I love gadgets.
I’ve bought every sort of smartphone right from the Treo through Windows smartphones to my shiny new iPhone 4.
And I love tools too. I must have bought every available to-do manager on the market.
So with all these productivity tech and tool purchases you’d have thought I’d become more productive, right?
Well, in the sense that I can now fill my downtime with activities, yes.
If I’m on the train or in a cab I can read my email. Using my online CRM I can browse my client and prospect details anytime, anyplace, anywhere. If I’m in the middle of nowhere I can still keep in touch with my Twitter buddies.
But the truth is that none of these activities are particularly vital for my business. They’re not unimportant. But they’re not crucial.
In essence, the tools have made me more productive at the mundane. They’ve allowed me to do “admin” when I wouldn’t previously have been doing anything.
Or would I?
If I think back at what I really used to do when I was sitting on a train, or in a cab it turns out I wasn’t doing nothing.
If I was on a train then usually I’d be reading. Learning useful stuff. Or thinking about a client or project – maybe planning or taking notes.
And actually, this is important stuff. Actually taking the time to think about my work and my clients or to improve my knowledge and skills.
Way more important than answering emails, tweeting or doing admin.
The fact that I’m “always online” with my iPhone has meant that I now spend more time reacting to events (email, tweets, even phone calls) than I do proactively thinking and planning. My ability to get access to this constant 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 check my email when I’m a bit bored to see if something interesting has come in.
And usually it has.
Not something important. Probably nowhere near as important as the document or the plan or the idea I was supposed to be working on when I got a bit “stuck”. But interesting.
And if there’s nothing interesting on email I’m sure there will be on Twitter. Or I could always check my website stats for the 20th time today.
Lord help me, I’ve even just checked email 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 awful red light that tells you when you get a new email. I’m not sure I’d ever be able to resist checking what had come in.
In truth, we’ve got more productive at the things that aren’t really important – and less productive at the thoughtful hard work that really is.
We’re obsessed by “real time”. I had to laugh recently when otherwise-sensible social media guru David Meerman-Scott lauded the new development in Tweetdeck that meant you got instant updates rather than every 30 seconds. ‘Cos being 29 seconds behind the times is going to kill ‘ya…
Now here’s the thing: I’m not saying all these productivity tools and technology are a bad thing. Even if they were, it’s too late – the genie’s out of the bottle.
But what we need to do – me especially – 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 easier and more stimulating.
So next time you find yourself checking email more than a couple of times a day – or whipping out your Blackberry in a cab to check Twitter. Think to yourself whether this really is the best use of your time.
So how about you? Have you managed to tame your tools and use them really productively?
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Image by Jeff Kontur
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So true, Ian
Though I have dodged the mobile devices I work from home so really that hasn’t spared me. I’ve had all the same issues.
I’ve slowly adopted some policies that make me more affective, mostly around the awareness that I work best in the first 3-4 hours when I’m fresh.
I don’t automatically load tweetdeck and email… out of sight, out of mind. Even my clients and associates have been conditioned not to call me before 10 am (slowly making it noon) and I never book morning appointments if at all avoidable.
Mornings are my time… to focus on doing what I know needs doing. It goes by fast and no matter how messed up the rest of the day gets, I FEEL like I accomplished something meaningful.
Oddly nobody has ever complained.. I guess they’re too busy checking their emails.
Lol. Love that last line Ian – well done.
I’m certainly going to try something similar. A lot of my work involves creation (articles, documents, videos) but I allow myself to be interrupted too often. I end up being my most productive really late at night when no one else is up – but that’s not sustainable.
Ian
Ian – this is so true. I consider myself to be pretty good at sticking to what’s important and driving the trivia into a small box, to be dealt with once a day…..then I got an Android smartphone (was Blackberry).
It is fabulous – a small computer in your hand, but death to focus and productivity. I’ve had it for 4 months now and it is a constant distraction (and not a good phone either). So, for this reason, it’s going on eBay tonight and I am buying a retro little Nokia thing that makes calls and that’s it – no Facebook, Twitter, News, email, footy scores, weather, RSS feeds, Tesco bar-code scanner……I am looking forward to a return to clear-headed sanity.
Thank goodness someone has raised this! I am still trying to create a schedule that allows me to realistically spend valuable time on social media whilst still balancing a busy diary. So far the result is that it eats into quiet time. Time just before bed when I should be ‘downloading’, on the train as you mentioned, when we would otherwise be thinking and early morning. The need to keep checking emails has become more obsessive than my need to keep eating chocolate, something I never thought I’d top! My alarm on the blackberry went off this morning and I did what has now become habit, check through the rubbish to find the diamond emails. I read your blog and immediately thought, this deserves a response, I’ll go onto my laptop as soon as I’m dressed; and here I am! Ian you really have made me think with this one, and I shall continue to keep searching for the perfect time management process. Got to dash need to check whose viewed my profile on linked in before breakfast!
Great point Ian. I practically never check my email/look at calendar because it is so urgent. It is so easy to preoccupy your time with the mundane because it feels like something worth while is actually being done. I love my smartphone, but it is a constant battle between checking my email because I have nothing else to do or because I really have to. LOL I am so dramatic. But yes, I agree, a lot of my best thinking and note taking occurs when I have no distractions and am in solitude (travel). But… I love those apps. =P
@Mark – knowing you, I know you have a pretty iron will when it comes to productivity – so if the devices can hook you into wasting time, what hope for the rest of us?
@Christine & @Rachel – Thanks to both of you. It sounds like we’re all in the same boat. We know we shouldn’t be constantly checking emails etc. But we just can’t stop ourselves. They say the first step to overcoming addiction is admitting you have a problem – so at least we’ve got that far!
Ian
It all has to do with being clear on what your priorities are, sticking to them, and being aware of what you’re doing at all times. I’m clear on my priorities. And yes, I do get distracted. When I do, I stop what I’m doing and move back to my priority work, even if that means closing the window on an article that I was halfway through.
Most of the time I have my BlackBerry on silent so all calls go to voice mail because I don’t want the interruptions and nothing is really that urgent. And if my BlackBerry is on my desk, it’s face down so I don’t see the red light, which I could also turn off if I wanted to.
I completely agree that for many people, the iPhone, BlackBerry, iPad, and other devices have made it easy for people to focus on the unimportant little things. But it’s like people who cancelled their Facebook account because they couldn’t manage their activity on social media: the problem isn’t with the tool or device, it’s with the user.
Great post, thanks!