Given that I just spent the better part of my recent downtime reveling in how life could go on without an Internet connection and making promises to myself to not let email, social media and online culture prevent me from having a life offline, it seems only fitting that I have come back to the chatter of mixed messages along these very same lines. Apparently, I’m not the only one grappling with the so-called crazy busy phenomenon.
The New York Times Opinionater column explored the “busy trap” so many of us are ensnared in and reveals (drum roll, please)…that it is mostly self-imposed.
That’s right. This worldwide web of messages, memes and multi-tasking we have weaved is a product of our own “busy making”.
I know exactly when I first fell into the “busy trap”. Mid-1990s, easy dial-up Internet made it possible for me to do twice as much work from home than I could ever do in an office. And, while I waited a minute (or more!) for a page to download, I’d check my email. Email was still such a new communication tool I needed to check it constantly to see if an editor had received a piece I’d written or a client had feedback on chapters I’d just edited.
Even better, there might be a new assignment waiting. Having lost one potential job because I was at the gym and another freelancer answered her email before I did, I vowed to stay tethered to my PC. I logged on before 6 am to be there for my East Coast clients and stayed online until after 5 pm for the West Coasters.
For years I thought I was the only one with such an obsession, but now I learn I was just ahead of my time. Today, 68% of Americans check their email before 8 am and 69% of them still check it again before they head to bed each night. The majority of these early risers and night owls are tapping into the “busy trap” via their mobile devices, often from bed. Why?
One theory is that our so-called frantic lives are really just a “hedge against emptiness.” If we’re so busy all the time, checking email, updating statuses and sharing information, filling the idle time between assignments, appointments and other things to do with constant connectivity, then our existence “cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless”.
Much has been written about the mess multi-tasking makes of our lives, too. And so, I returned from my two weeks away not only refreshed and ready to not fall back into the “busy trap”, but also determined to stop the needless online surfing that other, more disciplined types might refer to as “distractions.”
But then I read a second piece in the same edition of the New York Times that contained the busy trap story: When Internet Distractions Make Us More Efficient and makes the case for Tweeting and Tumblr’ing when you’re unable to break through on a project, rather than unplugging and taking a walk.
Somehow the mixed messages make me feel I’m right back where I was before that vacation, only with a better tan.
What else are people being distracted with online lately?
- CNN anchorman Anderson Cooper came out. Most viewers had long suspected Cooper might be gay. Few cared. The texts from Hillary meme resurfaced and pretty much summed up the whole affair.
- Nearly half of the 100 million people with a Twitter account never post a tweet.
- When is the last time you went to a concert and didn’t bring home souvenir, photo or video on your cell phone?
Photo credit: Simon Owens, creator of the meme 1990s Problems, via Mashable.
Kathy Drasky regularly writes about online culture. Her marketing and communications work with the ANZA Technology Network, Advance Global Australians and with various Australians and Australian enterprises has led to at least a dozen trips Down Under.
An accomplished digital photographer, her photos have appeared in 7×7 Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle and Google Schmap.
