Immediacy

"controlling immediacy is massively important or we could pretty much exist and expire almost side by side if we take this thinking to its logical conclusion." [Charles Frith in response to a remark by Mike Rohde via 'Cross the Breeze.]

I've been reflecting upon that comment globally - the impact that immediacy has on work and life, for example.

1. You get to the office, boot up your computer and you are assailed by several messages that demand immediate attention.

Now just because the tool and the delivery allow those messages to arrive to you quickly, does it mean that they are important? Stay with me here, I'm not being literal. Are they all of the same import? Does sending an email with an exclamation point command that someone drop everything and attend to your needs or those of that request?

I've had instances when the fact that you were sent an email on a certain date, at a certain time, meant you had accepted to work on something - job done by the sender, no follow up required. Up to you to figure out what else you need.

Is fast email deserving of attention if it's not brief, to the point, well written, considerate, an interruption? Maybe there is no expectation dictated by others, maybe it's self imposed. Why? Is it because you want to keep up? With whom, for what? 

2. You attend an event like SxSWi - everyone is going to be there, see and be seen. You don't want to miss anything. And if you say that's not the case too loudly, thou protest too much.

Why? Because everyone is meeting, greeting, connecting, documenting, seeing and being seen, as much as possible. Ok, maybe there is also another element at play here besides our desire to follow the crowd, to be as cool as the coolest (do we still say cool? Is it in the same annals with douche bags? Thanks, Gary Vaynerchuk).

The other mechanism at play is that when we share expertise with others, when we record the fact that we know something for someone else to see it, we enhance our self-image. If you think about this, you will probably see another reason why social media is taking hold. More people are figuring out that it feels good to share.

So sharing with others may well be one out of both desire to follow the crown (herd trigger) and that to be seen as an expert (self-esteem trigger). Who wants to take that for a spin?

3.You lose the ability to wait, savor, be still, think through, listen, be patient, be understanding - be. There is this immediacy expectation that is almost impossible to resist. You have to do.

As a consequence, you're too busy to think through projects at work, approach buying decisions at home with a rush (although I'm pretty sure right now things have slowed down a lot), even how you spend your time looses perspective (this includes social media).

Think about the consequences of this point for making decisions. While placating the short term gratification beast, you may be playing Russian roulette with your long term welfare. Immediacy has its advantages, but it also creates diminishing returns. It depends on how you take it.

Marketing has many immediacy moments. The retail display by the cash register, the offer that comes with direct response, calls to action, FUD tactics (fear, uncertainty, doubt). They all capitalize on the fact that once you create an expectation, the gratification needs to follow. They say we buy for one of three reasons - love, hope, fear. Emotion lives in immediacy.

Is immediacy always within reach and never achieved? Is immediacy the future that is never present?

Maybe this is not what Charles intended to say, but it struck a chord, and I wanted to explore this conversation with you. What are some examples of immediacy in your life? Do you feel the need to control immediacy or do you feel controlled by its rush?

I'm grateful that Mike could slow us down enough to appreciate this moment - and his work.

[see all the sketches by Mike Rohde]

Comments

[Fran Stephenson]

This is a very thoughtful column. We are all feeling and experiencing the outcomes of the "immediacy" generation. I sometimes hear the expression "your lack of planning is not my emergency" implying that everything in the workload is immediate. Some things are immediate but good....online bill payment is my favorite example of good. Other immediate needs are definitely in the too controlled and rushed category.

[Carolyn Ann]

Life comes at us far to quickly.

Stopping to consider what is important, and being reasonable in our requests can go a long way to keeping the stress to an acceptable level.

And now, I'm going to go play with a cat. :-)

Carolyn Ann

[Carolyn Ann]

I wish there was an "edit" feature for a comment!

That should be "life comes at us far *too* quickly. Oops. :-) <-Embarrassed smiley.

Carolyn Ann

[Bruce Christensen]

I find myself chasing my tail because of how fast things happen in this new communication space...
That is sometimes hard on this old dog!

[Peter]

I certainly feel the avarice seduction of the immediate. But I am working on some defenses:

First, I consider time as a practical tool to co-ordinate my life with the lives of others. It's practical but ultimately delusional. I only feel immediacy when the healthy co-ordination of life is threatened.

Second, I frame my experience of the world as watching things grow and transform(compose) and die (decompose). I watch the change of things and not the time. My hope is that I can then move( mind, behavior all that is my being) at an appropriate "speed" given the context (or composition) - present but without immediacy (perhaps the ultimate control of immediacy).

Co-incidentally, while a go I wrote an article on this point - It was called the bear and the salmon - the moral of the story was that the bear who moves around trying to keep up with the speed of the river will always end up exhausted and hungry.

I guess what I'm thinking is simply to notice that time is not on your wrist but in your head. We are time.

[Angela Connor]

I am dealing with point 1 in serious way at the moment. Now that the online community I launched manage has grown to 11,000+ members I am really working hard to manage expectations in terms of email responses. Early on, it was easy for me to respond quickly. Heck, i was growing a new community and anxious to gain momentum. So, I provided this insane level of personalized customer service that is killing me now and that I have had to scale back on quite a bit. It is such an issue for me that I wrote a chapter called Managing Expectations in my new book, 18 Rules of Community Engagement. We have to get a handle on expectations for our own sanity. The thing is, we set them so we can control them if we really want to.

[gianandrea facchini]

Once there was a song called Time is on our side. Today it seems a bit outdated. I believe that speed is not necessarily always good and that we should use tech tools to support us and not to turn us into slave to the immediacy.

[Tom Asacker]

I hate to point it out, but it's ego and desire that drive this sense of immediacy.

Great post, btw.

[Valeria Maltoni]

@Fran - your thoughtful comment reminded me of a post I read at O'Reilly about distractions and deliberate pauses. it seems to me that there are parallels.

@Carolyn Ann - when things happen to quickly, we take them for granted, too. Recently I saw a video interview where someone was marveling at how we are not awed by the fact that we can fly in the sky, but insists on noticing that they have a middle seat on the plane :)

@Bruce - slowing down is a good technique to handle stress.

@Peter - I'm a big fan of your concept of composition, which I do call context (semantics!). "We are time." I need to remember that. Thank you.

@Angela - the issue of scale is one we all share after we build anything from small to medium, to large. Success in business requires that we build more robust processes to track it all... and then the processes end up dictating how we do things. I will circle back with you on the community building challenge, if I may. I'd like to tell that story.

@Gianandrea - I think it's part habit, too. We get used to doing things a certain way.

@Tom - indeed. Thank you for the kind words.

[Taylor Davidson]

I have a theory that right now competition is focusing our attention on immediacy, in part because it's easier, but also because it's part of our human nature; but that soon, as our ability to publish and distribute at scale becomes even easier (automatic, even), that the returns to being "first" will diminish to the point where we shift more toward being "best", in the full sense and range of meanings that best can mean.

I'm hoping we return to valuing wisdom over knowledge, reflection over response. It's still a hope at the moment :)

[Mike Rohde]

Thanks for the SXSWi 09 SKetchnote mention! :-)