Twitter. Or I could always check my website statistics for the 20th time today. Lord help me, I've even just checked e-mail right now while I was in the middle of writing this blog post. And who knows how bad I'd be if I had a Blackberry with that horrible red light that tells you when you get a new email. I don't know I'd ever be strong enough to resist checking what had come in.
Honestly, we've got more productive at the things that aren't particularly critical and less productive at the thoughtful difficult work that actually is.
We're obsessed by realtime. I had to smile lately when otherwise-sensible social media guru David Meerman-Scott lauded the new development in Tweetdeck that meant you got instant updates instead of every 30 seconds. 'Cos being Twenty-nine seconds behind the times is going to kill 'ya.
Now here's the thing: I am not saying all these productivity tools and technology are a bad thing. Regardless of whether they were, it's too late the genie's out of the bottle.
But what we want to do me particularly is learn to become their master, not their slave.
To use them when it actually is productive not to oust otherwise productive activities because checking email is intellectually simpler and more stimulating.
So next time you find yourself checking e-mail more than a couple of times per day or whipping out your Blackberry in a taxi to check Twitter. Think to yourself if this truly is the most sensible use of your time.
So how about you? Have you managed to tame your tools and use them really productively?
Well, in that I can now fill my down time with activities, yes.
If I'm on the train or in a taxi I can read my e-mail. Using my online CRM I can browse my client and prospect details anytime, anywhere, anywhere. If I'm in the middle of nowhere I can still keep in contact with my Twitter mates.
But the truth is that none of these activities are particularly urgent for my business. They're not unimportant. But they're not critical. Essentially, the tools have made me more profitable at the mundane. They've allowed me to do admin when I wouldn't previously have been doing anything.
Or would I?
If I look back at what I really used to do when I was sitting on a train, or in a taxi it turns out I wasn't doing nothing. If I was on a train then usually I'd be reading. Learning useful stuff. Or considering a client or project perhaps planning or taking notes. And in actual fact this is crucial stuff. Really taking the time to think about my work and my clients or to enhance my knowledge and abilities. Way more important than answering mails, tweeting or doing admin.
The indisputable fact that I am always online with my iPhone means that I now spend some more time reacting to events (email, tweets, even phone calls) than I do actively thinking and planning. My capability to obtain access to this steady electronic stimulation has squeezed out the quiet time where I used to actually do some of my best thinking.
And it gets worse.
Being constantly online has conditioned me now to test my email when I am a little bored to see if something fascinating has come in. And usually it has. Not something critical. Possibly nowhere near as vital as the document or the plan or the idea I was supposed to be working on when I got a bit stuck. But fascinating.
And if there's nothing fascinating on e-mail I'm sure there will be on Twitter. Or I could always check my website statistics for the 20th time today. Lord help me, I've even just checked e-mail right now while I was in the middle of writing this blog post. And who knows how bad I'd be if I had a Blackberry with that horrible red light that tells you when you get a new email. I don't know I'd ever be strong enough to resist checking what had come in.
Honestly, we've got more productive at the things that aren't particularly critical and less productive at the thoughtful difficult work that actually is.
We're obsessed by realtime. I had to smile lately when otherwise-sensible social media guru David Meerman-Scott lauded the new development in Tweetdeck that meant you got instant updates instead of every 30 seconds. 'Cos being Twenty-nine seconds behind the times is going to kill 'ya.
Now here's the thing: I am not saying all these productivity tools and technology are a bad thing. Regardless of whether they were, it's too late the genie's out of the bottle.
But what we want to do me particularly is learn to become their master, not their slave.
To use them when it actually is productive not to oust otherwise productive activities because checking email is intellectually simpler and more stimulating.
So next time you find yourself checking e-mail more than a couple of times per day or whipping out your Blackberry in a taxi to check Twitter. Think to yourself if this truly is the most sensible use of your time.
So how about you? Have you managed to tame your tools and use them really productively?
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