Connected Manifesto

If you ask my classmate, Kimberly Moorehead, she'd laugh and say 'what's new?' Kimberly, Bhadresh Patel and I worked tirelessly together through the engineering school at the University of Virginia and Kimberly had a front row seat to me getting my first email address. To say I was almost instantly addicted would be understatement. I'd wander away while we were sitting together working on problem sets and come back 15 minutes later and she'd ask 'What are you doing? No one is emailing you.'

The connected life continued, I worked for a company who's bread & butter was email, building the world's first email change of address system for Return Path. I then worked at Vindigo working with Palm Pilots, mobile phones, connected devices, etc. Connected, connected, connected.

Connected devices have always been part of the mix and actually let me do amazing things that the working world didn't allow my father.

But recently, especially in the past 6 months, I'm not sure how I'm using my connectivity is a net-positive. I've mentioned William Power's book, 'Hamlet's BlackBerry' being a powerful and meaningful read and recently, I've decided my devices are taking me 'out of the moment' and interfering with the '3-D' (real world) too much. The biggest reason I know it's happening, isn't some incredible situational awareness (although that is secondary). It's because...

Our kids are calling me out on it.

It was also inspired by a trip I took to Seattle in November 2016 where it was noticeable how much less Seattle natives were on their devices when walking around when compared to New Yorkers. (A decade ago I did something called 'Mobile Free Mondays' where I kept my phone in my bag all day long and it was wonderful.)

I'm starting 2017 with a new communication manifesto with a goal to keep things in check and stay in the 3-D as much as possible. I'm going to look to use my devices to:

1. Keep the people I need to (wife, other parents) in the loop order to make their life easier.
2. Influence the current or near-future activities by making/adjusting plans.
3. Capture & Share the current status.

What I'm going to try to limit if not totally illuminate: casual consumption of content, especially social media, in order not be using it:

1. While out with people I care about
2. While waiting in line, other micromoment downtimes.

We will see how it actually plays out, but one thing I truly believe will remain unwavering and unchanged a year from now; I've been spending too much time distracted and the content / games that I'm interacting pails in comparison what's happening 'right now, right here.'