A short summer thought…
How many e-mails do you get a day?
How many messages of any kind…from any source do you receive an hour?
How many news stories have you read from beginning to end?
How often do you a read a report without “message interruptus”?
Honest answers only…
Here are mine.
I lost count of how many e-mails I get – most not important.
I get way too many messages in an hour from way too many sources – most not important.
I get so many news feeds that I have difficulty in determining which are the important ones – which ones I need to concentrate on.
I suffer from terrible “message interruptus” – e-mails pop up while I’m reading – phones ring, text messages chime and my addiction to checking has me toggling like mad…
So here is the question – info, info everywhere but am I absorbing what I need, what I should, what I must?
Are we? Losing touch? So absorbed in quantity that we are missing the quality?
And if so – what are the consequences?
Listen:
“Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.” Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein died in 1946 – think on that…
What’s your view?
Right on David.
In the time it took to read your short summer thought, on a slow summer Monday morning, I got too many emails, invites, tweets, texts and IMs to count, let alone respond too.
Agree, how can we be so connected but so not in touch?
Just for today I think I will work on one thing – just one – and make a difference on that one thing – and I’ll do it right after I respond to those emails…:)
Yes the volume of email is enormous. But beyond that, just because you sent an email DOES NOT mean I have read it nor should you assume so.
Communications is a response-generating task.
To make sure you have been heard, you need to find a way to generate a response.
I have a terrible problem: i cant go home if i have emails in my inbox. I only leave the few emails i could not finish reading and/or replying. I get an average of 120 emails a day, and most of them are important, or at least require my attention. I use my lunch break to listen to some quite music and try to reply the emails from the morning bunch. It is not easy, but with the DND on and the phone off, i get to clear most of them. It is a difficult task to keep the inbox in shape, but it is a good habit, like if it was our own body.
I take advantage of the early mornings or late afternoons to finish clearing the rest…I guess being multitasking is not easy but it pays off, specially in the Production Department.
The only problem i have is finishing reading wonderful stories and also being up to date on the industry ever changing news. I always remember the lesson i learned in school about the Jar+golf balls+sand, and i try my best to apply that on my day to day tasks.
I hope we can get more condense information and stories like yours that get to the point and teach us something quick.
Sorry, no time to respond. Too many emails to answer….
Want less emails. Stop the Ramble.
Just kidding David.
You know we all love your Ramble.
Sounds like we could use a different kind of network. One that adapted to you, understood you and did things for you while you were doing other things, and quietly brought you stuff that was just right for you. Say something more personalized. Coming September 26th, 2011
Since attention is finite (I know mine is) and fleeting, all this external input steals from the time we might otherwise spend paying attention to internal input. Equally important is looking inside, weighing, applying insights — even a moral code — to what we see and hear. I fear our ability to make personal meaning out of all this input is crushed by the very input itself.
How is “message interuptus” affecting our ability to make decisions?? Introducing Decision Fatigue. Great NYTimes piece claims that life-changing decisions will vary depending on how “desicion-fatigued” you are….and that’s why “the best decision makers are the ones who know when not to trust themselves.” Take a look…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=decisions&st=cse
Hi David, I´m new on YR´s Telefonica team. Here is what I think…
Before I joined YR, I worked for several different agencies in Colombia (been on the market for over 13 years) and got tired of exactly what you describe.
I left, I bought a car wash and worked in it for aver 18 months because I wanted to clear my mind, do something different, enjoy the sun, the rain, the wind…
I sold my car wash a couple of weeks ago, been in YR for 2 months now, but you now, I work now with a different perspective of communication.
Outside the advertising bubble (of course there are plenty more bubbles) people communicate all the time, all day long and is how it is intended, so how come we “advertisers” don´t do it? Do we really think that e-mailing, texting, chatting, tweeting, is the best way to communicate? are we that naive?
Life passes by while you try to answer every message you get just to be sure you are doing your job right!
Let´s all start talking, calling, visiting, enjoy communicating the way it should be!
This is a great message David. And reading the comments really resinated with me. I TOO have a terrible problem: i also cant go home if i have emails in my inbox (or at least have checked them and made sure they can’t wait ’til tomorrow).
Why do we feel the need to talk to sooo many people so often (just becuase technology allows us)? Why can’t we be happy with a smaller, more immediate world around us?
If it is important then meet face to face.
If you can’t, then call.
If it is a relationship issue then only face to face will do.
Email me if you want me to do something.
CC is only used for information, not action.
BCC is for the spineless.
Email is not a ‘conversation’. When will peole stop filling inboxes with ‘thanks for that”?
An email trail is proof that people have avoided meeting to discuss an issue that is probably best resolved face to face.
If it is important then meet face to face.
If you can’t meet face to face, then call.
If it is a client or staff relationship issue then only face to face will do.
Email me if you want me to do something.
CC is only used for information, not action.
BCC is only for the spineless.
Email is not a ‘conversation’. When will peole stop filling inboxes with ‘thanks for that”?
An email trail is proof that people have avoided meeting to discuss an issue that is probably best resolved face to face.
I can’t wait for the day when people stop hitting the reply-to-all button because either 1) they feel the need to demonstrate they have read an e-mail and are ‘part of the conversation’ or 2) maybe even genuinely feel the need to just say ‘Thank You’. I estimate the 300% of my e-mails fall into that category.
Hear hear for Diego \Let´s all start talking, calling, visiting, enjoy communicating the way it should be!\
Like with everything in life, we should (learn to) cut through the clutter and focus on what’s important. In our business we seem to suffer from ‘importance inflation’. We often have multiple clients, and they all expect priority. Or like with Sandra, it’s our internal people who are our ‘clients’, and we don’t want to let them down.
Here comes the balancing act: with so much to read and respond to, we need to decide what to ignore. You simply can’t do it all, so pick your top focus areas, stick with them, and feel good about it at the end of the day.
Easier said then done. But I do make a consious effort to declutter and simplify my life every day. Bring it it down the essentials, just like you do on vacation… or when you run a car wash (?)
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. ~Confucius
@David, I’ve been so flooded with e-mails, social media invite requests, phone calls, meetings, etc. over the past several months that I haven’t had the chance to respond to your blog posts. Interesting blog post and great quote from Gertrude Stein. @Jessica, also great quote from Confucius. Both quotes – so true!
Information is like facebook. Eventually, it goes from being meaningful and relevant to fat and forgetful- you don’t have 1053 friends, just like you cannot digest 1053 pieces of information if they are not within the context of a relevant situation, story or experience. We forget that we are HUMAN beings- rather than run out to know ‘more’, we are better served learning what we come into contact with. That is the difference between ‘understanding’ and ‘knowing’- and when we understand, we see the world for what it is, not the world as it is in theory. And as Krishna Murti wrote in ‘Freedom from the Unknown’, when you truly observe within the moment, void of that false creation called the ‘mind’, you transcend preconceived perception and understand- seeing without judgement everything for what it is in its current state, which is the action called ‘love’.
totally LOVE Diego’s comment! (and Jessicas..)
and totally agree.
I am freelance, and on my way home I will stop at the market, buy fresh stuff for dinner,
maybe some flowers, too. And while cooking – no phone, no electronics! Maybe some music. But not
necessary.
cheers,
Chris
I’ve always thought that “nowadays communications” and their devices (like the infamous Blackberry), bring closer to the ones that are far away… and send far away the ones that are really close to us.
finally I get a chance to read…..
Is all the information we are privvy helping us or hurting us during unsettling times?
Consider a recently published perspective on the why Mubarak’s shutting off Internet/Cell Phone connectivity actually contributed to the effectiveness of the Tahrir Square protests..
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/29/business/media/in-times-of-unrest-social-networks-can-be-a-distraction.html?_r=1&pagewanted=1&ref=world
“We become more normal when we actually know what is going on — we are more unpredictable when we don’t — on a mass scale that has interesting implications..”
Then consider how helpful Twitter personality “Irene” was (with status “I don’t want to hurt anyone”) in guiding us through the storm.
http://thecelebritycafe.com/feature/hurricane-irene-blows-twitter-away-08-28-2011
[...] last week: what effect does constant connectivity have on our response during unsettling times? Take a look at last week’s Ramble, comment #20. Posted by David on 08/29 at 03:49 PM Tags: earthquake and hurricane nyc, hurricane irene, [...]
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