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Making Time | January 6, 2003
By Gail Balfour
We’re surrounded by technology. Most of it-PDAs, cell phones, e-mail and Microsoft Word-is designed to save time. But users often end up feeling overwhelmed as information comes barrelling in from multiple sources. That means technology often gets a bad rap, but much of this stuff can boost productivity. It just has to be used correctly.
“We spend far more time on e-mail than is warranted by the payback . . . the fault lies not in the technology, but in ourselves,” said Peter de Jager, a Brampton, Ont.-based consultant.
Or, as Ken Hanley, a senior manager with KPMG Consulting in Calgary, put it:
“Technology is rather like nuclear fission and Tabasco sauce-it can be used for good or for evil.”
In fact, we have become so accustomed to the pervasive presence of technology in our day-to-day lives-and so cynical about how much time we spend with it-it is easy to forget how much time it saves us. Here are some ways:
1. Communication Remember a time when people called you (on a land line, of course) and you actually picked up the phone? Some are nostalgic for those days. But, think about it carefully-what if that person was a talker? What if you missed the call? You could spend weeks trying to track someone down, and then hours trying to get them off the phone. Now, with e-mail, text pagers and cellphones, there’s a new sense of brevity, and almost-instant gratification.
“Technology has saved me whacks of time managing projects because I now live in a world where people cannot deny that they have received communications quickly,” said Loren Hicks, a Toronto-based independent consultant.
“And they can’t make up stories about whether or not they’ve responded,” he laughed. “Technology makes it harder for people to hide, and that makes my job a lot easier actually, because I was usually the guy who had to go in the corner and drag them out.”
After a pause, Hicks said: “They didn’t like that.”
2. Research There’s a clich’ floating around that you can find virtually anything on the Internet. Hicks, who is a musician as well as a consultant, buys into this.
“I’m a banjo player,” he said. “That’s not a common thing to be in Canada. If there’s a tune or something I want to learn, I can now get on the Internet and nine times out of 10 I can find the words and the chord structure for a tune in less than five minutes-even really obscure pieces of music. For example, [John Lennon’s] The Ballad of John and Yoko was running through my head the other day, and 10 minutes later I was making it sound terrible on a banjo.”
Hanley has a similar view of the Internet’s usefulness within an office setting.
“I can search for quotes, find out where something came from or who said what. But the idea of somebody just going out and surfing the Web-I don’t get it. I use it as a tool to find something I require, I don’t play on it.”
3. Access Modern communication and collaboration technology are making traditional offices less relevant for many, and commute-slaves are increasingly joining the ranks of teleworkers-those for whom commuting is a 30-second trip to the home office.
“Being able to collaborate on documents makes things move faster. We seem to be requiring less and less office space all the time because we feel it’s not necessary to be in the office,” said Greg Michetti, president of Michetti Information Solutions in Edmonton. “For me that’s been a big deal.We had about 8,000 square feet and now we’re down to 3,000. People would rather be home than come into the office.
“Nobody needs a desk or an office anymore.
Especially in this business, nobody cares where you are.They just want you to be there when they have problems,” said Michetti, who averages about 75,000 to 100,000 miles a year in business travel.
de Jager also spends much of his time in the air, en route to speaking engagements around the world. But he’s cautious about the intrusion of too much technology. He’s proud, for example, that he doesn’t own a cellphone. “I don’t have one because I don’t like the intrusion in my life. I don’t want to be at everybody’s beck and call.”
4. Services Everyone knows someone who brags about having done his or her entire Christmas shopping in one afternoon, without leaving the house. And when is the last time any of us remember actually banking through a live human teller? From ATMs to e-commerce, this application of technology is undeniably a time saver. Michetti uses the Web to buy everything from books and CDs to software and services for his company. And banking online, he pointed out, is not only faster but also cheaper.
“Banks seem to be the only business model which pays you to not use them.”
For Hicks, global e-commerce serves his needs as a collector of musical instruments.
“Banjos have a lot of parts, and sometimes they fall off and break. And these are not easy to get in Toronto,” he said.
Hanley said he finds it hard to imagine a time when he could not acquire plane tickets online, and shudders at the thought of ordering them over the phone or in person.
5. Software Often taken for granted and even seen as a utility, software is not old news-new advances are being made at a breakneck pace in many industries.
“I can turn my computer into a band that I can rehearse with,” Hicks said. “This is a great advantage. It saves me time, but also a lot of money because my computer drinks a lot less beer than a bunch of band members lying in my living room. Not only that, it keeps time better and it doesn’t fade out after midnight.”
Michetti utilizes his homegrown software applications-everything from document management to network administration-to keep track of his business when he is away. In fact, high-speed access is the determining factor in his choice of hotels when he travels, he said.
But faster, better applications can also be too much of a good thing, Hanley said.
“Software has advanced so much faster than the ‘wetware’ in our brains. We still have fundamentally the same hardware and software in our brains that we had 200 years ago.
“We are working at an incredible pace, and I’m not sure if we are set up to deal with it. I find it personally exhausting.”
We’re surrounded by technology. Most of it-PDAs, cell phones, e-mail and Microsoft Word-is designed to save time. But users often end up feeling overwhelmed as information comes barrelling in from multiple sources. That means technology often gets a bad rap, but much of this stuff can boost productivity. It just has to be used correctly.
“We spend far more time on e-mail than is warranted by the payback . . . the fault lies not in the technology, but in ourselves,” said Peter de Jager, a Brampton, Ont.-based consultant.
Or, as Ken Hanley, a senior manager with KPMG Consulting in Calgary, put it:
“Technology is rather like nuclear fission and Tabasco sauce-it can be used for good or for evil.”
In fact, we have become so accustomed to the pervasive presence of technology in our day-to-day lives-and so cynical about how much time we spend with it-it is easy to forget how much time it saves us. Here are some ways:
1. Communication Remember a time when people called you (on a land line, of course) and you actually picked up the phone? Some are nostalgic for those days. But, think about it carefully-what if that person was a talker? What if you missed the call? You could spend weeks trying to track someone down, and then hours trying to get them off the phone. Now, with e-mail, text pagers and cellphones, there’s a new sense of brevity, and almost-instant gratification.
“Technology has saved me whacks of time managing projects because I now live in a world where people cannot deny that they have received communications quickly,” said Loren Hicks, a Toronto-based independent consultant.
“And they can’t make up stories about whether or not they’ve responded,” he laughed. “Technology makes it harder for people to hide, and that makes my job a lot easier actually, because I was usually the guy who had to go in the corner and drag them out.”
After a pause, Hicks said: “They didn’t like that.”
2. Research There’s a clich’ floating around that you can find virtually anything on the Internet. Hicks, who is a musician as well as a consultant, buys into this.
“I’m a banjo player,” he said. “That’s not a common thing to be in Canada. If there’s a tune or something I want to learn, I can now get on the Internet and nine times out of 10 I can find the words and the chord structure for a tune in less than five minutes-even really obscure pieces of music. For example, [John Lennon’s] The Ballad of John and Yoko was running through my head the other day, and 10 minutes later I was making it sound terrible on a banjo.”
Hanley has a similar view of the Internet’s usefulness within an office setting.
“I can search for quotes, find out where something came from or who said what. But the idea of somebody just going out and surfing the Web-I don’t get it. I use it as a tool to find something I require, I don’t play on it.”
3. Access Modern communication and collaboration technology are making traditional offices less relevant for many, and commute-slaves are increasingly joining the ranks of teleworkers-those for whom commuting is a 30-second trip to the home office.
“Being able to collaborate on documents makes things move faster. We seem to be requiring less and less office space all the time because we feel it’s not necessary to be in the office,” said Greg Michetti, president of Michetti Information Solutions in Edmonton. “For me that’s been a big deal.We had about 8,000 square feet and now we’re down to 3,000. People would rather be home than come into the office.
“Nobody needs a desk or an office anymore.
Especially in this business, nobody cares where you are.They just want you to be there when they have problems,” said Michetti, who averages about 75,000 to 100,000 miles a year in business travel.
de Jager also spends much of his time in the air, en route to speaking engagements around the world. But he’s cautious about the intrusion of too much technology. He’s proud, for example, that he doesn’t own a cellphone. “I don’t have one because I don’t like the intrusion in my life. I don’t want to be at everybody’s beck and call.”
4. Services Everyone knows someone who brags about having done his or her entire Christmas shopping in one afternoon, without leaving the house. And when is the last time any of us remember actually banking through a live human teller? From ATMs to e-commerce, this application of technology is undeniably a time saver. Michetti uses the Web to buy everything from books and CDs to software and services for his company. And banking online, he pointed out, is not only faster but also cheaper.
“Banks seem to be the only business model which pays you to not use them.”
For Hicks, global e-commerce serves his needs as a collector of musical instruments.
“Banjos have a lot of parts, and sometimes they fall off and break. And these are not easy to get in Toronto,” he said.
Hanley said he finds it hard to imagine a time when he could not acquire plane tickets online, and shudders at the thought of ordering them over the phone or in person.
5. Software Often taken for granted and even seen as a utility, software is not old news-new advances are being made at a breakneck pace in many industries.
“I can turn my computer into a band that I can rehearse with,” Hicks said. “This is a great advantage. It saves me time, but also a lot of money because my computer drinks a lot less beer than a bunch of band members lying in my living room. Not only that, it keeps time better and it doesn’t fade out after midnight.”
Michetti utilizes his homegrown software applications-everything from document management to network administration-to keep track of his business when he is away. In fact, high-speed access is the determining factor in his choice of hotels when he travels, he said.
But faster, better applications can also be too much of a good thing, Hanley said.
“Software has advanced so much faster than the ‘wetware’ in our brains. We still have fundamentally the same hardware and software in our brains that we had 200 years ago.
“We are working at an incredible pace, and I’m not sure if we are set up to deal with it. I find it personally exhausting.”
