Time-saving tactics
As C. Northcote Parkinson noted last century, expenditures rise to meet income. Today, I’m wondering if the same could be said about advancements that theoretically free us up to do more of what we’d like to, but that wind up encumbering us.
Here’s the context of this question: I just spend six hours clearing out my email.
It was like a digital Bataan Death March. Six hours later, I’m down from 110 “real” emails to 29. That’s progress, but it was hard-fought. I definitely have a small, slight feeling of satisfaction — of being a little less burdened. But am I evaluating what I really accomplished in those six hours, and asking why, at 9:22 on a Saturday night, I’m still at my office? (Other than because I don’t want to take this work home with me?) You bet.
This afternoon while driving over here from my workshop — many hours and many deleted emails ago — I heard someone on the radio proclaiming that our electronic devices own us. That’s true. It’s hard to pull yourself away from your iPhone when you have the nagging suspicion that someone is on there trying to reach you — via text or email or Facebook message or Skype or push message.
It’s not like I haven’t been aware of this situation for some time. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of unsubscribing. I’ve also been responding to some emails in an efficient but rude-sounding way. Here’s one of my responses of that type: “Yes.” Another one is: “No.” I’ve even taken to this stratagem, picked up at a conference: a subject line that says everything. (Example of one I sent: “confirming lunch today at noon at Octopus EOM.”) In response to a three-paragraph email, “no” really says a lot, especially compared against too much time indulging in email niceties versus working on my play. Now that I’m down to 29 emails (and who knows how or when — or if! — I’ll ever get to zero), my plan is to keep that number low. If I have to behave like a Visigoth, maybe that’s just what it takes.
If you email me, and you get one of those terse replies, it is personal. But it’s not personal against you — it’s me taking better personal command of my time.
August 18th, 2013 at 8:20 am
You no doubt are too young to remember when this was all done with paper & ink; you never knew the hours of agony spent going through the stacks of paper on your desk trying to find the one essential document amid a pile of things you discover need immediate attention, but i can tell you my hands are still rough and calloused from the effort of moving those stacks of paper around, not to mention the fingers I have lost to paper-cuts. And don’t even get me started on the toll in suffering and human life involved in cleaning out old file cabinets.You kids these days don’t realize how easy…. yada yada yada… stay off my lawn…yada yada…..
August 27th, 2013 at 9:22 pm
The iPhone is a fantastic device. It doesn’t own me, I own it. I have exactly ZERO notifications set to do anything. No beeps, sounds, or vibes of anykind! I’m over all that nonsense. No fucking machine is going to PUSH to me, I on the other hand, will push IT whenever I want. When I get to the stuff that shows up on it, that’s when I’ll look at it. Fuck all this technology shit, it’s lovely, I enjoy it, I rather like to think of the other live humans that communicate with me on the other end…than the delivery equipment. Old emails? I delete everything. Fuck all of it. I’d rather care for other live humans, my own species. The tactile, temporal, and daily life things attract me more. That’s the stuff that makes me bounce out of bed in the morning – not some fucking machine. I do however turn on Pandora Radio at the beginning of an automobile ride, and turn it the fuck off when I get to where I’m going. Period.