Mindfullness

All in all a quiet week for the Silicon Valley Warrior. I am practicing for my time off later this year. I was talking to a friend today with a good friend who is being laid off. Of course it is mutual. We both mutually agree that I am going to be laid off.

Anyway, mindfulness came up. Slowing things down and doing things more deliberately. So much of what we are conditioned to do is response based.

24-7. Not a football score but a bulls**t term someone came up with to show that they were on the job all the time. We surround ourselves with PDA's and cell phones, text messaging, instant messaging and email. We literally insure that we can't be anything else but up to date or falling behind. Falling behind what might be the question but still these tools, which many of us are slaves to, insure that we can always be reached and always respond.

One guy I coached (sorry it always seems to be a guy) use to take phone calls in meetings.

"Hi Honey," he would say loudly. It was his common law wife or whatever. In any case they share a house and headaches.

"Honey. I am in a meeting. Can I call you back?"

OK, sweets. I love you Honey.

I finally took him out in the hallway and told him to stuff the phone up his a**. Well, you know where.

"It might be an emergency," he said.

"How often is it an emergency?" I asked.

He looked sheepish.

I mean damn! Even the CEO wasn't taking cell phone calls during meetings.

But he wasn't alone. People do it all the time. They stare at their phones myopically. "Gee whiz, I wonder who this call is from? Hold on just a minute," they finally say as they take the call. Ten minutes later, unable to tell the caller that they are in a meeting, they are still talking. I don't get too uptight about it. I do tend to wander off if their call takes too long though. I believe that cell phones give people a false sense of being important and make them not have to be alone with themselves.
Marilyn Monroe died phoning people. Phones were a drug to her.

The worst of the offenders tend to turn over their jobs more rapidly because despite the fact they are always reachable, that bonding person to person connection just doesn't happen.

Finding a job is an art form. So is keeping one.