Blogging Translator

Crackberries – is that the device or the user?

I’ve had a Blackberry for about 6 months now and it has changed my life. No joke. It has changed my life, but in ways that have been surprising. The amazing ease of viewing emails which appear instantaneously on its screen like text messages is notoriously mesmerizing and hard to ignore, but has allowed me real time-savings. Also, the line between my work and my life outside work has become blurred, since I am able to see any new emails I receive at just about any moment I choose, whether that moment is when I’m watching TV and there’s an ad break, when it’s late and I can’t be bothered to get up and switch on my PC, or best of all, whilst I’m in a queue or waiting for a train.

This may all sound like a horrific scenario for some people who delight at shutting down their email service when they log off their computers every evening, content that this will mean nobody will be able to ‘get them’.  But for those of us who show Generation Y tendencies towards non-stop communication and to having annoying short attention spans this is simply neat way of using ‘dead time’ effectively. Having got used to texting from a relatively young age, the impatient young upstarts that make up Generation Y are used to being contactable at most times and via multiple mediums. They are adept at organizing their time effectively in order to get the most out of their days; not content to just stand and wait like a lemon for another delayed train, or waste time on endless emails when they’re back in the office and have so many other things they need to do. They use ‘dead time’ as an opportunity to check their emails for anything that they could respond to now, rather than later.

Many people will also see Blackberries as inducing obsessive, addicted behaviour in their owners. But their owners/users can always, always choose when to use them; Blackberries can be set so that you don’t receive an irritating beep on receipt of a new email (and you therefore have to actually look at the thing to know about it), plus you can use filters to select the types of messages you DON’T want to receive when you’re out of the office.  Moreover, remember that you can turn them off.  Repeat after me “you – can – turn – them – off – you – have – the – power”.

More than that though, it’s about the user prioritizing their lives, and knowing when and when isn’t a good time to be engaging in a little cheeky email checking. A conversation with a loved one in which they are telling you something vitally important or highly personal is probably a good example of non-good time.

Penelope Trunk discussed self-discipline and Blackberries the other day. Actually, in doing so she called into question the idea of of work-life balance. This is a very interesting, and probably 100% accurate, view of 21st century careers. Speaking as a freelancer, ‘work-life balance’ is nothing but a myth. I don’t mean that to sound negative, far from it. Although the intersection between work and ‘life’ has become blurred, I see it more as being that my career is synced in with my life. My non-work life is busy and full too, but I don’t think of it as entirely separate to my career. There is a point in every day and weekend when I ignore my Blackberry altogether or turn it off; we all need a little down time. However, my career is inextricably part of my life, and vice versa. I don’t see how it could work any other way, and I don’t want it to. Rather than running my life, my Blackberry helps me control and manage the two intertwining strands of life and work as if they were one and allows me to maximize my time in order to spend it doing the things I love, rather than spending vital time at my desk checking emails.