I remember taking long punishing 30-hour flight from Delhi-London-Madrid-Casablanca (with little time to changeover); with my big red eyes when I finally checked-in the hotel and logged into the Internet, I was amazed to see how much the world missed me during the last hours. There were 647 messages on WhatsApp, 15 text messages, 23 missed calls and 81 unread emails waiting for me (not counting the spams that were trying to sell me Viagra or a war-widow from Africa asking my help to settle her few millions)…… Ofcourse all these messages were not meant directly for me, I was “forcefully” included in the numerous WhatsApp groups comprising of school friends, college friends, professional friends, relatives, cousins, family, wife’s family. I really wanted to get rid of all of them for some peace but I thought it would very impolite (though I didn’t get the courage to exit the wife’s family group).
I was listening a wonderful talk by Judy Wajcman, Professor of Sociology at London School of Economics (LSE) and the author of new a book Pressed for Time. Judy discussed, we all are living in culture of busyness and hyper-productivity (atleast we assume so). The questions are… Are we really pressed for time? Are we busier than the last generations? We are constantly pulled between professional/personal/digital lives. She quoted a research about relationship between parents & kids – parents are spending more time with their kids now than in the previous generations.
It is quite evident, technology cannot be ignored. We have to smartly adopt it so that we can co-seduce technology and other interesting things in our life. Judy mentioned an interesting ‘out-of-office-reply’ from an over-tired corporate executive who sneaked out for the much-needed vacation – “The email has been automatically deleted since the Mr X is on holidays. If it is important, please send the email again once he is back on 15 September. Thank You”. Interesting way to reduce the burden of flooding messages when you are away.
We may not be pressed for time, but this is quite obvious that we have become very impatient. If the website takes one-extra-second to load, we suddenly loose interest or even in some cases, we forget what we were searching. It may be argued, the knowledge and quality of information has taken the back seat, whereas, the “speed” of information availability is critical. The fastest information that is displayed on our mobile phone or tablet is the most trustworthy.
On the other hand, “slow movements” such as slow food, slow sciences, slow travel and even slow life are picking up popularity. In my last blog, I talked about the smart cities – it would be interesting to see the correlation between “smart city” and a “slow city”. The being slow does not mean doing things at snail pace but at the right speed. Think of an artist or musician – the masterpiece of art will come at its own pace; certainly we cannot speedup the creativity. The same parallel can be drawn towards innovation. We need to be innovative but at a right speed and right time. Remember, the over speeding can be dangerous.
I am not saying we should shutdown completely from the online space but we need to stop complaining about being busy. Time is the only thing, which we cannot control; it would move exactly the same pace as always. From introducing fitness programs, yoga & meditation camps, to encouraging quality time being spent with family by not allowing the employee to carry that laptop home during the weekend and so much more, the much sought after speed will be attained when the brain is rested, less threatened, more accepted and at peace with inmates back home. As the old adage goes Charity begins at home…it sure does!!
May be it is time to take a break and have a KitKat.
(Acknowledgement: Thanks to Professor Judy Wajcman – her wonderful talk inspired me for this blog)
Originally published at http://blogs.economictimes.indiatimes.com/snakecharmer/are-we-pressed-for-time/
