The Cost of Staying Constantly Connected

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When I used to work for the man I HAD to stay within arms reach. In fact for the last ten years that I was someone else’s webmonkey, I had a pager/cell phone/blackberry and was on call 24 x 7. When I went on vacation I had to call in every two days to make sure the wheels of progress didn’t grind to a screeching halt. I will add that while I wasn’t compensated handsomely I was compensated, so don’t come to the wrong conclusion that I was getting the raw end of the deal.

However now that for all intents and purposes I AM the company, the need and pressure to stay constantly connected has actually increased. In the past two years the longest I’ve gone without being online and checking my email was last week, and it lasted three days. On your average day day I probably get 150 emails. Half of them are spam and get deleted by my spam filter. Half of the remaining ones are things I’m not interested in. Even though the decision only takes a second or two it’s still something I have to do manually. The remaining ones are items with varying levels of importance that need to be dealt with somewhere between today and the next 60 days. So if I don’t check my emails for three days that’s about 120 email messages I’ve got to wade through. The longer I let it go the worse it becomes.

Now I am partly to blame for this as I’ve established email as my primary/preferred method of communication. Instant messenger is just way to distracting, and I’m not a phone person at all, in fact I’d rather talk to you in person than on the phone.

Next comes RSS, I have about 120 feeds I subscribe to, and another 150 or so vanity feeds for me, my domains, news searches, and so on. I came to the realization while on vacation that I have reached the point of information overload. Over the next few days I’ll be deleting some of those feeds. I’m also looking for ways to more effectively deal with email so that unplugging for three days or more isn’t a dreadful task than it already is.

Part II: The Benefits of Staying Constantly Connected

Categories:( email | email | rss | rss | information.mamangement | information.mamangement | time.mamangement | time.mamangement)

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