Spent the morning doing hamster work. This is the work that takes a long time but at the end of the day you realize that you have not really produced anything. Its all important work but its not creative or productive.
- Check & empty spam filters for mail and blogs
- Reply to “boring” emails that have been ignored in inbox
- Clean inbox by deleting or storing dealt with emails
- Update blog plugins
- Browse through the overfilled rss reader
Not really sure what this kind of work can be compared to in the analog realm – its a bit like preparing a garden after winter, pruning for growth. Well that’s a positive spin on it. Otherwise I sometimes get the impression that I am a slave to my tools. My devices and software seem to need a constant stream of update and electricity to be content enough to work.
In 1996 the Akihiro Yokoi of WiZ Co. Ltd., and Aki Maita of Bandai Co. Ltd released the Tamagotchi on the world. It was (for those who chose not to remember) a very simple digital toy that needed constant attention in order to “live”. Parents had to take their children’s devices to work with them so that the precious pieces of plastic did not die while the children where at school.
Those who were not in the craze laughed.
But today my whole digital life seems to consist of me being trapped in a tamagotchi. My devices demand attention and can be quite adamant about getting it: I once had to throw away a digital thermometer that would not stop beeping out an ice warning every 5 minutes when the temperature dropped below 3 degrees. On my phone a blue or red occasionally blinks. Its communicating with me – but nowhere in the manual does it say what the lights mean. I usually restart the phone just to stop the blinking lights. The same phone, when fully charged flashes brightly, and can wake me up in the middle of the night.
And don’t get me started on updates!! Here is the wisdom of Izzard on the topic – all to cheer us up in the midst of digital work.