Technology and I: From typewriters to messaging apps
Do you remember typewriters?
I certainly do. When I entered high school, I sat down with my counselor, Mr. Z, and mapped out my classes for the next four years. With only one elective, he insisted that I take typing; on a typewriter no less.
He asserted it would make homework go faster and would encourage me to think before I typed, as every word counted and couldn’t be changed without messy white-out.
I hated the class.
It took me up to an hour to complete a flawless paragraph. That was what was considered productive in 1990.
Enter word processors. What took an hour before, could be done in 20 minutes.
Mistakes could be made and erased quickly. Between that and the fax machine, technology had hit an all-new high and one that many of us couldn’t imagine would ever be topped.
Boy, were we wrong.
Email gained popularity during the last couple of years while I was in college. It was an exciting thing to see two or three emails a day.
My productivity rose dramatically. No longer was there a need to walk a mile each way to ask my professors a question.
A 90-minute trip became a 5-minute email.
Those were the days, because in the working world, email became something different. It went from being a productivity enhancer to, at times, a suck of time and resources.
With email becoming the primary method of business communication, the number of emails waiting to be read has increased dramatically.
According to McKinsey Global Institute, an average employee spends 13 hours a week reading and responding to email. This equates to 650 hours a year spent on completely reactive, low-value work. Doing simple math, that means that 28% of a work week is consumed with email — much of which is not relative.
As high as that number is, I really believe it low-balls the amount of time we spend on email.
I could, of course, add more studies and stats, but I don’t need a study to state the obvious.
Email not only creates a lot of noise (I get about 100 emails a day in my personal account) but sometimes can take awhile to get done.
I can take 15 minutes, for instance, to write a simple email, especially when talking to a co-worker, manager or CEO.
The email could have four lines in it, but everything must be perfect.
I write, read, edit, rewrite, make sure I’m absolutely clear, do another check…and then hit send.
For an important email, I’ll wait for the response, and should I not receive one — I’ll send out that all annoying “gentle reminder” email. Sometimes, an email contains a simple question but as an email has become a formal document, everything must be perfect.
As a worker and team member, you can be judged based on your emails.
Technology continues to evolve and we are slowly pulling out of both the noise and formality of email.
Thanks to the widespread adoption of texting, we have learned to communicate directly and quickly, which has led to the proliferation of communication and business-focused messaging applications.
These messaging and collaboration platforms have not only increased our productivity, but also spurred creativity in us.
The modern workplace is made up of collaborative teams.
It is a fact that collaboration and creativity rely on effective, direct, and fast communication among coworkers.
Messaging dusts off the formality of emails and alleviates the waiting game for answers and frankly, eliminates confusion.
It allows banter to happen and a stream of consciousness for brainstorming. You can have direct communication without picking up the phone or sending an email. I can read body-language via video, clarify a misunderstanding via questions, create a team or to-do list, and save a history of the conversation.
Effectively speaking, I can get more done in a shorter amount of time, with more creativity and a deeper understanding of what the task demands.
Although I can’t clock the time spent — this much I know is true:
- I receive about 10 emails a day, which is down from 100 emails at my last job. Five are relevant and those emails take time to read and craft.
- I can tell via video conference how our teams in Brazil and Russia are doing that day based on body language.
- I can brainstorm and shoot out ideas without having to worry about whether my sentence structure is perfect.
- And I am much more productive than I have been in the past.
Oh, and did I mention the 10 emails a day?
Typewriter be gone.
-Authored by Christina Andrea Sarracino, who secretly misses writing on a typewriter. Also handles PR for Flock.
