Hear me out on this one. This is a big change for some people.
How many forms/lines of communication do you use? Mobile phone, home phone, work phone, fax, work email, personal email, IM, text-messaging… perhaps even smoke signals. Ten years ago, you had a home phone and work phone, perhaps a fax and an email, if you were uber-geek. Twenty years ago, you had only a work phone and home phone.
Think about that. Most folks have gone from two forms of communication to almost eight. Do you really need to be that available to people? I recently bought the latest in mobile phone gadgetry – which has capacity to text-message (SMS), email, IM and even surf the web. But I turned all of these features off. Truth be told, I’m already in front of a computer for more than half my waking hours (holy cow, did I just write that?) Yes, I want access to communicate, but that doesn’t mean that I want to be accessible to everyone all of the time.
So try this: think about the number of lines of communication by which you are accessible, and either merge a few or get rid of them. Watch your “human time” soar:
- cancel your fax and get an eFax account. It merges two of your lines: fax into email.
- unless your job requires it, cancel the data plan on your mobile phone.
- cancel your home phone. Mobile technology has advanced enough to allow you to be accessible through one, mobile line: one place to reach you, one voicemail to check, costs-savings, time savings and more time to focus on other things.
Canceling your home phone is pending, of course, a few factors. Perhaps you a) use a DSL or dial-up for your computer. So hey, you’re paying for it, why not use it? I agree with that. Perhaps you should also check to see that b) your mobile phone service works in your area. and then there’s always the c) fear of mobile services ever going down. But in the very rare circumstance of that happening, most other services are down anyway.
“Remember that as a teenager you are at the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.” ~ Fran Lebowitz
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