Stress Gadgets

This post started out as a small side discussion in today's meeting with some customer reps. One of them forgot their blackberry in the car, and came in to the meeting. She was pretty restless for some time, and finally blurted out "am sorry, i left the phone in the car...its not like am expecting any calls or e-mails or anything...its just making me nervous..."

Got me thinking about all that these gadgets meant to ease our life and are just adding to our stress levels :)

The "smart phone" came into my work life about 6 years back. It was wonderful, I could check mails while on the road, reply, take action whatever! But I also started reading e-mails on Saturday, that i would only have seen on Monday morning...and there was more work hanging in the back of the mind over the weekend....and most times ended up with me finishing it off during the weekend just to get it off my head....it also reminded me in the middle of an important meeting.."you have an email...better read it now... it will be too late by the time you are done with this meeting" - took years to take control...now i have profiles set up...where the little beast cannot even blink its nasty LED if i don't want it to :))

Working from home also started out good...no commute..no dressing up for work...but then, work and "homework" started to blend in till nothing was clear no more - ended up with 12-14 hour work days and lots of pending house work, and frayed nerves....that took a great deal of discipline to set up a proper work day and limits...but then travel picked up, and there was/is hardly a chance to work from home - thats an entirely different post on its own...

The DVR was another great invention..now I could record ALL my shows, I did not have to miss any...and watch it any time. It took just 3 weeks for ALL my shows to fill up the massive storage...and now about 40 shows i would have missed without a thought...were lying piled up in the DVR...it was starting to delete the older episodes...and I was getting tense about NOT being able to watch stuff I would have cared less about...! threw the dvr away...even disconnected cable the day i realized there was nobody watching it at home :)

Even silly things add up...my "old" airline sends me a notice about how many miles are about to expire..and that i could subscribe to all these wonderful magazines to use up the miles...and now there are unread magazines piling up on my desk...and i got tv guide magazine that tells me what NOT to miss each day...and am getting worried about missing these shows they told me NOT to miss...solved that particular problem quite easily...just toss the tv guide magazine straight into trash when it arrives....or just hand it over to my little girl..she will shred it in no time...

:)

that reminds me...i got a little girl...and a wonderful wife...and life is really good :))