The Gritty Virtual Assistant Blog

Wow, it’s always surprising to see what resonates with folks, especially when it’s something that is just a given in your own life that you don’t really think twice about.

Case in point, I always write a little personal note relating to that week’s feature article topic in every issue of the VACOC’s ezine, The Portable Business.™  As this week’s topic was about the problem with multi-tasking, this is what I wrote:

“Without a doubt, one of the secrets to my success is that I simply do not multi-task. I learned long ago back in my corporate days that it is simply counter-productive. You can’t really and truly be present in your work and for your clients if your mind is divided and distracted. It’s not fair to them. This is also part of the present and conscious lifestyle my guy and I intentionally choose to live. I absolutely love technology. I used to be the type who had all the latest gadgets about as soon as they hit the shelf. But I found that I couldn’t live fully and presently in the moment if I was always hunched over the keypad of a Blackberry. Life is so much more delicious when your eyes and ears and fingers and mind aren’t constantly preoccupied. So we say “no” to too much technology. I have a simple cell phone that does one thing–it makes and receives phone calls. Imagine that, LOL! I don’t text and I don’t tweet. When I am away from the office, I am fully engaged in LIFE and ready to savor experiences with all of my senses.”

I received such a flurry of emails on this from folks who identified so much with the idea of NOT having all the latest gadgets, purposely so, yet who are made to feel guilty or “less-than” about that.

I hear you guys! It’s like peer pressure. I see this as the old “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality, but for the Internet (Internet marketers are responsible in large part for that, in my opinion, because they prey on people’s insecurities and hopes) People are made to feel like they aren’t successful if they don’t have all this stuff, and that’s just crazy. Stuff isn’t what makes people happy. Nor is it what makes them better or more successful people.

It’s okay to be conscious and purposeful about how much stuff and technology you allow in your life, and how you leverage the technology tools you do allow in your business without letting them taking over your life.

I remember a movie I saw once called The Bridge (you can watch the full movie on Hulu). It was a documentary about all the suicides that occur at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. Apparently more people take their lives there than anywhere else in the world. What the filmmakers did was set up a camera, it may have been over the course of a year or something like that, and documented these very tragic events that were all too common. They learned more about some of the people who committed suicide and interviewed family members, bystanders and rescuers.

It was quite controversial because some folks thought it was exploitive. Personally, I thought they did a very moving, respectful treatment of it. At any rate, one of people interviewed was a bystander who ended up saving a woman from jumping to her death (a woman who had attempted it before and later attempted it again, that time succeeding in taking her own life). Or maybe it was a guy he ended up saving; I can’t remember, it’s been so long.

Anyway, he was someone who was just sightseeing and taking photos like all the thousands of other people who visit the bridge. But something he said stuck in my memory. He had been looking through his lens and watching this person who was about to commit suicide, and he said that you really are in a different world when you are behind the camera. It’s like it’s a movie and not real and he really had to shake himself out of it in time to help that person and save their life.

I know that’s kind of a dramatic story and not something that would happen to us everyday, but I remember so totally understanding what he meant because at the time I’d been really infatuated with a new camera and was being Miss Shutterbug–until I realized I was missing so much other stuff because I was always behind the lens. It’s like you aren’t really taking part or experiencing what is going on. You are just an observer and at the same time, not seeing or feeling everything fully. I still love taking pictures, but I’m more conscious about not taking it to extremes and putting it away so that I don’t miss out on all the truly good experiences–those are the things that enrich your soul. Not gadgets.