Mind Your Manners, Mind Your Blackberry

This article made me think. While, I am personally annoyed by people who use their mobile devices (not just Blackberries) too much, especially when they are in social situations; I can see the point the article makes. I have been in positions where replying to e-mail immediately was necessary and showed professionalism. When I think of good behavior, and what is good for the spirit, I often refer back to the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie. Every person should read this book. It discusses manners, but also is important to teaching people the skill of dealing with people. The positive ideas it suggests, in they style of Affirmative Inquiry, teach more than behavior. The book teaches how to have a positive outlook to working with people, even difficult people. This new behavior surrounding polite behavior seems to break some of the rules.

I would also like to know from a psychology perspective how this constant changing of direction of behavior and interest affects the brain. Are we so dynamic and mentally agile that this is not a concern? I wonder if our quality of work goes down when we are doing this jumping. As an anthropologist I wonder if these constant changing multiple social statuses (i.e. business person, mother, friend) and moving them into the same 5"x3"x1/2" space means the line between them is thinner and thinner.

My personal opinion is that this constant movement and the use of mobile devices is unhealthy for the human spirit. I am under the opinion that time is NOT money. Time is the most valuable resource we have while alive. You can make more money, but you can't make more time. Vicki Robbins wrote a book called "Time is not money: waking from the work-a-holic American dream" and talks about how our time should do a better job of illustrating our values. When you are in a business meeting, you are representing something bigger than yourself. You are symbolic more than literal. By not using the time allotted to you to being in the postion, you are destablizing the status of the business/organization. It is self-important to use the time to play another role that you may find more pressing.

Remember when we didn't have cell-phones? We would have to wait until we got home or back to the office to return calls. The world didn't end, and honestly, we did quite well as a nation. There are certainly positions that should take precedence over others. I don't want police officers to be without a phone in the case of an emergency, but there are few positions that the person has to be self-important to think you can't take 10, 30, or even an hour from that other position to show respect for another human being. Undivided attention is important.

One of the points Dale Carnegie makes in "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is that people like a good listener. This is something that I have also learned from being taught to council people or intervene in a crisis. Active listening is one of the most important skills a person can have. People do, by nature even, want to feel important. This is why the Blackberry religion has grown so quickly. It is also pretty much a universal in every culture to find ways of controlling that individual desire too. Religions do it, in fact one of the major focuses of thesist religions do is to take the focus off of the individual and put it towards their Godesses and Gods. "There is no God but God" is the Islamic mantra. Hare Krshnas' sing and praise God many times a day as well. Christians also are asked to give thanks and prayers towards God many times a day. The Blackberry prayer is also a kind of "check-in", but not with a higher-power, but with one's own life. And it isn't a self-check-in which is suggested by more wellness coaches' it is a redirection towards ones responsibility and others in a misdirected effort to become more productive. It is what makes us work-a-holics. It can also increase our individual personality, like the NYT article says-we may often say things in text we wouldn't say aloud.

This points out another negative consequence of too much pda. To be a balanced human being, we must communicate openly. If you are texting during a meeting, you are not communicating, especially if you are making comments to others in the room. This would destroy a marriage, and the same goes for relationships in the business world. Just like a partner that loves you, they may excuse the behavior, like they do in this article. Over time the behavior adds up until it has ruined the relationship.

When time is the most important thing we have, and we use time to give power to our values, this use of technology shows that we may not value the now and people physically around us. for us not to be in-the-now is not showing respect. It may be my religious opinion, but people should be more centered and sincerely where they are rather then the mind drifting to other places or fantasizing about being somewhere else. When you are in balance, you are where you are without distraction. Every action is intentional and sincere. Personal mobile devices seem to get in the way.

I have a job that constantly jerks me in different directions. I love my job, but I have to get up and press buttons or speak words into a microphone 16 times a day. I am not ADD, or ADHD so this moving direction make it hard to get quality in whatever else I am doing. Because I have many 5 minute breaks throughout my shift I get pulled in many directions. My Palm phone used to do the same thing when I was alone. It wasn't until I re-listened to Vicki Robbin's talk about how our time should refelect our values I became more fre from my computer life. sure I have twitter and facebook, and even myspace updates sent to my phone, but these days I also set time aside to free myself. The best way to show respect to the people around you is to not answer that e-mail or text immediatly, but ignore it and center yourself with the person you are with.

By not recieving an immediate reply to an e-mail or text, it is an illustration that the person on the other end is balanced and is respectful to those around them.

If none of this makes sense, it was becuase I was inturrupted 16 times while writing it, and had to check my facebook on my mobile phone.

clipped from www.nytimes.com As Web-enabled smartphones have become standard on the belts and in the totes of executives, people in meetings are increasingly caving in to temptation to check e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, even (shhh!) ESPN.com. But a spirited debate about etiquette has broken out. Traditionalists say the use of BlackBerrys and iPhones in meetings is as gauche as ordering out for pizza. Techno-evangelists insist that to ignore real-time text messages in a need-it-yesterday world is to invite peril. Mr. Reines said. “BlackBerrys have become like cartoon thought bubbles.” like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’ ” Despite resistance, the etiquette debate seems to be tilting in the favor of smartphone use Mind Your BlackBerry or Mind Your Manners