Out & About...Lesson in Time & Tech Management
Maybe I should have called this column "How I Missed My Mac." That's because I was out and about all week without my usual white appendage attached firmly at my side. Mac was out sick.
If you know me, you probably can’t picture me without my digital sidekick, but there I was - riding solo. I joke a lot about having the machine with me, but in truth I was sort of looking forward to a less-digital week. I figured I’d rely on a shared web browser and maybe even catch up on some of the stacks of paper that surround my desk – but it wouldn’t be the end of the world or anything.
So, ok, the world didn’t actually end but what I learned was just how much an integrated use of simple technology tools drives my productivity – a lesson that surprised me, humbled me, and made me ponder the changes in business process that we all take for granted.
I am a juggler. I don’t have any singular great talent (Singing? Nah! Coding? Nah! Dancing? Hah!) but I do have a lot of energy and a reasonable facility at multi-tasking. It never fully occurred to me that much of that ability comes not from within, but from a learned use of tools. Remove those tools and suddenly one is painfully aware of the role they play.
I know dozens of people who are quick to say they are “not technology people” or that they “don’t know anything about technology,” but I would dare any of them to hit the same level of productivity without using the ubiquitous digital tools, that tools that they don’t even think of as technology.
Let’s start with communications. Sans laptop, I no longer had quick and easy email access. Without email, I was left to either make phone calls or drop in on people. Now, I am very comfortable with email -- but the absence of it highlighted just what a large portion of it involves quick information exchanges – confirming a time, sending a contact name, passing along an inquiry or a document to someone else. I didn't realize how many one-second messages I send.
Yes, email can be a huge time sink ... but lack of email also turns 5 minutes of clicking into 50 minutes of leaving voices mails, dropping off printed copies to remote locations, and responding to voice mails left in response to my voice mails.
It’s not that I mind talking to people or seeing people, but voice mail and mail drops don’t actually build relationships or create in-depth connections. They just create a new layer of busy work. And take a big bite out of the day.
How about time management? I quickly realized the movement to a digital calendar had been a success when I didn’t know where I was supposed to be at 10 am on Monday.
Paper came back into play (and I do like paper calendars) except that the little automatic reminder didn’t happen. And the ability to quickly find the notes from a past meeting wasn’t a two-click step. And I couldn’t flash between daily and weekly views as I planned the layout of the week. A half hour or so disappeared between the calendar lines.
Then there was the issue of directions. For the directionally challenged, the development of Mapquest is right up there with sliced bread. No laptop, no connectivity, no Mapquest. Yes, a paper map works ... sort of, eventually. Factor another 20 minutes out of the day.
Contact management. Like most of us, I have hundreds of names ... companies, people, categories. Can I remember them all? Not likely.
Without the ability to do a quick digital search for a partial phrase and jump to the right phone number ... well, let’s just say that sorting through a large stack of business cards tied together with a rubber band is a nice way to notice design trends but not exactly the best way to reach out and call someone.
What about all that work in progress? Notes, documents, spreadsheets? Oh my, to try and manage them in paper form is downright scary. Not to mention an activity that added yet another layer of time overhead to everything.
The funny thing about all these tasks is that none of them seems very significant unto itself. And by and large, I have little memory of transitioning them into digital form. And yet, and yet, without the digital form suddenly the day got shorter, gobbled up by the a million little inefficient actions and flecked with frustration over repeated manual tasks.
Whether we are “technology people” or not, the mundane business processes have forever changed. The dynamics of the day are digital – and they are executed more efficiently than we probably realize. The reality of the work world is that everyone has to do more with less – and that is possible largely through a whole series of seemingly simple process shifts, in tiny moves to digital tools.
I tried to remember how I used to get things done, before my little Mac buddy or any of its many predecessors came on the scene. The answer was the human assistant – in the early days, the department secretary and later the administrative assistant.
I didn’t need Mapquest because a nice helpful person photocopied maps and drew my routes to client sites with yellow marker. And a nice helpful person filed away project specs and could unfile them in moment. That person was a critical part of the team.
The world has changed. Whether it is my tasks and time, or the still-critical admin’s tasks and time, we are all supercharged by changes that happened when we weren’t looking and that many of us barely consider technology any more. It’s only when it goes away that we realize just how much extra zip it gives us.
Oh yes, there is a happy ending to this column. Around 5 pm today, the FedEx people dropped off a box. And I got to welcome Mac back home.
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