Techno relief?
Will technology make your life easier? Will the office ever be paperless? Will it rain next year in Andalucia?
Having been an early adopter of the Amstrad PCW, The HP Compaq PDA and the Blackberry I wonder how I ever manage to find the time to write books and speak to small business audiences. My preferred writing style is still to get the written word out of my keyboard, print and then edit with a real pen and re-type the next day once I have slept on the ideas further.
My desk reflects the addiction to the paper process and the smell of real ink being used on paper and not to the paperfree gleaming silver and black handheld PDA model that I would have expected. How can this be? What should it be?
The real answer is that you should use technology where and when it serves you, without allowing it to take over. Having received and opened my first Blackberry with great joy, it was not long before I came to hate the little alert that another email had come in, and another and another. It took me a while to break away from always looking at the screen, always seeing each item as urgent and feeling the need to give it immediate attention.
With time I have begun to realise it is not the technology that matters so much as what your personal approach is to the way you want to work. I think you should design your work to match as closely as possible with who you are and how you think and behave, rather than try to fit yourself into a place that is truly not you.
This personal development was greatly helped when I read a great book recently which helped me adapt my keyboard addiction, at least with regard to email. Try this one for yourself in The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and published by Crown. Although the book is rich with content about mini-retirements (yes please!) and auto pilot income (yes please again!) where it really scored with me was on the section about automating so many of your processes and allowing yourself the benefits of just picking up your email once a day and even - dare you do this - once a week!
So far I have managed a week of email only in the morning after a coffee and before lunch, and am working my way up to logging on for mail just three times a week. I will let you know how it goes, but I am pleased with the results of the experiment so far.
Nick Sturgeon is a small business owner who has benefitted from the experiences of success, failure and financial recovery. The author of “Small Business BIG Profit” published by FT Prentice Hall, Nick writes and speaks from the heart about Risk, Reward and the Power of Personal Enterprise. nick@smallbusinessbigprofit.co.uk
