Conduct an expert job search from your smartphone. Here’s something I wrote for AOL Jobs about making your job search mobile first.
Tag Archives: iphone
What My 10 Year Old Teaches Me Every Day About Technology & Social Media
Bill Hartnett: What a 10-Year-Old Teaches Me Every Day about Technology and Social Media
Here’s something I wrote a few weeks back for David Berkowitz’s Marketers Studio marketing blog. If you are not already familiar with him or his work, he is an all-around awesome guy with an insatiable curiosity for gadgets, innovation and desserts.
Delete, Delete, Delete
Recently I passed on an iPhone 4 to my son. He’s 10 years old and he was absolutely dying for a phone. Like all my gadgets it was crammed with apps, pictures, music, videos and more.
Almost immediately he was out of memory. He wanted to have more space and i said you need to delete some apps. Watching him was a beautiful thing.
He went through his deck like a madman. Boring. Delete. Don’t want it. Delete. Why do I have this? Delete. I hate this game. Delete. Outgrown. Delete. Delete. Delete Delete.
It was amazing. In just a few minutes he had effortlessly and ruthlessly deleted 2GB of apps. No sentiment. No wavering. Just business.
I painstakingly debate whether to trash apps and anything else that is overloading my phone. With hundreds of games, services, social networks and utilities all mostly losing the battle for my attention, why is it so easy to add more stuff and so hard to lose it?
)Yes, I downloaded an app while writing this, but I deleted one as well, so that’s something.)
It’s just stuff, but the emotional and intellectual attachment is strong. Do I need more memory or just the execution-style app killing skills of my son? Maybe I can implement his process to clean up my iPhone, my iPad and maybe a few junk drawers as well.
In these days of app, email, text, music, video and information overload and the push to unplug and unclutter we can learn a powerful lesson from a 10 year old.
Delete. Delete. Delete.
Your Technology is No Good Here
A couple of weeks ago I spent a week in western Massachusetts in a house way up in the hills. I love this particular corner of the world for several reasons. Hiking. Road riding. Mountain biking. Rafting. Kayaking. Swimming. Whoopie pies. Most of all, I love the quiet. The loudest noise in the daytime is tractors and the loudest at night is the owls.
There is no cell service here. Nothing. No wireless. Zero bars. My trusty iPhone is basically useless beyond Cut the Rope and Doodle Jump. Just a brick that tells time.
At first this is disconcerting. I reflexively look to see what’s happening in my digital world and it’s The Twilight Zone. No Facebook. No Twitter. No emails. No texts. No phone calls. It no longer exists.
Once the shock wears off, I start to enjoy the freedom. I read books. I hang out with my kids and build forts. We all sit down to dinner and talk about frogs and butterflies. It’s amazing how quickly I don’t care about new followers on Instagram or checking in on Foursquare. The biggest gift is the ability to focus and think. It is something so precious that we often neglect in our quest to vanquish our to-do lists.
Once I was back on the grid it was a scramble to catch up and plug back in, but the lesson I learned is the beauty of disconnecting, even if just for a moment.
At the recent #140 Conference in New York City, many of the speakers said the same thing. Put down the technology. Go outside. Make friends. Build something. Do stuff. Love someone. It will all be here when you get back. And they are right.
How do you disconnect and find time in your day to think? I would love to hear your thoughts.
worldonshuffle 