I forget how totally dependent my life is on technology until something stops working and it sends my world into total chaos. When I found out today that my email server hadn’t been sending or receiving a bunch of emails I about lost my mind! Not only that but the emails I sent to people weren’t even showing in my drafts or sent items folder properly for me to resend them so I had to spend hours upon hours trying to contact people to figure out which emails hadn’t gotten out and which ones had and then I spent hours more trying to redo all the info that had been lost….argghhhhh….
When technology works its amazing – truly life changing! But more and more our lives have become completely and totally dependent on our technology working properly to the point it’s become nearly impossible to get anything done without it. When its not functioning it brings everything to a crashing halt. Which is terrifying when you think about it…
We put contacts in our phones but we never memorize their phone numbers anymore so if the phone is lost you don’t know how to contact people. Siri tells us how to get everywhere we need to go, but if gps isn’t working we wouldn’t have a clue how to find locations on a traditional map. Once we put something in the calendar on the phone we don’t think about it again until a reminder pops up. If our calendars go down how many of us would remember everything we had scheduled out on it? I know I certainly wouldn’t.
I don’t think its viable for us to limit our need or reliance on technology at this point – that ship has sailed and we are way out in the ocean with no recollection of life back on the shore – we are all totally and completely reliant on it now. But today served as a good reminder for me that with that level of technology dependence we face, we have to keep all kinds of backups and redundant devices in place so that when one device fails another one is already loaded up and ready to roll.
I just wish I would have thought of that YESTERDAY!
~Amy Rees Anderson (you can purchase a copy of my new book here: “What AWESOME Looks Like: How To Excel In Business & Life“)