Demands of our time

Nowadays, there seems to be more demands of our time than ever before. Maybe the demands really haven’t changed other than we are more aware of them now because of constant communication methods.

Before we all carried mobile devices, we could basically only be reached at home, work or by chance meetings. Now we are basically reachable no matter where we are. Email, SMS, phone and other methods of communication means that we are constantly trying to meet the needs of others or at least communicating with them. How many times have you checked your email just before tucking in and then upon waking? If you are like most people, this is something that you do almost without thinking about it now.

We still have the same number of hours in a day, but now that communication is faster and can be done from anywhere. So many people think that it’s easier to send a quick message than to pick up the phone. Sometimes it’s actually easier to make that phone call instead of writing a message because the back and forth messages can end up taking longer than the actual phone conversation would have been and with a lot less confusion. Most adults nowadays do check work email from home or from their mobile device after work hours. In a lot of cases if you can deal with a message quickly it means that you aren’t going into many issues the next day. Yes, you are trying to start your day by doing what is on your to-do list instead of dealing with the messages that accumulated over the time from when you left work and when you returned.

I know that sometimes I feel that there are more demands on my time than before, but I think I am my worst enemy when it comes to that. I am the one that puts the demands on myself to try and make sure that I get everything done quickly instead of thinking that something will get done a bit later, and there isn’t any problem with that.

Remembering that we managed before the mobile devices sometimes is what it takes for us to step back and realize that demands are the same, but now we see them quicker.