How Using Productivity Tools Makes You Less Productive
I love gizmos.
I have bought pretty much every sort of smartphone right from the Treo thru Windows smartphones to my shiny new iPhone 4.
And I adore tools too. I must have acquired each available to-do app on the market.
So with all these productivity tech and tool purchases you’d have thought I’d become ultra productive, right?
Well, in that I can now fill my quiet time with activities, yes.
If i’m on the train or in a cab I am able to read my email. Using my online CRM I am able to browse my customer and prospect details anytime, anywhere, anywhere. If i’m in the no man’s land I’m able to still keep in contact with my Twitter chums.
But the reality is that none of these activities are especially crucial for my business. They’re not trivial. But they are not vital.
In essence, the tools have made me more productive at the mundane. They’ve allowed me to do admin when I wouldn’t formerly have been doing anything.
Or would I?
If I look back at what I really used to do when I was sitting on a train, or in a taxi it turns out I wasn’t doing nothing.
If I was on a train then customarily I’d be reading. Learning useful stuff. Or thinking about a client or project perhaps planning or taking notes.
And in fact this is crucial stuff. Actually bothering to consider my work and my clients or to enhance my knowledge and skills.
Way more significant than answering emails, tweeting or doing admin.
The indisputable fact that I am always online with my iPhone means that I now spend some more time reacting to events ( email, tweets, even phone calls ) than I do actively thinking and planning. My capability to obtain access to this steady electronic stimulation has squeezed out the quiet time where I used to actually do some of my best thinking.
And it is getting worse.
Being constantly online has conditioned me now to test my email when I am a little bored to see if something fascinating has come in.
And generally it has.
Not something significant. Potentially not nearly as crucial as the document or the plan or the concept I was supposed to be working on when I got a bit stuck. But fascinating.
And if there’s nothing fascinating on e-mail I’m sure there will be on Twitter. Or I could always check my website statistics for the 20 th time today.
Lord help me, I’ve even just checked e-mail right now while I was in the middle of writing this blog post.
And who knows how terrible I’d be if I had a Blackberry with that horrible red light that tells you when you get a new email. I don’t know I’d ever be able to resist checking what had come in.
In truth, we’ve got more productive at the things that aren’t really important and less productive at the thoughtful difficult work that actually is.
We’re obsessed by realtime. I had to smile lately when otherwise-sensible social media guru David Meerman-Scott lauded the new development in Tweetdeck that meant you got instant updates instead of every 30 seconds. ‘Cos being Twenty-nine seconds behind the times is going to kill ‘ya
Now here’s the thing : I am not saying all of these productivity tools and technology are a bad thing. Even if they were, it’s too late the genie’s out of the bottle.
But what we want to do me particularly is learn to become their master, not their slave.
To use them when it really is productive not to oust otherwise productive activities because checking e-mail is intellectually simpler and more exciting.
So next time you find yourself checking e-mail more than a couple of times per day or whipping out your Blackberry in a taxi to check Twitter. Think to yourself if this truly is the most sensible use of your time.
So how about you? Have you managed to tame your tools and use them really productively?
Ian Brodie is a Marketing Consultant and Speaker who helps consultants, coaches and other professionals attract and win more clients. To discover the secrets of how to attract and win more clients your business. Get free access to his Client Breakthrough Report and Video Training and learn how to Get More Clients in Less Time.