You are a busy person doing busy things. After all, the job description said you would have to work independently in a fast paced environment handling many duties at once with a calm demeanour. Emails come at you all day and you’re expected to respond to that urgent text you received last night at 9:37 during your one hour of television this week void of interruptions. The promise of a paperless world with a four-day work week has been replaced with much busyness and still no jet packs.There are meetings and deliverables, research and decisions. And when you get a moment, you check on your social streams. You haven't tweeted in well over an hour and people may have commented on that article you shared on Google+. Your friends on Facebook want your thoughts on the best sushi in town and there hasn't been a fresh blog post on your site in almost two whole days.
Here's Where We Get into Trouble
We are so afraid to miss something we tend to skim over everything. You're probably doing it with this post. Our lives are 140 characters or acronyms on the smartphone. It's okay, they're busy too and we added that semi-colon and a closed parenthesis so they know we're kidding, right?
In your quest to stay on top of everything, shortcuts are taken and suddenly a friend contacts you through one of the eleven ways they can and mentions that your last response seemed a bit dismissive. Suddenly a dozen messages back and forth could have be more enjoyable and far less misunderstood with a phone call. Or perhaps we have strapped on the suit called busy because it's what others think we should.
A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep
There is certainly no time to have a meaningful conversation, we are far too busy for that. And we wouldn't dare show up for that dinner engagement without our mobile device so we can check it half a dozen times before the appetizers arrive.
Business Week recently published a study stating that only 38% of people can make effective decisions today due to the overwhelming amount of data which is increasing at a rate of 60% a year. It may be time for us to have less meetings, put our phones away, and have more meaningful interaction.
Or perhaps we're too busy for that.
__________________________________________________________________
Kneale Mann | Leadership Strategist, consultant, writer, speaker, executive coach facilitating performance growth with leaders, management, and teams.
fototastic
