I just read a post on GovLoop about having to find a balancing act between your work and home lives and it got me thinking more about this with my own life.
Now, I’m not a financial planner/money guy, but when it comes to your investment portfolio, you’re often told to diversify in order to spread your money over many investments giving you a chance at steadily increasing your return rather than betting it all on just a few big winners and going broke. There’s more to it than that, but that’s the general idea.
However, where diversifying doesn’t make sense is our digital world. When you really think about it, It’s actually more harmful to our lives and well-being. These days every service is free. You can sign up for YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, yada, yada, yada. You subscribe to RSS feeds from sites you’ve never heard of simply because you can and it’s quick. You read news not only online, but through RSS, and even through the regular newspaper (despite the fact that it’s already day-old news). You probably tweet more than you realize it from multiple devices. Raise your hand if you’ve ever just finished reading your tweetstream on your desktop, got up to go to lunch and immediately opened up a Twitter app on your phone? Anyone? Bueler? Then when you get home, if you’re like me, you have multiple PCs/Macs staring at you just waiting to be used.
We’re constantly hearing bleeps, beeps, dings, and chirps from every techno-gadgetry device tethered to our belts. WE HAVE SO MANY DIGITAL INPUTS! We’ve diversified our online lives so easily, and cheaply, yet it’s not doing us any good. We end up spending more time understanding and trying to filter all of this connected and social information that we don’t stop to realize that we should stop trying to filter and start trying to consolidate. Instead of packratting and signing up for more services, we should start replacing old services with new ones. Sometimes we do this and we move onto a new service, yet we still get bleeps, beeps, dings, and chirps from the old ones. They just linger on continually making a mess of our digital lives. But it’s soooo hard when you WANT to be connected because you enjoy it.
I guess what I’m trying to understand is would be better off, and end up making more time for our “home” lives, if we didn’t simply cut off our access to technology when we got home but instead consolidated services and tools so we have less bleeps, beeps, dings, and chirps constantly pinging our senses?
Does any of this make sense or am I just rambling on without a point? Sound off.
Note: This post is of my own personal opinion and is not endorsed or supported by any local, state, or federal government agency.
“We end up spending more time understanding and trying to filter all of this connected and social information that we don’t stop to realize that we should stop trying to filter and start trying to consolidate.”
It all depends on what we get from this process and what we lose to it. It also depends on what we give up. If a person takes away time from their partner and their children and other interactions then there is a cost. I have to ask if the cost is worth it?
I have recently found that the Twitterverse is extraordinarily useful to stay in touch with what I am interested in, but when I put in a lot of Twitters (11/18/09) they were lost to the cloud. I think that a decent blog entry versus multiple Twitters would better capture what I want rather than send it out… and wonder if anyone… anyone… is reading, listening, etc.
I find the Gov Loop community valuable and useful; I like adding my comments. I do realize though that we’re all strangers all over the country. I realize, and invest my time, because we have general mission of serving our fellow citizens and making the world as good as we can. I hope that is our shared mission.
Your thoughts aren’t random or lost. Balance in our lives is what is really important. We don’t have to give up on one thing; we have to keep perspective on what is of genuine value. Our brief interaction is valuable, and, our offline time is of more value… if it is..
It’s the choice we each make. Peace be with you. Gerry