February, 2010
To balance out my gushing about the interesting ways that social networks and technology in general is rapidly changing the world, I’ve been running a little personal experiment during my main working hours. The idea is to unplug as much as is reasonable for the main portion of my work day. No Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, or Linkedin. No Google Talk or Live Messenger. Not even Gmail or Outlook. At the beginning of the day, maybe at lunch and then again at the end of the day I’ll tune into my work email just to make sure there is nothing immediately demanding my attention. Now some people have taken this idea to the extreme, but I’m too chicken to commit social media suicide. I guess it’s more of a question of who controls who. Do I live in a state of reaction to these information channels? Or do I use the channels on my terms to get things done.
The great thing is that important stuff still seems to float to the top. After a week and a half of this, I’ve had some amazingly productive development time. When someone really needs something they call or get up from their desk and come ask me in person. If they’ve written more details in an email then at that point I’ll go find the email and we will talk about the issue. When I do read through something like my personal email in the evening, I’m in get it done and move on mode, so I read, take action, reply, archive, pay the bill, etc. I’m focused on the task at hand and the time I spend doing this is far less than checking my email every 15 min throughout the day.
