In my last post (only last Friday, I brag to the naysayers!), I wrote about the positive aspects of the social media as a tool for marketing. But like most everything else we partake of, this should come with a WARNING label: Do Not Operate While Under the Influence of Procrastination.
In the early days of Major League Baseball (in the late 1800s-early 1900s), Rube Waddell was a remarkably dominant strikeout pitcher in an era when batters mostly slapped at the ball to get singles. He had an excellent fastball, a sharp-breaking curve, a screwball, and superb control. Waddell led the Major Leagues in strikeouts for six consecutive years. However, he was also fairly unpredictable. He had a habit of leaving the dugout in the middle of a game to follow passing fire trucks en route to fires. He was easily distracted by fans of opposing teams who held up puppies and shiny objects, which would always put Waddell in a trance. He was, in fact, very much like me (except that I’ve never played professional baseball) for I am, perhaps, the most easily distracted individual I have ever known.
Admittedly, I do not fall victim to distraction through fire engines, shiny objects or puppies. (Okay. Maybe puppies. But I’ve never chased a fire engine.) Instead, the sole source of my prolonged procrastination is firmly rooted in the world wide web. At the end of the day, my unattended project list falls under its own “www” – What Went Wrong?
It’s hard to pinpoint which cyber playground engrosses me the most. I am, without a doubt, hopelessly addicted to email. Not that I get all that much real email. Most of my various inboxes are littered with spam. But I’ve been known to be on vacation, without a computer, trying to access my phone’s email function. The various positions I have twisted myself into to bring up that one, necessary bar would make yoga enthusiasts blush. The most common result of all these gymnastic exercises: No New Messages.
If it was only my obsession with email standing in the way of productivity, my workload would be much smaller. But I have bigger fish to fry than yahoo and gmail. First of all, I’m a numbers freak. Tracking visitors to my blogs and websites is a day-long investment of time and energy, overshadowed only by the relentless investigation of how many downloads there have been of my books. Not just once or twice a day, mind you. That might be considered normal. I take it to a whole, new level. I can check statistics every hour on the hour. Not surprising, nothing much changes in those mere, sixty minutes, but that doesn’t stop me from taking another peak.
Ask just about anyone and you’ll be told that Wikipedia is not a trustworthy source of information. Of course, it isn’t. Anybody with a keyboard can jump in there at any time and recreate history. So, what’s your point? As a researcher, I don’t take any Wikipedia fact as gospel unless I verify in through several, different sources. But for a procrastinator? It’s a little, slice of heaven. And it isn’t so much the story as it is the links. Look up one person in Wikipedia and you’ll find a slew of links to just about everybody else. After an hour, you’ll be so far away from your initial search that you can easily forget where (and why) you started.
For pure procrastination at its finest, though, nothing beats YouTube. I work for a radio station that specializes in pop standards and artists from the 40s, 50s and 60s. A huge part of our listeners are Doris Day fans. So it’s not surprising that many of our promos are about this singing/acting legend. One day, I innocently wandered on to YouTube to check out a promotion for one of our upcoming, special programs. This, of course, led to other video suggestions. Oh, look! Doris Day on the John Denver special. After watching various snippets of this show, I found videos of John Denver and The Muppets. The Muppets! Wait. Where was I? Oh, yes. Doris Day. Hey, there’s a clip of her on the old, game show, I’ve Got A Secret! Who else was on there? Huh. Sammy Davis, Jr. Gypsy Rose Lee. Bob Hope. Jack Benny. And on and on and on. It’s amazing how much time can elapse by watching all these harmless, little video clips.
Twitter is rapidly becoming my diversion of choice. With an imposed limitation of 140 characters, you can read a dozen tweets in a very short time. The problem is that tweets are always being updated. And, much like YouTube, there are always suggestions for other Tweeters you may enjoy. I’ve really just started posting my own tweets, but I’m less interested in my own words of wisdom than the fascinating things other people say. And don’t forget: Most of the tweets have links attached for even more Twitter fun! Countless hours expended. Limited product to show for it.
I’m a brand new Skype user. I haven’t figured out exactly how it will enhance my life, but I’ve certainly spent enough time trying. I do know that I had a 27 minute and 42 second conversation with another Skyper and, if asked, I couldn’t tell you what all we talked about. Probably about Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia.
For those of us who work at home, we don’t have other people around with whom we can break up the daily monotony. Oh, sure. I can talk my fool head off with my dogs, but the Labrador only understands “ball” and the Basset Hound only understands “dinner.” Conversing with the cats is out of the question. There is nothing I can say that is even remotely interesting to them. Then again, when I was working in an office, my co-workers probably felt the same way.
The moral of this story? I guess it all boils down to self-control. Forcing yourself to remain focused is not an easy task. Distractions are all around us and attack with subtle ferocity. Call it getting back on the bus, getting the train back on the tracks, or jumping back up on the horse … it doesn’t matter. When you feel yourself drifting away, indulge yourself for a moment or two (or five, or ten or twenty). Just remember, at the end of your visit through Cyber Land, there is work to do. And, as Larry, The Cable Guy, says, “Git-R-Done.”
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