Strategic About Your Time

http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/hbr/mcgrath/2008/05/be-strategic-about-your-time.html

An old proverb says, "time is money". No wonder my Training the Street instructor wrote "wasted money" instead of "wasted time", which he intended to write to indicate the period of time we are waiting for projects as summer analysts to be staffed on, checking mail, responding to dozens and hundreds of messages, updating all the possible social networks we belong to.I am global and believe in connectivity...However, unless you are specialized in working in the social networks space like Mark Z or Evan Williams, what is the value you add while twittering or facebooking...0...

Rita McGrath, professor at Columbia Business School, who studies innovation, corporate venturing, and entrepreneurship, writes, "In the frantic buzz of most managerial lives, I see people running from meeting to meeting, consulting their BlackBerrys as though in prayer, desperately working into the night to cope with a deluge of emails and otherwise being busy, busy, busy. The dilemma of all this activity, however, is that it is for the most part what academics long ago termed "non value-added time."

Convenience and efficiency should go hand in hand.While it is convenient to have a blackberry device or an iphone, I also believe it is highly distracting to hear the buzz or the vibration every time I get a message.

People should adapt to change as it comes pervasively. Technology is the prerequisite for development and it certainly needs its space. I am certainly its most ardent advocate. However, it is a personal choice to keep a sanity check on oneself....in the busy, busy, busy life we have.