Working to Avoid the Drowning Effects of Real-time

One thing I'm experiencing as I come out of my Drone Recovery project is the drowning effects of our real-time worlds. I am talking about the desire to stay connected in this Internet age, and subscribe to as many possible available channels (ie. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, RSS, etc.), and more importantly the tuning in, and responding to these channels in real time.

You hear a lot of talk about information overload, but I don't feel the amount of information is the problem. For me, the problem comes in with the emotional investment demanded by real-time, and the ultimate toll it can take on your productivity, or just general happiness and well-being. You can see this play out in everything from expectations that you should respond to emails, all the way to social network memes getting your attention when it comes to the election, or for me personally, the concerns around security and privacy using technology.

The problem isn't the amount of information, it is the emotional toll of real-time. I can keep up with the volume of information, it's once I start paying the toll fee associated with each item, that it begins to add up. I feel the toll fee is higher in the real-time lane than when you do on your own schedule. The people who demand I respond to emails, and be first to the story have skin in the game, and will be collecting a portion of the toll fee, so it is in their best interest to push you to be real time.

Sure, there are some items that will be perishable in all of this. I am not applying this line of thinking across the board, but I am prioritizing things with this in mind. In an increasingly digital world, the demands on our time are only going to increase. To help me to keep from drowning, I'm going to get more critical about what I accept into my world in a real time way. My goal is to limit the emotional toll I pay and maximize my ability to focus on the big picture when it comes to how technology, and specifically APIs are impacting our world.