THE ONSLAUGHT OF COMMUNICATION - EMBRACE IT & PLAN FOR IT
The Onslaught of Communication – Embrace It & Plan for It
Isn’t it incredible the amount of electronic communication we are all inundated with daily? Between texting, telephone calls, emails, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In…you get the idea…I could sit at my computer all day. And the distractions! I get a message from Facebook. I log on to see the message, a little irritated they didn’t just email me because now I have all these extra steps, but c’est la vie, read the message and reply. Then the distractions start. I start reading the other postings and commenting. All of a sudden 15 minutes has passed all because I went to answer one comment. Geessh! You do that 3 – 4 times a day and you’ve wasted at least an hour.
After doing this several times, yes, I’m being honest, I fell into the trap over and over all the while knowing exactly what I was doing, I asked myself, “How are you going to stop this?” Then I realized it’s not that I’m doing something wasteful. I am responding to business connections the same time I’m reaching out to personal connections. Both are important. What I didn’t do was allocate the correct amount of time to the task.
So now I schedule “Electronic” time. Anyone who corresponds with me knows it is in the early morning. It’s quiet. Phones aren’t ringing. Employees haven’t arrived yet. This has assisted me in keeping up with my emails, staying in touch via social media and getting my day set. It has been very productive and not wasteful at all (except when the email from my favorite store popped up – we all have our vices.)
This way of communication isn’t going anywhere. You might as well embrace and plan for it. If you are feeling the way I was, totally inundated, schedule time for what has become a permanent part of our lives.