IT Vendor Raves

Time Constraints

Ever ask yourself, “Is this thing going to ever end?”

If marketers and media want to reach me “live”, they need to be respectful of the clock. I try to participate in webcasts and marketing surveys regularly, but I’m noticing that I’m pulling out of a lot more events midstream as they get longer and longer.

Hey, I know my schedule. I know whether or not I have 1, 3, 15, or even 60 minutes to spend. It’s not that I have a short attention span; I have a long ToDo list and a busy calendar.

Marketers, I’ll give you my time if you let me know how much to allocate before I start. It’s why I still read magazines and books; I can see how many pages before I begin, and I start and stop at will. The only organizations who I allow to keep me for an indeterminate amount of time are the airlines, and that’s under extreme protest!

Tap Tap Tap... is this microphone on?

I looked up the famous quote that "writing is easy; you just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein" and  was surprised to discover it is attributed to one of my favorite old time sports columnists, Red Smith. http://www.quotegarden.com/writing.html

Communicating my thoughts in writing has always been a love/hate relationship for me.  It's easy for me to core dump my thoughts into a computer on a daily basis; I've been doing it for more than a decade on email lists and at work.   The real painful part is effectively communicating, and that means going through the difficult process of editing.   Words have power, and I've occasionally found myself taking 30 minutes to write and rewrite a 4 sentence email. 

So here's a challenge for this blog. I've got to be able to write this primary message in 20 minutes or less.  I'm setting a timer every time I sit down.  I can do this.  The quality may not meet my standards, but time will tell.