When Do We Get to Work? (Corner Office by Jeffrey Wood)

Enough already.

LinkedIn. Facebook. Twitter. Jaiku. MySpace. Beebo. Friendster. Not to mention e-mail, voice mail, cell phones, landlines, blogs, e-newsletters, e-blasts, EBay, e-transfers, video conferencing, webinars, discussion threads, podcasts, e-vites, RSS feeds, instant messaging and the latest electronic fad – lifestreaming providers.

The latter, for those of us with jobs, facilitate the aggregation of your online presence into one central location so that you can “Tweet” through the Twitosphere with one hand and not miss a beat blogging or IM’ing with the other.

Imagine the horror of overlooking a friend’s Facebook update because you were busy cyberloafing at your favorite wiki.

People, or Tweeple, or whatever you are in the e-plane of existence you purport to occupy, I have had about enough of e-terruptions.

Please indulge a few disclaimers before making my point.

I am neither a curmudgeon or a “lamer.” The Internet is a useful tool for too many business and other functions to cover. The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal even has its own Facebook following, which is an efficient way to communicate certain things to a portion of our customers. Via ArkansasBusiness.com and our friends at Arkansas Business in Little Rock, we also offer a variety of useful online products and services. I get it. I really do.

I work and live in the e-world most of the day, and by-and-large find it at least functional if not frequently enjoyable.

I am also not one of those media relics who rages against the Internet, although it’s a fact that the medium generally has done more to plummet the standards of journalistic reporting than Jerry Springer and “The View” combined.

Make sure you seek out reliable online news sources. Lance Turner, the Internet editor at ArkansasBusiness.com, was and is on the vanguard of professional and credible Internet reporting.

I’ll skip the scourge of citizen journalism for today, and what’s really behind the decline of mass consumer publications (it’s less emergent electronic media than strategy). Suffice it to say, the quality and relevance of content matter most whether it comes thrown in your yard or via a hologram.

I am not anti-Internet. I am simply so inundated with communiqués of every imaginable kind that it’s hard to sift through the e-clutter and manage the items that are related to, you know, actual business.

I don’t need an e-mail from LinkedIn every 25 seconds to tell me an associate’s third cousin just changed avatars. Between regular office and business banter, the phone, the fax and Lord help us all, the BlackBerry that buzzes my hip all day like a physical therapy STEM unit, I’m feeling a lot more bothered than bolstered.

Wasn’t the Internet supposed to make us more efficient? If you have time to e-jack around all day then you’re either the Maytag repairman or in need of more work to do.

The cyber bombardment hit home recently while I was supposed to be watching my middle child’s ball practice. There I was alongside the T-ball moms at Bentonville’s Memorial Park, thumb wrestling with my handheld and staring into e-blivion. Meanwhile, Kasey hit and caught and threw and grinned with the excitement of playing on her first organized “baseball” team.

I was answering a work e-mail when a glance upward caught her looking to see if I was watching. A pivot found half the spectators at the entire complex yakking away on cell phones or tapping onto some form of handheld device.

It was a gorgeous evening. There were live people at hand to talk to, childhoods to watch unfold and there we all sat, a gaggle of Googling goofballs. I turned off the BlackBerry, put it in my pocket and low and behold, the universe did not collapse on itself.

Electronic communications are here to stay, and if we manage the use of them correctly, we’ll all be more productive. I would simply submit the following, particularly to managers and business leaders:

The people in your work and home life most likely are not hungry for your forwarded e-funnies or mico-chats. They’re hungry for you, and interaction and appreciation.

Try rejoining the real world now and again and paying attention to what got your business where it is in the first place: People and relationships.