Everyone I know is incredibly busy. As an example, here’s a quote from a recent email from a friend of mine: “I am DROWNING right now.”
We all face the ironic situation that our labor-saving devices and productivity tools (software and hardware) have left us with a vague feeling that they have helped us only to work harder and less productively.
So you see people stretched thin and becoming less patient. Notice what happens 15 or 20 minutes into a meeting or phone call. People even schedule calls a few minutes before another meeting so they can jump off and feel they have knocked another item off the to-do list.
People regularly come to me with ideas for group projects (often related to blogging). My new test is to say that it will be worth pursuing only if the people who want to do it are willing to commit to doing a one-hour conference call. Often, that call never gets scheduled – people get too busy to give up the time and effort to put together, set-up and have that call.
So, for all you busy people, which is probably all of us, I’ve found something that you must find some time to read and think about. It’s from Dave Pollard and its a post called “Too Busy Being Unproductive to Learn to Be Productive.”
The money quote (among many):
One of the paradoxes of modern life is we’re too busy to learn to do things that would make us less busy and more productive. . . . If you’re skeptical, spend a half hour observing a co-worker at his/her PC and you’ll be astonished: It’s like watching someone being tortured — awkward workarounds, unnecessary steps, time wasted searching in the wrong places the wrong way. The cost to every enterprise, and our economy as a whole, must be gargantuan.
An important guide for the too busy society.
[Originally posted on DennisKennedy.Blog (https://www.denniskennedy.com/blog/)]
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