Anybody remember when Bill Gates stood up many years (probably decades) ago and said that technology was going to make our lives simpler? OK, so do anyone of you feel that technology has simplified your life…or has it made it more complicated?
Everything today is faster, and the expectation of response time is not anywhere what it used to be. I remember when over 20 years ago I worked for my father’s company and bringing in the telex was revolutionizing the speed of information. We were hesitant to use it (due to cost), yet it changed the speed with which answers could flow. The fax was an immediate document (as quickly as you could type the page or write it and then put it into the machine). Email came next and then people started sending more jokes than serious work communication. And then finally we got SMS and IM messaging for the most instant gratification money could buy.
Do we have overload? Will you wait TWO DAYS for an email to be responded to as this article implies? I’m not so sure that even as it was being published, it had not already become obsolete. I know that if my team doesn’t get a reply from me in two days (without expecting that I am offline which happens but twice a year) they get worried.
Technology addicition, overload or dependency. Call it what you wish…it has NOT made our lives simpler Bill. Rather it has blurred work and play, rest and drive. It means that as we got faster, so did our competitors, vendors, customers, shareholders…and thus all that happened was that the expectation of response went skywards.
I think the day we can relax is the day when we need not think anymore. The implants will carry our thoughts at lightening speed across the galaxies and we’ll just sit and veg with our virtual lives. What a sad thought.
And so leading from these thoughts, I made a decision…I am shutting off my laptop on Saturdays. I will not respond to emails on Saturdays unless a deadline may be missed or a project flow will be affected by my non-response. For those who know me, this is a HUGE decision, yet frankly speaking, as my good friend Laurent says “balance is king”, and I’m feeling today that I have lost a bit of it to the technology race.
Shabbat shalom (aka “have a peaceful Sabbath”),
Sass