When Apps Leave You Behind
News broke recently of my favorite email app (Newton) closing its doors. Try as they might, even as they offered one of the most expensive apps on the market, the company just couldn’t sustain itself.
I’ve seen on Facebook and other places the response to this news,
- “I can’t believe they’re closing!”
- “That was my favorite app!”
And my favorite,
- “What will I do now that my inbox will get cluttered all over again?”
Come on people, it’s an app. It’s not like we’re talking about your best friend passing away or your dog getting hit by a car. It’s an app.
My sarcasm aside, the response to Newton (and any app for that matter) is telling. We get attached to our productivity tools. We learn to form a sort of relationship with them. The keyboard shortcuts become, pardon the pun, second hand.
And, with all things this side of heaven, they pass. Just because Apple is a trillion dollar company, doesn’t mean that it will be around in 25 years. Just because Starbucks makes delicious coffee to millions of people each day, doesn’t mean they will be around in 25 years.
Read Jim Collins’ “How the Mighty Fall” if you don’t believe me.
I don’t think people are out of line as they respond to Newton’s news with some measure of sadness. It’s happened before and it will happen again. It might be an opportunity for us, all of us as workers, to go back to the basics and rely less on our apps.
What are these basic “productivity skills”?
- Get everything out of your head. Write it down. Capture it somewhere.
- Keep your projects tidy and organized. Whether you use a notebook or software, monitoring and managing your projects is critical.
- Always remember to focus on what matters most. Whether it’s your family, friends, key projects, whatever- remember that we build a life not on apps but on intentional living.
