Push The Green Button

We live in a world where we are exposed to new technology almost daily.  Many of us wait with great expectation (sometimes in long lines that include the Mayor of Philadelphia sitting in a lawn chair) to be among the first to possess that next thing that is going to dramatically change our lives and solve all of our problems that are right now keeping us from getting things done.  After shelling out hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars we finally have that shiny new and ever smaller device in our hands.  This is a very cool moment and yet it is also the moment when your overall productivity just plummeted. 

Have you ever noticed that most devices that we buy today don’t come with an owners manual in the packaging?  Actually, there usually is something of a set of User instructions but of course those are accessible on the internet (which by the way you can’t get to because you don’t know how to configure your new device to get you there).  So instead you just jump in and try to figure out the device.  I mean just how hard can this be?  You have owned other phones, tablets or computers, how different is this?  Actually, you make it through this stage and ultimately (OK many hours later) you have your new device configured, you can access your email and your other files and if you are very lucky someone helped you synchronize your information from your last device and you my friend are back in business.  Here lies the problem.  You acquired this device to make you more productive.  It has all of these new features that you thought were going to be great and this is so much better than anything you have ever had before.  Except you don’t really know how to use the device.

I was recently working with a colleague and helping him to make a few configuration changes to his smartphone.  This was not a new device and in fact because it had been around for a while he was having a couple of problems and most importantly he could not gain access to our company email system.   The IT people told him he had an unsupported device (this really means we don’t know how to work that one).  I was happy to help so while we were together at a three day meeting we got together one night after dinner.  I was able to make a few changes to his phone, get his email working and solved the problem he was having with moving his trackpad.  This took less than half an hour and I was really happy to do that.  But I did not realize until well after the fact that I was actually quite tired when I set his phone up and I made a mistake in one of the configurations.  The next morning he begins using his newly configured phone and he realizes that there is a problem in that I had configured his email to reflect that the sender was named Password.  All of his email messages that he sent out reflected to the recipient that they had just received an email from an unknown source.  Imagine the inconvenience in a world where we are suspicious of odd email messages and the potential for viruses.  I felt terribly when he sent an email to me telling me about the problem and to make matters worse I was about to catch a plane for a 4 hour flight and would be unable to correct the mistake I made in his email.  As a quick fix I shot off an email with instructions to fix the problem at least in case he had to solve that before I got on the ground again.  In his message to me he mentioned another problem.  He said that when he attempted to dial his phone all he got were letters instead of numbers for every button he pushed.  That one stumped me.  I had configured his phone to use several keyboard shortcuts but did not recall doing anything there that would have turned his phone dialer into gibberish.  I thought for a moment and realized that in my haste the night before I told him that after the changes I made that to make phone calls he had to push the green button then dial as normal.  My colleague and new friend now was stranded and could make phone calls only to those people in his address book. 

As I was boarding my aircraft I realized that the phone dialing problem was a minor one and that he had likely forgotten to push the green button prior to initiating a telephone call.  I sent a quick text message reminding him of those instructions and expected that this would solve his problem.  

When my plane landed and I had a free moment I gave my colleague a call.  He said that he had looked and looked but could not find the green button that I wrote about and therefore still had the dialing problem.  I pointed out that this button was literally on the lower left hand corner of his telephone.  From his uttered response I know that at that moment he felt a bit foolish.  However, what I realized at that moment was that prior to the changes I made in his telephone he had likely never had a reason use that green button and he was expecting something special and as a result this rather ordinary button had become invisible to him.

My friend’s challenges are not unlike what many of us face when we really don’t know how to use the technology we purchase or that is provided to us.  While we so often appreciate the cool factor of having something new, most of us don’t take the time to learn how to use our tools.  While this is fine if you just like cool stuff, it is not acceptable for those of us that need and use the devices to help us become more productive at work.  Our technology often rules us or at least confuses the heck out of us.  Or as I am so often reminded by the words of Stephen Covey “Technology and tools are helpful and useful when they are your servant and not your master.” 

It is worth the investment in time and sometimes money to really understand how you can rule your technology.  I have spent countless hours personally learning to master the tools I have all around me.  While this serves my friends and neighbors well, most importantly it has served me well as I can use my technology to make my life simpler, my work faster, and reduce technology overload.  While it might sound trivial to have trouble finding the green button, think about the frustration, loss of energy and loss of productivity that my friend experienced and that you experience when you can’t do something with your new phone, tablet, or computer.  It is time folks to really understand exactly what that little button does when you hit it.