Working Offline
On Friday night, I met my one of my oldest friends in the world and her mother for dinner and a basketball game. Kate and I hopped out of our cars in the pouring rain and into her mom’s Honda so we could carpool to the game. When Ms. Bets turned the key in the ignition, the car wouldn’t start.
My first thought? We had three cars, so we could just jump into another, but that would mean when we came back later, we would still have a dead car. We needed a hot shot. Neither Kate nor I had ever done one of those and Ms. Bets claimed not to have done it in years.
I pulled out my Blackberry to Google the procedure, Kate grabbed her iPhone, and Ms. Bets, the instruction manual. I thought to myself as I was reading the directions aloud, “What a perfect example of the differences between Generation Y and the older generations.”
I’ve been thinking about this all weekend. If you asked a person outside Gen Y about finding a job, they would probably pull out the Rolodex and start making phone calls. By contrast, I do not own a Rolodex and my first instinct is to turn to my online social network for connections. I am not saying this is a bad idea. In fact, using your online connections is a fabulous idea. Blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are wonderful resources in your job search.
But, as foreign as it might seem to my fellow Millenials to pick up the phone or to sit down and write a handwritten note, I challenge you to sit down and be a little old fashioned for the afternoon. Instead of immediately typing your draft out, write out your thoughts on a piece of paper. I find that when I write things down, I can see more patterns and connections between things, I make a lot of maps before I write a cover letter or revamp my resume. More than that, when I sit down with a piece of paper, I do not get distracted by things like Twitter or my Pandora station.
The next time you feel inclined to e-mail to someone, I challenge you to pick up the phone. I have a lot of difficulty with this one, but when I do pick up the phone, I get my questions answered sooner. I find people are less inclined to say no to my request for an informational interview or any of my other requests when I have them on the line.
Lately I have been feeling like I hide behind the technology that I use on an everyday basis. There are a lot of great resources on the Web and in many ways, these make my own life that much easier. But when I pause and pick up the phone or sit down and write something out long-hand, I feel like I focus better and the quality of what I am doing is that much better.
