Strong Opinions @marksbirch

Look around the next time you are in a long queue or sitting in an office for an appointment.  People are looking down at their phones.  It is not just one or two people, it is everyone.  It is on the subway, at the DMV, waiting at the checkout line at the supermarket, driving in our cars.  There was even a Windows Mobile advertisement featuring people staring into their phones, mocking this new human behavior (and to boot, it was actually funny).

We are consumed by our tiny, glowing screens beaming all sorts of information into our brains.  Whether news, social media, games, or videos, it is all readily available within the reach of one’s pocket.  We do not think for a second about this, it is just the natural reaction to being in a situation where having something to “kill the time” with is a nice convenience.  Technology is filling in the time for us and waiting is slowly going the way of the dodo.

I am not sure this is such a good thing though.  There were always ways to occupy one’s time in the pre-smartphone days.  The old, crumpled magazines in the doctor’s office, paper newspapers folded in unimaginably complex configurations*, tawdry romance novels with the bombastic covers of chiseled men without shirts, and those puzzle books.  Some were knitting, others plugged into their walkmans, and yet others were chatting away.

There is something different however in the age of the smartphone.  With our phones, we have access to infinitely more information at our fingertips which allows us to jump around, get absorbed, and become lost in a sense.  Our portal into life is not the world around us, but the screen before us.  And we are getting drawn ever more deeply into the virtual world as the expense of the real world.

I am not sure that this is a positive development.  We used to have to wait for things.  Waiting forced us to be patient, gave us moments of time for free thinking, and created a collective social bonding.  While we all complain about waiting, it never really damaged us.  If anything, I believe we came to appreciate our time more by making us slow down a bit.

Of course, technology is the great productivity enhancer that was supposed to give us more free time.  While technology certainly improved our productivity, the odd thing is that we are not necessarily working less.  In fact, by all measures, we are working more hours and spending less time engaged in our relationships with others.  All technology has really accomplished is to slowly chip away at our free time.

Free time is vitally important.  Our need to rest, our ability to think creatively, and our opportunity to build relationships all depend upon having time available that is wholly owned by us.  Yet we are now continuously available to others and their requests.  Our email inboxes are overflowing, our friends and families are calling, our social media updates are multiplying without rest.  But those are not even the worst offenders squashing our free time underfoot.  We are our own enemies every time we pull out that phone from our pockets or purses.

Here is an experiment you can try for yourself; put the phone away for a day and make sure it is inaccessible.  Put yourself in situations where you have to wait such as your commute or shopping.  Do not log into any personal email or social network sites and do not use the Internet for anything other than work related activities.  Then record at what time you breakdown in tears or epileptic fits from being “off-line” for an extend period of time.

If you can actually follow through on this experiment, use the open periods of time to think and observe.  Day dream a little bit and see what you conjure in your mind.  Stare at others and create stories about those people.  Hum some tunes.  Pick a controversial topic and have a debate in your head.  The objective is to utilize the open moments of time in creative and spontaneous ways, not with a explicit purpose in mind, but rather to shake up stale thinking, foster patience, and create opportunities for inspiration and innovation.

Action and thought are very yin and yang.  They are opposite yet interconnected forces that oppose yet necessitate each other.  There is a certain contingent that tells you that you need to do more faster.  They say this because many people are poor at executing.  However, I would rather do the rights things better, and speed is not always the best starter agent.  In fact, speed very often leads to action without thought in a way that is counterproductive.  You need the balance between thought and action, analysis and execution.

Do not think you need to fill every moment of time.  The fact that waiting exists is not a problem to be solved, but rather the necessary breaks in life to keep us balanced.  Think of waiting as the opportunity to catch your breathe and spend some time in thought, reflection, or mental rest.

* The ability to fold and read a newspaper in the format of the NY Times or Wall Street Journal on the subway was at one point in time a mark of pride and valor and admiration.