(>>) fast forward

The other day I was watching Merlin Mann’s talks about Time and Attention as well as Inbox Zero at Google. Basically it’s about the general topic of Getting Things Done and where your attention should go or what you want to spend your time on. He’s specifically talking about email and the fact that we make ourselves available around the clock by checking mail, IM etc. all the time. Switching off disturbing notifications, such as the new mail pop-up in Outlook , is one part of focusing on your current task without getting interrupted all the time. I’ve adopted many of these ideas and I’ve even gone so far that I stopped using MSN etc. because it’s just too easy for people to get to you.

So for me, it has been all about asynchronous communication lately, which allows me to check my emails (as an example) when I want, not when the notification pops up. What’s interesting though is, that although a lot of people seem to be annoyed be the constant availability, services like Twitter, which are all about fast communication and getting peoples attention, see staggering growth. There are also a variety of desktop clients for Twitter that immediately inform you when somebody you follow posts a new item. And Twitter is just the tip of the iceberg. Are people so addicted to other people’s news or are they just bored?

Just now I was coming home from the Shanghai Geek Dinner (that’s actually why I write this). We heard 3 presentations about products and all of the presenters mentioned that we could follow them on their Twitter feed. Now, not that I would say that any of these products were bad, why would I want to follow any of these products on Twitter? Yeah, they were interesting, but do I want to allow them to steal my attention and time with Twitter updates, maybe not.  Another thing is, that I wonder whether the Twitter audience really addresses the group of people these services target. But that’s maybe another story.

I guess in the end it’s all about choice and who do you want to allow to “steal” your time.

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