Is there a working person in America who doesn't complain about the quantity of emails she gets? Is there an elevator, escalator, subway stairway, crowded sidewalk anywhere that's not encumbered by people with epileptic thumbs typing out some message to someone that obviously couldn't wait.
If everyone is so busy sending messages, when do we get time to read them? If everyone has so much to say, when do we have time to listen?
I would imagine if you were a farmer 100 years ago, or a tailor like my father's father, or a grave-stone engraver like my mother's father, you spent a lot of your day inside your head. You were focused on the task at hand. Other people were hard to come by. And you had a certain amount of stones you had to cut or seams you had to sew.
That is, I think we have lost the time to think about things.
That's certainly true in most agencies. Where nervous "tissue sessions" follow haphazard briefings some times by as few as a couple hours.
There's no time for thinking.
No time for doing, either.
We're too busy blabbing.
And responding to others' blabs.
Back in 1967, Timothy Leary advised us to "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out." It's not advice would repeat for today's world.
I think we'd be better off saying: "Turn off, Slow down, Think."
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