An Argument for Contemplation
The Internet moves at super-nano-sonic speed (it’s measured in increments so small, that move so quickly we can’t see them). Ok, so I just made that up. But you can’t argue that Internet years are more like dog-years than people-years. We have new technology at every turn – and not just new, but awesome new – like, if-you-don’t-know-what’s-going-on-you’re-gonna-be-left-behind new.
One of the by-products of this sort of environment is that it makes certain things that were already frantic (like marketing) even worse. When you’re marketing a new product or a new idea, the inclination is to fly off in a frantic ball of excitement and do, do, do, do – do everything you can think of, and a few things you can’t even imagine yet but you know they’ll come to you. New ideas have a lot of “wow” factor and they generate something I referred to in another post – contagious enthusiasm.
This is not a bad thing, as long as it’s not allowed to multiply uncontrollably. But because it’s so contagious, you’re always at risk of being carried over the line when you’re operating under the influence of contagious enthusiasm. This is why I’m an advocate for contemplation.
Contemplation is not something you see a lot of where I work (meaning the Internet in general). I’m constantly surrounded by people who want things in a hurry, people demanding instant solutions to complicated problems, people who have this permanent sense of urgency oozing from every pore every time you talk to them, and people who can’t talk about the same subject for more than 6 and a half minutes without getting bored and moving onto the next great superficial but exciting topic of discussion. And I’m not talking about folks I just hang out with – these are people in business, people who control lots of money, people who have assumed employment responsibility for family providers. These are folks who can’t afford to flit around under the influence of contagious enthusiasm.
When I sit in a meeting or a boardroom, sometimes people who don’t know me get the impression that I’m a little slow. I like to tell the story about when I was working contract as a web developer in Pennsylvania. Being from the south, I have a drawl and I don’t talk quite as fast as some people up north do. When I came into the plant to start work, they put me in a corner making small fixes and updates to in-house intranet gadgets. For about three weeks, this is the only kind of work they “let” me do. Then one day our entire department took a lunch at a local sports bar called Damon’s where everyone at our table commandeered a remote for the local electronic trivia game. I won. I went home for a week, came back, won again. In fact, pretty much every time I went to lunch with these guys, I beat them all. It didn’t help that I named my game persona “Ewok.” That just sort of made the whole situation even more ridiculous. Imagine all these 25 yr-old high-falutin’ college educated VB programmer geeks getting their butts kicked by a nearly 40-something, self-taught, hillbilly named Ewok, who asks so many questions before starting a project that people think she’s missing a marble…
Eventually, they realized that the southern drawl and deliberate speech pattern didn’t mean I was mentally incapacitated – it meant I was contemplative. I think. I plan. I ask questions… realistic and difficult questions. If you ask me to solve your problem, expect me to ask you questions yourself before I give you an answer. Nine times out of ten, I don’t have to change my answer because I asked enough questions to be able to do things right the first time. There was a reason I was invited to come from Texas to Pennsylvania to contract for these people. Part of that reason was my willingness to slow down and think things through. Well, unless we’re playing trivia.
So what silly little pearl of wisdom is this leading to? Well, I was sitting through a webinar, half listening because I thought I didn’t have anything to learn, when I realized that I couldn’t answer a simple question posed by Dr. Flint during the webinar. There’s no right or wrong answer, just THE answer and I didn’t have it because I hadn’t bothered to take the time to figure it out. I wasn’t the only one with this problem either – so many of us couldn’t answer that he gave everyone the same advice: Slow Down and Contemplate.
Sometimes you just have to unplug in order to recharge. A change of scenery can provide you with a sudden change in perspective. A few moments alone without IMs popping up or personalized ringers going off or texts flying across your vision might be all it takes for you to see things with new clarity. It doesn’t matter whether you have an immediate problem to solve or not – sometimes you’ll have a eureka moment when you didn’t even realize you needed one. Make some time for contemplation before you make that presentation about the next big thing… before you dismiss a new idea from a co-worker in favor of your own… before you pop off a flippant deadline answer to your boss…
They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I’m not sure what the going rate is on slowing down to think before you act. I don’t know anyone brave enough to try to put a dollar value on the time and effort wasted due to acting on contagious enthusiasm without the benefit of contemplation.
Sorry, ouija has no special extra insight.
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