I seem to have picked up the habit of not only resisting technological advances, but complaining whenever I am forced to catch up with them. For example, I recently had to upgrade my phone, because not even an old priest and a young priest could fix my old one. Despite the obvious necessity and the fact that having a phone that actually worked was a bonus, I fought the change. I put it off. I complained on social media (yes, I realize the irony of that). And when I was complaining, I adopted the hashtag – #GetOffMyLawn. Because despite the fact that I am in my thirties, I totally feel like the old guy yelling at the neighborhood kids whenever I get all uppity about updating my tech.
Flash forward two weeks, and I absolutely adore my new phone. It’s faster, has a longer battery life and the swipe feature still blows my mind. How the heck does that thing work? I have also realized, that since I now have a phone that works I am using it a lot more. Not to call or text people, that has remained the same. The amount of time that I now spend on email, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or searching the net has skyrocketed. To a certain degree that’s a good thing. I write historical fiction and historical biographies, that entails a lot of time on the net. I also have to keep myself present and engaged on social media. But I was doing that before, when my phone didn’t work. So clearly, this extra time that I am spending isn’t productive . . . and if it’s not productive . . . then it must be wasteful. Yes?
I mean, how many times does someone really need to check their email in one day? To check their Facebook account? How many times in a day do I get something that needs immediate attention? Ummm, never. I can’t think of a single time. Now I get things that need attention before the end of the day, but I can take care of that by checking my email 2-3 times a day. A couple of hours isn’t going to make a bit of difference. Let’s face it, most of the time I read an email and then ignore it for a couple of hours anyway. Facebook or Twitter? Same thing. I can’t think of a single time that I got something that couldn’t have waited a couple of hours. Therefore, what the hell am I doing checking these things sometimes 4-5 times per hour. Seriously, that’s ridiculous!
How much time to I waste everyday by obsessively checking in on all of my accounts? Let’s do the math. I have two email accounts, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Let’s say that I spend one minute on each, each time I check, which is realistic if there’s nothing new to see. So five accounts times one minute, times four times per hour. That’s twenty minutes per hour minimum. If I sleep eight hours a day (ha!), that’s 16 hours awake, which is a little over five and a half hours per day checking to see if there is anything new on social media. That is almost an entire work day! What is wrong with me?
And that doesn’t count the time that I spend playing Mahjong, Yahtzee and Scrabble. No wonder, I’m not as productive as I’d like to be! Therefore, I have new goal. Hence forth, I will be embracing the grumpy-old-man-get-off-my-lawn side of my personality. No one needs to be on their phone that much, so my phone is going to get real cozy with the phone pocket in my purse. At home, it is no longer going to live right by my side. I survived growing up having to get up to answer the phone, so I can as an adult too. I’m tired of feeling chained to the damn thing. Therefore, get off my lawn, and don’t expect to get an immediate response from me. I’m disconnecting.
