Gizmo Vortex

Officially my office, the space with the 1960s green desk, piles of paperwork done and undone, three or four computers, extra drives and cables and connectors for gizmos past and present, may be the location that I do my best creative work.  The quality can only be attributed to the office chair from my former gig that complemented my bottom from 1987 to 2001 at which point I simply rolled it into the elevator, through the Skyway and home.  The topic of previous blog post, the chair has served for thirty good years.  The office contains an iPad rarely used, an Amazon Echo and a small SONOS unit used daily for music.  There are three desktops and a couple of notebooks and three printers.  My good stuff comes from a single thread of technology through that mess.

The Samsung Chromebook upon which I'm writing goes everywhere.  When I want to look serious I carry a briefcase that also contains a high-end Lenovo notebook which usually has a depleted battery.

The night before last I had a weird dream in which a guy named George sold me an airplane for $13,999 which I proceeded to hide in my uncle's basement.  Currently I am working with a guy named George, airplanes are of a casual interest and my uncles was special but has been gone thirty years.   Before going to sleep I'd looked at YouTube content on warbirds.  Perhaps that triggered the airplane purchase.

But really I think my weird dreams of late have occurred because I don't have a job (not even a dumb job) and my brain has been invaded by technological gizmos.  When I headed off to sleep the eve of the airplane dream I brought my Chromebook (in case I woke up in the middle of the night and needed watch something with a video need (nothing planned), my iPhone (alarm, weather check, Instagram, Google Tasks, Google Keep), another Lenovo notebook (I keep forgetting it's there), an Amazon Echo Dot with Bluetooth speaker, my original Amazon Kindle (just restored the battery), an early Amazon Fire (previously used for video) and my new Amazon Paperwhite Kindle.  This is too much.  In the old days you read a book and then fell asleep.

• The danger, as tablets, smartphones, ever more powerful (and complex) PCs and cloud options continue to develop is falling into the 'gizmo' trap.  
• Track how much time you spend on you own personal technology support such as upgrades of software, new phones, data plans, internet resources.
• Drive a stake into the ground
• Define your business and personal goals...what's important
• What are the measurable business and personal outcomes for your goals that you hope to achieve.
• Have a business and personal mentor...not another Gizmo person...find a balance.

I'm going to cut down on the the extra stuff.  Three Kindles are crazy.  More than a couple PCs is crazy.  Standardize onsite and cloud storage tools (currently I use Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive and far too many onsite storage devices.