Thank You Steve Jobs, you may have brought my blood pressure down.
Like many of us in media, everyone knows I'm an Apple guy. Thus I have the iPhone4. I run my whole life from this little device, My Starbucks credit card, to my Garmin GPS and now XM satellite all runs off this little swiss army knife. But I have an issue. Unlike most of my creative colleagues I am not a "stacks of paper messy desk" person. I actually like my workspace neat, and I don't like knowing I have unread messages. You see I was brought up under the IBM business service concept of "No matter who you are, the CEO or the janitor, no phone should ring more than 3 times and you pick it up". Now thats a great customer service policy, unless you're like me. A individual owner and sole employee of your consulting media company. You get lots of calls and even more Emails. So I also mistakenly adapted the IBM phone creed to my Email policy. The result is low productivity because that little red "badge" on the iPhone (other phones have them too) that tells me that I have 10 unread Emails…yea that sends my blood pressure through the roof when I see that icon. I know I have no reason to react like that, and I should see a shrink about it but Steve Jobs before his passing solved my problem on the new iOS5. I can now turn the badge off. Now when I open my phone up to do something Im not distracted by the glaring "YOU HAVE 10 UNREAD EMAILS!!" taking me off task. I take the Emails at my pace when I am able to write them. Take a look today at what you can do to stay focused on your tasks for the day, and you may find time to stop and smell the roses, or whatever makes you happy.
John Ondo is President & Creative Director of Ondo Media. We specialize in documentary production and media consulting. Based on Columbus, Ohio. John Ondo, can be followed on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and our Ondo Media Vimeo site.
