In the last ten minutes, I’ve heard crickets chirping, horns blowing, bells going “ding” and other assorted nonsense. Like one of Pavlov’s dogs, each unique sound resulted in me stopping what I was in the middle of doing and react.
Answer the phone.
Respond to a text message.
Tell someone on instant messenger I’m busy.
Listen to the voice mail message I got while I went to pee.
I’m starting to find it more and more difficult to accomplish anything anymore because these small bits of technology are getting in my way.
If you don’t answer the text message from your friend that just says, “ut?” a half-hour later you’ll get another one asking, “are you mad at me?”
I keep turning call waiting off so instead of callers getting voice mail, they get the old fashioned busy signal which some people never heard before and end up telling me my phone is broken.
I’ve been interrupted five times since I started writing this. One was an instant message asking me if the lunch menu for the deli down the street is online.
I’m not Google. Go away.
I don’t leave voice messages for people because I know how time consuming it is to press this, press that, only to hear, “It’s me, call me back.” If you leave me a voice mail, chances are I won’t listen to it. That’s why phones tell you when you’ve a missed call.
If you’re one who lives off of voice mail, please don’t say “leave a message after the beep” in your greeting. After 25 years of this, I think all of us know when to start speaking.
If you look at your day, you’ll see just how much time you waste on these silly things. Not to mention posting a picture on Facebook of the sandwich you had at the deli once you found the menu and tweeting about how good it was but you wished your best friend was there to share it with you.
I often wonder how in the world we worked with just a rotary phone and a typewriter at our desks.
More productive comes to mind.