Category Archives: smartphone

Christmas, mobile, smartphone

What Happens when Tiny Seedlings Grow into Large Trees

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Soon after we purchased our current home 23 years ago, we planted some small pine trees in the backyard at the edge of our property.  Over the years these trees grew and began to encroach upon each other.  About 10 years ago, we decided that it was time to begin thinning the trees and decided to harvest one as a Christmas tree.  I treked to the end of our lot with our kids and we took turns sawing on the trunk with a hand saw until we were able to fell the tree.  While the tree had looked rather small from the windows in our home, we suddenly realized that it was much larger and heavier than expected.  We had difficulty dragging it up the hill to our house, so we found a tarp to roll it onto and used that to slide it up from our backyard into our driveway.  Once in the driveway, we were within range of a power outlet and used the electric saw to further trim the tree down to size.  Unfortunately, when we tried to bring it in through the back garage door, it still didn’t fit the doorway.  Eventually, we decided to try bringing it in the larger front door, which also gave us the advantage of being a straight shot into the family room so we wouldn’t have to “bend” the tree around corners.  After much pushing and shoving, we were able to ram the tree through the front door and up the stairs into the family room.  We then hoisted the tree into an upright position, only to find that it was still too tall and scraped the ceiling at the peak of our 14 foot cathedral ceilings.  At that point we lowered the tree and took the electric saw to it again (inside the house, no less) until we had shortened it enough that we could hoist it upright without making marks on the ceiling.   As I remember there were additional difficulties keeping it upright and in place once we got it positioned, but all in all, my kids loved the tree preparation process, enjoyed decorating the tree, and lighting it up every night during the Christmas season.

Ten years later only two of our four children still live at home, and my wife had purchased a synthetic tree to use this year.  However, one Saturday when my wife and I were out running errands, one of our married daughters came home for the weekend with her husband and some friends, and decided that the ritual must continue.  When my wife and I arrived home, the yard and the driveway were strewn with extraneous tree limbs.  In spite of the fact that they had measured the tree first (a new mandatory process which we adopted after the first year), they had still overshot the ceiling and had to do additional emergency surgery to get the tree to fit.  Nevertheless, they managed to complete the job and once again we have a floor to ceiling length Christmas tree gracing our family room.

As I reflect upon what I learned this semester in my digital communications class, I was reminded of how my original small flip phone has grown into a giant iPhone 6s Plus that I can barely get in and out of my pocket.  A device that seemed rather small and inconsequential at the time has morphed into something that consumes my attention a good part of each day.  The latest news, stock reports, and weekly download of the Economist magazine distract me and captivate my attention way too much on an hourly basis.  I plan less and just react more.  I don’t need to know how to get anywhere, just fire up the map app, plug in an address, and I’ll get there without any planning, …..well……. most of the time anyway.  As the year draws to a close, I resolve that even though we didn’t downsize the tree this year, there’s still an opportunity to downsize my phone, or at least the obsessive, incessant checking of the latest notifications.  It’s important to set it aside more and allow myself time to plan and organize my life.  It’s important to stay focused on the many other truly important tasks that need to be completed by the year’s end.  And, finally, it’s most important of all to spend more time each night sitting on the couch, admiring the tree, and contemplating the real meaning of the Christmas season.

advertisements, smartphone

Ads, Ads, Everywhere, even on Mobile

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While my mobile phone used to be an almost ad-free zone.  It has suddenly turned into a virtual ad machine.  Several of my news applications now slip advertisements in between their stories.  When I scroll through the news articles looking for something to read, this makes it easy to accidently touch and activate the advertisement, kicking me out of the application and into my mobile web browser.  Needless to say this does not endear the advertiser or the news app provider to me.  Some news apps put most of their advertisements at the bottom of the screen of news articles.  This is a better arrangement for me as a consumer; however, I don’t always scroll to the bottom of the page; consequently, I doubt that these ads get as many views as the embedded ones.

While my Safari “Block Cookies” setting is “Allow from Websites I Visit”, the advertisements that I receive seem significantly less targeted than the ones I receive on my PC.  I never thought it would happen, but I miss having advertisements in which I have at least some semblance of interest.  Nevertheless, I don’t miss getting the same advertisement over and over for those products that I have already purchased.

My favorite mobile advertisements are still the ones that use geolocation to notify me of a discount at a nearby store.  Unfortunately, these still seem to be pretty rare, and again, they can’t tell if you’ve already bought the item or already eaten somewhere else; consequently, they’re not as useful as I’d like.

Right now there seem to be a lot of growing pains with mobile advertisements, but I’m hopeful that between the information that I choose to share and the use of big data on the seller’s end, I will see tailored advertisements and discounts.  Then viewing those advertisements will be worth my time and they can quit hiding out in my newsfeed waiting for me to accidently click on them.

 

Digital Diary, smartphone

The Day I kept a Digital Diary

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For a class assignment this week we were asked to keep track of our media use, and record observations about our digital consumption for an entire day.  My results were rather disturbing, at least to me.  I was working from home on this particular day, so I was already guaranteed to spend eight hours or more on my laptop consuming and regurgitating email with occasional “breaks” for meetings via conference calls.  Indeed, I was on my laptop most of my day, and even when I was on conference calls, I was simultaneously typing meeting minutes if I was running the meeting or trying to sneak in snatches of other work if I was listening to a call that someone else was leading.  In spite of the many studies showing that multitasking is not possible, I still have a difficult time fighting the illusion that I’m being more productive by attempting two or more things at once.  So while I’m creating a document on my computer and concurrently taking a conference call, my computer or phone may beep with an instant message, text, or another phone call that suddenly demands my attention as well.  By the end of a day like this, I often feel like I have a bad case of ADHD.  I have difficulty concentrating on a single task for long and I feel physically and emotionally exhausted even though I haven’t moved from my chair for much of the day.

Another thing that I noticed was how often I became distracted by my smartphone.  When I would complete a task, my tendency was to reward myself by checking the news, my investments, or my email on my smartphone.  Unfortunately, it didn’t stop there.  Usually, as I was rewarding myself with one of these, I would find myself drawn into something else.  For example, a quick glance at my stock market app would show that the market was declining.  Then, I’d want to know why it was declining, so I’d open my Wall Street Journal app to find an article explaining the current direction of the market.  Then I’d be distracted by a second article or by a new notification pinging my phone and I’d be off on a completely different tangent.  At one point, a two second glance at my stock market app turned into a 15 minute time wasting odyssey.

Since the day that I recorded my digital consumption habits, I have thought about what steps I could take to overcome some of these habits that were decreasing my productivity.  I have found that I can avoid a lot of wasted time just by keeping my smartphone out of sight and further than an arm’s length away.  When I don’t have it in my line of sight or if I have to get up and walk across the room to access it, I am much less likely to be drawn into a pattern of mindlessly skipping from app to app searching for fresh content as a reward.  I haven’t found a way to eliminate multi-tasking completely, because assigning someone else to take meeting minutes for me still feels like doling out cruel and unusual punishment.  Nevertheless, by restricting myself to a single screen at a time, I have found that I can reduce my stress level and most likely improve my productivity at the same time.