Thoughts and ideas on people and technology.
September 23, 2024
Does your life feel overly complicated? Do most things feel like 10 steps when they used to be 3? Does simply maintaining your existence feel like a hamster wheel with hopscotch squares on the inside? Do you find yourself yearning for “simpler times”? While there are many things in a complex society outside our control, personal technology choices are still within our purview. Maybe it’s time to consider deleting some of the tech from our lives in an effort to simplify.
I worked at a phone shop for some time, and one of the things that surprised me was how many non-smart phones we sold. We had a lot of customers whose only phone needs were calling and the occasional text. Anything their phone couldn’t do could be taken care of on a computer at home or at work, and a smartphone would have been a whole ‘nother stack of skills to learn and maintain. So why not go without one? For less than $100 you can get a plain flip phone from your local phone shop, or hop on your marketplace of choice and get a used one for half that. They’ll take the same SIM card your smart phone does, so simply power down, swap the card over, and try it out for a while!
Social media is another one that you can probably trim down on. How many platforms are you actively using? I’m most likely going to remove Snapchat from my phone as the notifications from Snapchat themselves are annoying, I hardly ever use it, and I’m connected with those I use it with elsewhere. I helped someone recently who uses Facebook to connect with family but has been struggling with the technical aspects of securely maintaining their account. Switching to group texts or another platform those family members are already using may be easier than fighting with Facebook account compromises and their account recovery processes.
You may even consider abandoning social media completely. “I’m not on social media” has become less the exclusive domain of luddites and is certainly not only spoken by older generations. Any Gen Zers who took part in the “nose cover” trend early this year will understand. Try going on a social media fast for a few weeks (or even a few days) and see if you feel the need to return.
Using myself for another example, I bought a smartwatch about 3 years ago and wear it fairly regularly. But the work to make sure its charged, keep up with the changes, and any manual maintenance items has me thinking I won’t be replacing it when it dies. The nice-to-haves it brings aren’t worth the trouble.
A final hot take: In your workplace, how many staff’s only interaction with technology is time tracking or timesheets? Paper timesheets may be an option. I know, I know, Hell has frozen over and the tech guy is talking about switching something from digital to paper. But my job is supposed to be to guide toward efficiency. If bludgeoning your blue collar staff into the cyberpunk dystopian future of a spreadsheet (or even worse, a geofence-powered time tracking app on their phones) turns out to be more work than entering a handful of numbers off of paper timesheets, maybe paper is the more efficient (and humane) option.
If you like the idea of deleting technology at work or at home and want some help with it, you can find us at scalebright.ca.
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