What if We Turned Our Devices Off?
I sent a blank document to a co-worker at World Wide. I left keys for our summer vacation rental house at home. On a recent business trip to London, I got on the wrong underground train. Worse, I was halfway to Heathrow when I realized I’d left my passport in the hotel room safe.
These are just some of my symptoms of overload. The more tasks, the less efficient, and more distracted I become. Sooner or later, I fear, I’m going to get hit by a car.
As anyone will tell you, time is the ultimate constraint, and unlike money, once spent it can’t be recouped. Management is therefore about efficient use of time and setting priorities. Easy to say, hard to do. Because by the end of the week I need to both write a funding proposal for Jamseed and tape my London trip receipts to blank letter-sized paper for submission into World Wide’s accounting system.
But that’s not what’s really overloading me. The challenge lies with the very tools that make bootstrapping a startup while working a day job possible.
While on the plus side, I can use the Internet to find out the number of Myspace users who list themselves as musicians (403,170). I can also use my Blackberry to read work and home emails and respond 24-hours a day from anywhere in the world.
The downside is precisely the same: the 500+ emails I sent this month and time spent listening to a few of those 403,170 bands. That’s not efficiency, that’s, as my friend says, “faffing around.”
Reading email immediately is great. But just because you can also respond instantly doesn't mean that always useful.
So I did an experiment. I wrote my boss at World Wide an email and set it to not send for 4 hours. Then I closed my web browser, Skype, all instant messengers, and turned off the Blackberry. That left a mere 3 input channels: work and home email and phone.
Over those 4 hours, I edited several work presentations. I also got emails from my boss. In response, I tweaked my delayed email. When I finally sent it, I had incorporated her several updates and saved myself half a dozen back and forth emails and probably a half hour call. I’d also freed myself up to work on Jamseed (and this blog) in the evening.
What do you think? Is turning off some of the communications channels the only way to solve the information overload? Or can you manage the “flood” of email while not reducing your ability to get things done? How do you manage your things to do?
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David Silverman is the author of Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars (Soft Skull Press, 2007).
This blog chronicles the trials and tribulations of David and two longtime friends who are trying to start an Internet music company called Jamseed. All three have day jobs, all have failed in the past with new ventures, and all hope that this company will bring them entrepreneurial redemption.
Comments
Hi David,
You might like to see my views, on information overload, at my blog http://mumbaicp.blogspot.com/
- Posted by Mumbai couch potato
June 28, 2008 12:31 AM
The old aged discussion about time management...being in similar circumstances, I like the do, delete, defer, delegate model.
I definately check emails at set times - otherwise life becomes about responding rather than doing and I feel like I've been fire fighting.
Turn off the information highway for a while! Let your brain have time to function and create and do what it is best at.
Then - when I do check them - I ask, "is this something that I do (in less than 2 minutes)? Something I delete? Something I defer until later or some that I delegate?"
Listening to 400,000+ bands seems monumental! Why not recruit an army of people passionate about what you are doing and get them to listen to them and report back according to defined criteria? That is what the web is all about - surely?
And to help along the way - here are two of my favourites (OK, I am biased as they are friends - but there is evidence to back up my bias, honestly).
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=39751630
http://www.myspace.com/thisislindsey
Hopefully that will help with your creation of something amazing!
- Posted by Matt Edmundson
June 28, 2008 2:10 AM
You're totally right but it seems to me it's only a part of a more global point which to make people become their own information supply-chain managers instead of being passive victims of an uncontrolled flow.
In fact there is something you didn't mention : the big gap existing between what I receive and what I need to do my job. Eliminating this unneccessary communication would let more time left to be really efficient.
So more than using communication tools more wisely we have to rethink the very nature of our communication systems in order the information "finds" people who really need it and keep IM and email for their original purpose : one to one communication and alerts.
- Posted by Bertrand Duperrin
June 28, 2008 3:11 AM
You're right that devices offer information and accessibility. But saying that's the value proposition is misleading without adding the clause, "when you need it." The key is to recognize that we don't need *more* of those things all the time, and that we're better off turning off sometimes.
Maybe it's turning off to do focused work free from distractions, like you indicated. Maybe it's peace to escape form work completely and relax. But one way or another, we don't NEED the devices all the time and, like you pointed out, the world goes on without us being connected to it 6 million ways all the time. It goes on for 4 hours without us. It goes on for 4 days without us. Even in a startup environment.
A colleague forwarded me this article of yours, knowing full well that this is my schpiel. I'll be heading to the Information Overload group the NY Times article you mention referenced, and I've written lists of reasons to turn off email on your BlackBerry, etc. I'll be very curious to see if you stick with the habit of turning off. I can tell you that, without exception, everyone I've spoken to who's stepped away from the crackpipe of email and data to do something focused or just escape has gotten incredibly more value from that time.
Hope it gets to work to you, and consider your blog subscribed. Cheers.
- Posted by Jared Goralnick
July 10, 2008 11:29 AM