Is it me or are people spending way too much time speaking, texting and using their supposedly smart smartphones? It seems that no matter where you go, what you do, someone is always on the phone.
What does these people to have to say? Am I missing something? Standing in line at Starbucks, text your friend; waiting for the bus, text somebody; looking at the watermelon at Shop-Rite, make a call.
Everywhere I go; people are toiling away on their phones. Well, friends, it is time to stop the madness. The time has come to put down the phone, stop talking, texting or viewing and start interacting with humans again. The first thing that will happen, perhaps, is that people will stop bumping into each other. The second is maybe the lines at Starbucks will move faster and the third is that people actually may communicate better.
The other thing I want to know is what is everyone saying?
Maybe it is me but I can tell you that I don’t have that much to say in a text or in a tweet. More importantly, when at Starbucks ordering my coffee, I am so overwhelmed with choices that I need to pay complete attention or I am definitely not going to get my super-deluxe-decaf –no sugar added- not too much ice – ice coffee with skim milk.
Perhaps paying attention is a lost art, maybe people really can multi-task. But, I believe that most of the texting and tweeting is just a waste of time and people choose to “communicate” via phone, rather than conversing with the live people around them.
Recently I was in a training class, and the leader suggested that each of us our check e-mail only twice, maybe three times a day: once in the morning, once before we leave for the night and perhaps once in midday. The five or so people in the room set out a collective “Yeah, right.” Nobody was willing to look so infrequently, because they believed they would miss something.
My question is what are we missing by checking email so often?
The answer is a lot. We are missing the human interaction. The reason the machines are taking over is because we are letting them. We need to fix this and fix it quick.