Scoble, Productivity, and the Dangers of Living in the Cloud
Several days ago, Robert Scoble came to the brave conclusion that—wait for it—the internet might actually make us less productive. I have chosen to reply to only the most coherent parts of his courageous post:
Four weeks ago I had 5,250 emails in my inbox. Today? 10.
But who’s counting? Needless to say, if you can’t recall how many emails you had in your inbox 4 weeks ago, then clearly you are not as obsessive as our dear friend Scolbeizer.
Want to get something done? Turn off Twitter. Turn off Facebook. Turn off blog comments. Turn off FriendFeed. Turn off Flickr. Turn off YouTube. Turn off Dave Winer’s blog and Huffington Post. Turn off TechMeme. Turn off the distractions.
Which is all just another way of saying, “You’ll never get your homework done if you don’t turn off the TV.” Yeah sure, thanks Dad. Now please stop talking to me like I’m a three-year old. While Scoble no doubt feels as though he has stumbled upon some sort of enduring insight, I can assure you that he hasn’t.
Another datapoint? When I talked with Linda Stone a couple months ago…I told her I had one goal in my life, other than to be a good father and a better husband: to have an interesting conversation every day. She said that was “attention management” at its highest form…”
Another datapoint? Attention management? Fuck right off. When will we stop treating our lives like some sort of science project or valued-added enterprise? At what point, exactly, did the technocrats lose their humanity? And why do they have to yell so loudly every time they think they’ve reclaimed a shred of it?
And as for the desire to have an interesting conversation every day, I would appreciate it if Scoble would return this lofty goal to the highschool yearbook he found it in.
What are your goals? Is it to have more followers on Twitter? Or is it to get something done today?
I am unwilling to indulge Scoble by answering any of these questions. He has no business talking to anybody about the uses or abuses of Twitter. On matters as serious as this, I refuse to negotiate with terrorists.
I just sent 200 emails that I answered over the Atlantic. What a flow state I was in.
From the sounds of Scoble’s ‘flow state’, it seems as though he had one hell of a plane ride. I can well imagine that there were tears in his eyes when the plane finally touched down and unceremoniously returned him to the unproductive clutches of terra firma.
While I do not wish to deprive Scolbe of the occassional flow state, perhaps he might consider further maximizing his productivity by hiring a handful of third-world children to take care of his more menial tasks. This is just one way that the tech world could give back to those in need. It would be beautiful.
Note: For those of you who happen to admire Scoble’s work, my apologies. To Scoble’s credit, I appreciate the craftsmanship that he brings to all of his on-the-road interviews, and I suspect that I am not the only person to have noticed that he has a very steady hand.
In all seriousness, I chastise Scoble since, a) I know he can take it, b) I know that his attention is so tightly managed that there is none left to devote to what a punk like me is saying about him online, and c) he is one of the higher-ranking members of a group of technocrats that, quite simply, just don’t seem to fucking get it.
