Blackberrys, e-mail and twitters

I'm a busy, senior executive who depends on a blackberry to stay connected and to conduct business any where and any time. That sounds free and liberating, huh? Nope. It is actually more counter productive and debilitating than you might imagine. Because we have come to rely on e-mail and text messages as instant communication transmission methods, we are now slaves to the devices because the sender assumes the receiver is simply waiting by the device to read the message and respond. No chance the receiver is in a meeting, reading a document, on the phone or, heaven forbid, trying to think and plan strategically. I just read a great quote from Jack Nicklaus on the subject. When asked if he used a blackberry, Jack replied, "No, everyone I know who has one is a slave to it. That's why I have a secretary." If it were up to me, e-mail would only be used to transport attachments - no multi-paragraph rants or chains of dialog and I would make hitting "Reply To All" a federal offense. If something is very important, pick up the phone. If you need to document your communication, type a letter and attach it. We could all use the practice of writing a solid, well structured letter now and then. One of the biggest weaknesses I see in young employees today is the inability to write letters. We are losing the art and the science of formal writing. Don't get me wrong, short, purposeful bursts of text (to let your wife or daughter know you are at the game or to ask your husband to pick up some diapers or to tell your friend to meet him at Jim's at 6) are a good use of the technology and have their purpose. However, if I have learned anything in the past twenty years of business, it is that the tyranny of the immediate is our daily enemy and it can fool us into thinking that filling the day with activity is the same as accomplishing our goals. We need the discipline to disengage, to be still, to think, plan, write and discover. If we are constantly in immediate transmission/reception mode, we'll fail to do anything more than survive. We'll be slaves to the here and now. Success in almost anything requires the discipline to sacrifice the small, short-term gains for the large, long-term ones. So, I 'll bet you know by now what I think of Twitter. It's just not that interesting.