We should, in theory, be wildly productive with all the gadgets and technology at our disposal; smart phones and tablets, totally mobile tools that can organize everything and communicate with everybody. They're relatively cheap and easy to operate, little real expertise is required. People bring out apps like crazy. So you and I should be some pretty darn productive humans! Since everyone is totally connected in every possible way at every minute of the day, technology should have made our jobs easy. But in many ways our jobs are harder. Why? Because we tend to over connect without communicating as well as we once did. It reminds me of a night not long ago after a little too much wine when a friend looked at me and said, "A lot of words are coming out of your mouth, but you're not saying much!" I wasn't offended for two reasons; 1. It was true and 2. We were both ok with lots of word flow while really saying little. We were simply having fun. But when we're working at our craft, it's a whole different problem.
If you are still reading this although you're multitasking by watching You Tube, answering texts, Tweeting and talking to your therapist on your cell phone, monitoring your Facebook, searching for connections on LinkedIn, editing a Word doc, and fixing errors in that Excel spreadsheet you just popped off the "cloud", you know what I'm talking about. Not only do we talk a lot without saying anything, we do a lot without "doing" anything. Whether we want to admit it or not we spend a lot of time with spirit numbing distractions and if we're not more careful spending too much time with all our tools can put us out of business while we feel so very busy and even productive. It's so very seductive. So much of our work (and even play) time moves at dizzying speeds. Just the sound of it is, at times, deafening. The frenzied pace fools us into mistaking being busy for being productive. Ah, yes, that's the problem. We have a hard time slowing down enough to put the theory of being productive in perspective.
Yes, we can prove the theory right or we can prove it wrong. There's nothing wrong with the theory that tools CAN make us more productive, there's only problems with how we use them. We have to be willing to look at our use of our "tools" as honestly as we can, because frankly we can get so caught up in using them that we convince ourselves that we're being very productive when we're not. And guess what? Often those around us can see we're wasting time, but they'll never say anything. It's like the child's story The Emperor's New Clothes. Stark naked, the Emperor went into procession and everyone along the streets said, "How incomparable are the Emperor's new clothes! No one would let it be perceived that they couldn't see clothes on him, as that would have shown that they themselves were stupid. Until at last, a little child called out that he had nothing on. The others slowly noticed and so did even the Emperor, but he held himself a little higher and continued on. Ah, how we fool ourselves.
Let's be careful not to walk around naked.
