Today a friend apologized to me for not seeing a Skype text I’d sent him last week (no problem). This got me thinking about the incoming communication tools that I have, all the ways people can reach me.
- Work email address (Outlook)
- Personal email address (Gmail)
- Blog email address (Gmail)
- Blog comments (WordPress)
- Spam/shopping email address (Yahoo)
- iPhone text
- WhatsApp (including a few groups)
- Twitter (DMs, RTs and mentions)
- Skype calls + texts [oh, and I’m testing Viber]
- Facebook (and I don’t use the messenger app)
- LinkedIn messages
- Work phone + voicemail
- Cellphone + voicemail
- Home phone + voicemail
- [Local cell phone while traveling abroad]
Fifteen different communications tools, and I’m not that active on any of the social media platforms. Nor does this make any reference to my going out and seeking news, updates and information (blog RSS feed, Twitter feed, Facebook feed, LinkedIn Feed, etc.).
This feels like an insane list. I guess Facebook and Google want to consolidate everything for me so I’m not jumping between platforms, but I don’t trust either enough to have that feel like a good solution.
Is this just the way it is, or am I missing something?
I’m curious: how many ways can you be reached?
(p.s. Eric Schmidt wrote a piece for Time about email, which includes the maxim “Clean out your inbox constantly.” I totally disagree. Where do we draw the line in terms of our incoming communications streams, and when are we supposed to do real thinking and work if we’re triaging 15 (20? 30?) feeds all day long?).
Leave a Reply