The Internet seems like an infinite source of information and knowledge, yet we often allow it and other digital technology to be infinitely distracting. Cell phones, e-mail, and IM are tried and true digital distractions. Today, that’s advanced to satellite television, social networks, and text messaging. These technologies create a sense of urgency due to their instantaneous or mobile natures. We’ve allowed the dings, buzzes, and chimes to interrupt everything from meals, meetings, and movies. We’ve yielded to urgency or perhaps better put, been fooled into believing that next e-mail, phone call, headline update, or text message is indeed urgent.<\/p>\n
In 1967, Charles Hummel wrote an essay about the “tyranny of the urgent,” where his point was not that we have insufficient time to accomplish tasks but rather that we prioritize the urgent over the important:<\/p>\n
“We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.”<\/p>\n
Since his essay was written in a less digital world, Hummel references the impact of the telephone on the urgent, “A man’s home is no longer his castle; it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because the telephone breaches the walls with imperious demands.” The latter part of the sentence could now read, “it is no longer a place away from urgent tasks because cable, satellite, Internet, cell phones, etc. breach the walls with imperious demands.”<\/p>\n
The urgent is synonymous with the now. It relates to the “What are you doing?” question of Twitter, ostensibly the most egregious of urgency offenders. In the always-on always-connected urgent world, so much time can be spent “keeping up” with new stories, new e-mails, new text messages, and new updates of various types that “keeping up” becomes a task itself. In fact, it teeters on becoming the task of the day; the news of our lives never stops.<\/p>\n
But how much is too much?….<\/p>\n