Wise advice

“People don’t look at their watches to see what time it is,” someone once told me “they look to see what time it isn’t.” Ever since then I have been surprised how true this is. In the same light I recently realized that “People don’t worry about how much work they have to do, they worry about the difference in the work they have to do.”

Luckily few people live in a micro managed world today. Perhaps the closest we each get to that state is when we are under the sway of our GPS-based navigation system. I find that when I am driving along I am relaxed and enjoying the journey but once the GPS speaks I become anxious and worry I might make a mistake and get on the wrong road. I don’t remember that being the case when I followed a paper map.

Why should it be that technology designed to improve the quality of life adds more stress than it relieves? It is the realization that the common, familiar practices are something we do not fear because we have already mastered then.  Any change, however, introduces uncertainty and demands a higher order of awareness and decision making.

As I look at what we use technology for today I see that it is the job of automation to take the tedium out of our daily tasks. Leaving us, the ones with the most adaptable, creative and effective processor to deal with exceptions. Yet there are many, and many people in IT, who see automation of IT as a job killer. Whereas automation is really a job enhancer: it does the repetitive for us so that we can do the interpretative and exceptional things computers cannot.

So let’s strive to automate everything in IT. We should be the paragons of technology exploitation and show the business world how it should be done! Are you up for it?