Stealing your time

I'm sure all of us would have come across such thefts of our time.

They are the ones who walk into you office when you're engrossed in work. They send text messages to your handphone on the most trivial of matters. They call you just to interrupt and disrupt what you're doing on matters which could wait or could have been emailed.

Emails are good - compare to text messages to handphones - in that they can be read at your own leisure. Even people with Blackberry phones can opt to read emails at a time they choose to. They "push mail" you, but you don't have to read it instantaneously, that is the minute they are "pushes" to you.

In this world and age, it feels like we're having less and less control of our own time. Time to do things we want or need to do; time to be on our own; time to "just do nothing".

On the other hand, these time thefts are also victims to other time thefts to the extent that they're oblivious to this notion of "stealing time". They've simply "done onto us what others do to them".

What a pity. That's why I don't turn on or log on to any of the so called IM or "instant messaging" programs. Imagine you're deep into a proposal or quotation you have to complete in an hour's time and a busload of friend instant message you, or text message you on your handphone. You'll never get to complete what you've allocated time to do in that hour or so. Or worse still, a task requiring an hour to complete suddenly becomes something which can only be completed in 3 hours.

I feel that I'm just as guilty of stealing other people's time. Sometimes when I'm stuck in traffic and bored, I would invariably be tempted to SMS others on matters which come to mind. They come to mind, but they often won't need to be communicated instantly. But for some selfish reason, I chose to SMS so that it becomes one less matter to store in my brain for action.

A lot of people feel that once their email or SMS is out, their job is done. Mission accomplished. Many a times, I've had clients forward me emails from their clients or colleagues requiring attention just so that they feel they've done their jobs.

Often, these emails which they forward have not even been read or perused by them. And often too is that these emails relate to nothing I can do without their input on the contents of that email.

Blind forwarding, I call this; something I don't condone. All the staff under my control know this.

So, the next time you need to call someone, or text someone using SMS, think about how disruptive that will be to his/her routine; and most importantly, think about the effect all such disruptions and distractions on your own routine.