Datasheet

16
Part I: Preparing for Personal Productivity
Keep in mind that playing the game of eternal catch-up with the tools of your
trade can play havoc with your sense of self-worth and competency as a
worker. Trying to escape work’s longer and longer reach and finally find a time
“when the working day is done” can be quite demoralizing and promote early
burnout.
Every time I turn around, it’s out-of-date!
One of the more vexing aspects of high tech — to everyone but its engineers
and programmers — is how hard this industry works at making its own latest
and greatest products completely obsolete! It seems as though no sooner do
you become competent using a particular version of a computer operating
system and the application software upon which your entire job seems to
depend than they’re replaced with newer, “improved” editions.
Quite often, these new software versions require considerable relearning
in order for you to perform the very same work you did just fine using the
previous, now-obsolete versions. Not only that, new versions of operating
systems and application software sometime require you to make extensive
and sometimes expensive upgrades to your existing hardware and other
auxiliary software programs.
Perhaps even more demoralizing than having to spend time you don’t
have relearning the new software and incurring additional upgrade costs
is finding out that the installation of this latest and greatest version has
introduced incompatibilities into a computer system that was otherwise
working just fine.
Still too complex and inflexible
In terms of both flexibility and ease of use, I agree that computer technology
continues to promise much more than it can deliver. Despite great strides
made to the interface of personal computer operating systems (think Windows
Vista) and application software programs (think Microsoft Office) in the last
decade or so, computers remain exceedingly complex tools that, more often
than not, still work the way they want to rather than the way you want them to.
No matter how you feel about the escalating role of technology in your life, it’s
not going away any time soon. You can bet your bottom dollar its role is only
going to increase both in the workplace and in the home. This is one fate you
can’t escape and a place where, since you can’t beat them, you need seriously
consider how best to join them.
The only advice I can come up with for countering the inflexibility and
complexity displayed by high tech is to get yourself as well trained in
its use as you possibly can. As I hope you discover in this book on using
Outlook as your tool for personal productivity, good basic training lets
you understand not only how the technology is supposed to be used, but
also how you can use it in more creative ways to come up with unique
solutions to problems you encounter in getting your particular job done.