Roland Teo, a friend of mine recently put up in his blog the trend for people in the lower hierarchy of an organisation being so dependent on the mobile thingy in their hands that they are online practically from the moment they are awake till the minute they go to sleep. They even answer the phone while doing their 'business' in the toilet. Then there are the Bluetooth types who have handsfree connectivity and appear to be mad people talking and laughing into the air while walking and driving. I admit I use the Bluetooth during driving but draw the line while walking.
A long time colleague turned friend,Frank Rigley,who has travelled the world over and is based in Germany,Hong Kong and Penang depending on time of year told me that he met a more worldly wise man on a flight to Brazil. The senior gentleman who was a business owner told the then young Frank (in his early 40s then) that all he ever needed was in the brown paper bag which he carried.In the bag was an apple and his paper organiser which had all the numbers to his lawyers,bankers,vendnors and key customers. Did he need to call any of them at all times of the day ? The answer is "NO". The brain is still by far the most complex machine mankind has ever made and we are still learning to use maybe 10% of it till this day ! Will his business go down the tubes or the banks start foreclosing the loans to him if he does not receive their call for 1 evening ? Definately NOT.
Do handphones,Blackberries,GPS, Ipods,Laptops actually make you "work less and play more ? ". The answer is "NO". Unless you play On-Line games and ignore work whereby you run the risk of 'goofing off' during work and getting fired,most of us are seemingly bogged down by the need to access our online workselves. By perpetually getting more 'connected' we are enslaving ourselves to our work and the tools which enslave us are the very ones which were supposed to make our lives easier. The Blackberry is a pushmail device whereby ever so often email gets sent to the owner and he is supposed to read and
respond to the mail while "on the go".
So ask yourself " Have you Got Lost (go to where noone can contact you) today ? " . It is a privilege that only a few - in the upper realms of management or the Financially Independent can truly afford to "Get Lost".
It seems that at the end of the day, we are Slaves to the Technology which was supposed to simplify our lives.Does it appear that we are in fact workng HARDER now than we did say 15 years ago (in the early 90s) given the amount of time we have to apply our brains and bodies to the work that we are involved in to get the SAME or LESSER returns ?(eg. salary or commissions).
This excludes the bankers of course, the less said about them the better !
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