You don’t need better technology.
You need to get your head on straight instead.
A pencil is high technology if you use it for deeper thinking.
This comes to mind as I re-read this Dan Markovitz post:
The Lean Approach to Email Management: It’s Not About Technology
. . . Toyota is legendary for its production efficiency. The company is also legendary for being slow to introduce new technology. Management has always felt that it’s pointless to spend money on shiny new hardware, software, and equipment when the underlying process is broken: first get the process right, and then figure out whether it makes sense to invest in new technology.
. . . The real solution to the explosion of email isn’t a new Outlook add-in that makes sorting, filing, or finding email easier, any more than the solution to your weight problem is buying a bigger pair of pants.
I know many, many people who struggle with their e-mail overload. Or with meetings. Or with keeping track of the confustion of all their competing projects. Or whatever. Many of them are looking for a technology solution, whether that means a new e-mail filtering system, an enlarged memory partition on the e-mail server, or a better mobile device that lets them keep up with e-mails and IMs and tweets etc. while they’re in meetings. We could proliferate examples.
But what these folks really need is to get a grip on themselves. To ask themselves hard, basic questions about what their real work is and what they need to do to accomplish it. They need to examine — and then discard — their excuses. They need to really think about what value they bring.
By “they” I mean “we,” since I like the new shiny piece of technology as much as anybody. If I have a better grasp on this problem than some people, it’s because I’ve realized that in the overwhelming majority of cases, we don’t need better technology. We need to use our own brains better.
Okay, sure, some problems will only be answered by better technology. Samples:
- Cheap space travel.
- Ordinary cars that can run wholly off of solar power.
- Dirt-cheap desalination of seawater.
- Groundbreaking research in genomics, pharmaceuticals, and particle physics.
- 100% reduction in some industrial effluents.
But seriously, if you put your e-mail load into this category, you’re fooling yourself.
Stop fooling yourself. Think better.
I’ll try to help.
~
- The False God Opens a New Front – Kevin Meyer’s post includes this great line: “Automating the management of a problem is not managing the problem.”)
- “Workiness” is to work as “truthiness” is to truth. – Shiny new technology is often no more than a pit of “workiness.” You must avoid this like a plague.
~
(Photo by Arwen Abendstern.)
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Hi Tim,
We worked together for a number of years at Hoovers, and I always enjoy reading your articles. I quite like the tech series, and think it is beneficial in my new line of work; selling time and project expense tracking software. Keep up the good work, and hope all is well in your world. – Ann Marie
Hi, Ann Marie – and thanks for the kind comment!
Thinking always gets shortchanged. Linda Stone, who works at the Microsoft Research Institute, says that we all suffer from “continuous partial attention.” And in that condition, we tend to shortchange the things that don’t seem urgent or critical – like thinking. But of course, that’s where problems get solved and ideas are hatched.
With a combined decrease in cost and increase in compute power, we have become very lazy about thinking. We have come to rely on brute computing power in place of careful Design of Experiments, or the ability to ask a good question. We have been discussing this out loud over here for a while now.. I think it deserves some blog time as well.
Dan – Amen re “continuous partial attention”. It addicts us to urgency, and then we don’t know what to do with ourselves unless urgency is running the show. Recipe for mediocrity, if not disaster.
Nan – Your comment about asking a good question reminds me of Einstein’s dictum that we should spend MOST of our problem-solving time figuring out what the right questions are. It’s too easy to ask the first question that pops to mind, get a quick answer for it, and then start implementing . . . all in the wrong direction.
It always get back to the basics doesn’t it? I usually find that when I’m spending an inordinate amount of time responding to the urgent and not so urgent gmail inbox, twitter, facebook, linkedin, etc., etc., that I’m just avoiding accomplishing something really important. Sometimes that might just be a nap or a trip to the gym, both to clear my head. Thanks for the post.
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