Get Things Done! (with the help of technology)

I wanted the title of this blog post to have been "Get Things Done!" with a subtitle of "with the help of technology" in really teeny, tiny letters... like font size 0.001tiny. I was going to do that to hint at my personal view of what technology should be -- technology (tools, gadgets, software) should be designed to help us be more productive in our tasks (either of the work or personal variety) and be as un-intrusive and easy-to-use as possible. Ideally.

Some technologies achieve this seamless integration into our lives so much so that when they break down, we're absolutely lost without them. Can you remember the last time you went a day (let alone a week) without going on the internet? It was pretty bad wasn't it? What about the last time you went a day without access to any kind of vehicle (a car, a bicycle, the bus, the train, the subway) and you had to walk to work or wherever it was that you had to get to? I'll bet that was pretty brutal too.

The truth that the best technologies are ones that are so convenient to use that they become a part of our daily routines. We drive, ride a bike or take public transportation to get to work on a daily basis (unless you work from home... lucky bast... but I digress) and the internet has become so prevalent that we Google almost everything we ever need to know -- so much so that "to Google" is now a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/google). The best technologies free up our time and some mental memory space for other things.

I'll freely admit that I'm a techie at heart -- I love technology; if I can find a piece of software or a device that will help me work smarter and more efficiently, I'll buy it; I'll bring an iPad with me to meetings so that I can take notes and have it synced up with my desktop just because it allows me to recall more information than the guy next to me; I'll install plugins and extensions to my development environment to minimize the amount of "legwork" I need to do to get things done when I program. 

Technology, should at its root be able help us work more efficiently, free up our time to do other things and be as un-intrusive as possible.