Another E-Mail
*Beginning in 2010, I started writing a bi-weekly column, “From Richard’s Oft Cluttered Desk” which appears every other Wednesday.
Oh, the insanity. I do a lot of reading online about personal development and business leadership and some of the writers periodically share the tools they find to use, either online, with Outlook, or with their smart-phones and iPhones. Recently, Google Buzz tried to simplify our social media streams. Brazen Careerist is trying to do something similar.Tools are great, but one of the bloggers I read wrote about a year ago with screen shots of all the applications they had on their iPhone. I laughed out loud. I don’t disagree that technology can simplify life and make certain things easier… but some of the applications that people use to manage their days blows my mind. We’re being controlled by a computer. It can tell you when to eat, how much to eat, to run more or to quit your job.
Now this week I found Award Wallet, a site that boasts the ability to manage and report back to the user all their reward points and airline miles in one simple location. I think I will try it.
Why shouldn’t I? I have about a billion reward points spread across about a billion companies. Seriously… just think of them.
For fun, I’ll list them off. United Airlines. Midwest Airlines. Delta Airlines. (also used to have Northwest Airlines.) US Airways. Southwest Airlines. Credit Card No. 1. Credit Card No. 2. Credit Card No. 3. Hertz Rent a Car. Time Warner Cable. Best Buy Rewards. Hilton Honors. Holiday Inn/Priority Club Rewards. Thank-You Network. Wydham Rewards.
Seriously, that is too many companies to have to log into, know their rules for redemption, only to find out that you need a team of lawyers to understand the actual rewards.
Life was so much easier without all this clutter. Forget the radio. Forget the phone. The cell phone. The television. The iTunes with thousands of plays recorded – and for what – to show me that I’ve listened to my current song 51 times (and I only bought it on February 17 – of this year!)
We are on information overload, but here I sit in front of my computer on a Sunday. We’re connected. We can’t get a divorce. Shoot, it takes an act of Congress to even to get a FRIENDS-like “break” from all this information. I can hardly keep up with my Google Reader.
I remember a study done years ago (which of course I can’t find because there have been a billion webpages made since then) that said the majority of BlackBerry users in Europe would pick their smart-phone over their spouse as their sleeping partner.
Maybe places like Award Wallet is the way to go. Maybe all this techno stuff is for the better. But why then do we all crave and say how awesome it would be to not be so connected. Oh well I guess. Information is here to stay. I just don’t want to be owned by it. Gotta go, another e-mail just came in.
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