You and I know that people are "very busy" these days. Many of them are so busy that they don't have the time to say a heartfelt thank you for whatever gifts they receive.
If you are one of those "very busy" people, you also know that some of it is your own making. Think about it -- You get busy when you are paying attention to something. You pay attention to something if it is meaningful to you or it's meaningful to someone or something (e.g: a cause) that matters to you. At least, that's how it should be most of the time.
What's happening today?
You are bombarded through dozens of channels (starting with your email) where others are staking a claim for something that's precious and limited -- your mindshare. In fact, there is a "daylight robbery of mindshare" in progress right now on various social media channels. Sadly, you might have been a willing victim of such robbery every single day. In many cases, you might have triggered something to cause that.
Used wrongly, social media can be an addiction of the wrong kind. The big reason for this is that you can pretty much "broadcast" ANYTHING on a social media channel and you will most "likely" get instant feedback of some kind. This might send you a wrong signal that what you posted may have been indeed important. Otherwise, why would people "engage" with that content, right?
Let me give another example: You post something from your life that's not very important. Let's say, you post about you having a coffee on a rainy day. After you post that, you move on to take care of important things such as working on your personal or professional projects. After a brief time lag, social media will catch up and bring that past mundane activity to life as people start "engaging" and sharing what they are doing on a rainy or a sunny day. Soon, you are drawn back into a discussion where you spend minutes away from your project work. Add a series of such instances and you have easily lost hours of productive time in a work week. The sad part is that you don't even notice it because you are labeling these lost hours as "engaging with social media." In reality, you are probably entertaining yourself in the name of engagement.
Social Media when used right has many benefits. However, the lazy option is to use it in a way where get a false sense of being on the center stage for brief moments. Like a drug, once you get that feeling, you want more of it and then you want some more of it. Soon, you are sucked into it so much that it is now a part of your second nature.
The result?
Something's got to give. And that something happens to be the important stuff in life -- like your projects, you being grateful for the blessings and you not having time to thank those that have made a difference in your life.
The good part is that you can make a change and use this Thanksgiving as a wake up call. For starters, you can carve out just few minutes a day to focus on being grateful and thanking those that shaped your life or those that are continuing to shape your life. It will make a world of difference.
