But here’s a thought to consider:
Just a few centuries ago, the smartest humans alive were dead wrong about damn near everything. They were wrong about gods. Wrong about astronomy. Wrong about disease. Wrong about heredity. Wrong about physics. Wrong about racism, sexism, nationalism, governance, and many other moral issues. Wrong about geology. Wrong about cosmology. Wrong about chemistry. Wrong about evolution. Wrong about nearly every subject imaginable.
The other night, I had a plan. A good plan. A productive plan. After my AA meeting, I was going to go downtown, fire up the laptop, finish a blog post I’ve been working on, tweak a few things on my laptop, set up some FTP access for a friend, and maybe catch some football on TV. But I did none of that. Instead, I had a cigar and enjoyed the football game with the other patrons. And in doing so, I came to a realization that had been gnawing at me for a while.
You need to turn ‘off’ the multi-tasking and networking from time to time.
Smoking cigars is something I do to relax and unwind. It’s somewhat of a carryover from the 15 years I smoked cigarettes (yes, I started smoking at age 10, and even worse I began again a few months ago.), some of it is tied to my father’s own cigar smoking, but mostly it’s a reason to sit down and decompress. Given that it takes a good 45 minutes to an hour to smoke a cigar, it’s almost as though I am mandating relaxation to myself.
So why do I want to include other work in it? I don’t, and I shouldn’t. While it’s OK to do something else from time to time, there’s a reason I need to relax in the first place. If I begin to incorporate other tasks into it, the meaning and purpose is gone.
There is always the push to always be ‘productive’. Whether it’s the non-stop data feeds of RSS and email, the numerous GTD posts, blogs, gurus, or just the fact that there are more things to do than time to do them, we often lose sight of relaxation. Relaxation IS productive, probably more so than half the things I do to ‘stay on top of things’. When I am in a situation that is calming and relaxing, I have a better chance of seeing through the problems and issues I may be facing at that time. I can allow all the half-thoughts to either complete themselves or filter there way out.
And most importantly, I can watch football.
Note: this post is not addressed at any one person or group of people. Just an observation. But if you’re taking it personally, well, then….
Well, is it?
We all know that social media is great. It brings people together and helps businesses (and individuals) market themselves with extremely low barriers to entry. But is it making us dumb?
I’ve noticed a trend lately of folks either on twitter or other channels asking questions. No big deal. But these questions aren’t detailed or complex. No, they are ones that either could be solved with a 10 second Google search or looking at the settings page of whatever the program is. So why spend the time to ask a random group of people and wait for the answer?
I’ve always prided myself on having some pretty good critical thinking and problem solving skills. My parents told me it was important, that I needed to be able to solve whatever problems were thrown my way. It has translated well into my work, both corporate and freelance. That ability has enamored me to employers and co-workers when my somewhat surly attitude otherwise wouldn’t. Basically, I’m the ‘fix it’ person when it otherwise fails.
So why the crowdsourcing hate? What’s the difference between asking twitter and asking the person next to you in class? Simple: you don’t learn. Having the answers given to you at any sign of confusion does absolutely nothing to solve the problem. It’s easy to pass it off as something you ‘don’t need to know’, but the skills are just the same. Either you can figure things out or you can’t. Which kind of person do you want to be?
I am a freelance web monkey in Tampa, FL. I am heavily tattoo'd, I sleep too little, I drink too much coffee, smoke entirely too many cigarettes, but otherwise do my thing. My littleman > you.
