PC Pro – Issue 345, July 2023
English | 132 pages | pdf | 65.19 MB
Welcome at PC Pro Magazine Issue 345, July 2023
Stop. Breathe. Just for a moment, switch off your phone, ignore the itch of social media, cast all thoughts of upcoming deadlines aside. Is the sun shining? Why not step outside for a few
and enjoy that spring sunshine?
Don’t worry, I’m not about to start humming a yogic mantra. These are merely the thoughts that sprang to mind after I asked others what they’d do with their spare time if they could magically work 20% faster. You can read what our contributors said on p8 and fellow readers’ responses on p25.
Most people said they would switch to a four-day week, but I think this would come as a culture shock. Over the past couple of decades, it feels like we’ve lost the ability to stop and reflect. We’re so busy filling our days with tiny dopamine hits and deadlines that we see any moment not checking social media as wasted. Even our once relaxing social lives become full of tiny demands. Ooh, I must take a photo of that for Facebook/Instagram/ WhatsApp. Like, retweet, share. We all have our own addictions.
My personal addictions keep on growing. I have a daily date with Wordle, Quordle and Octordle. I subscribe to the New York Times games app, so in downtime I’m often struggling to reach Queen Bee status on its daily Spelling Bee. Then there’s Duolingo, with its gamification technique pushing me to a daily streak of over 100. Yet I still appear to be spazzatura at speaking Italian.
Then there are my work addictions. As if editing PC Pro Magazine wasn’t enough, I’ve committed to writing a book later this year and can already feel the weight of those deadlines. Often, I feel like I’m running at full pelt simply to keep up with the treadmill of demands.
There’s only one time I’m free of this pull, and that’s when I’m playing tennis. No technological distractions: just me, an opponent, a racquet and a ball. There’s a simple beauty to it, unsullied by nagging screens, that takes me back to a childhood when phones had cords.
I realise that many people read PC Pro PDF Magazine on a tablet, but for me there’s no replacement for the printed page. It’s the same reason I still use a pen and paper when writing my daily to-do list, despite the obvious benefits of Todoist and its ilk. In my family, we even use a paper diary for events.
So, why am I talking about this? The answer, ironically, is our ten-page article on working faster. As part of our research for the feature, Barry and
I trawled through the changelogs of Microsoft’s Office software, and it made me realise how much I had missed in my rush to get things done. Not just the new tools, many of which our feature highlights, but the multitude of tools contained within the software that help us work more quickly. But which, with nary a hint of irony, we ignore because we’re too busy rushing to finish the latest task. Which is then simply replaced with another task. My suggestion? Stop. Breathe. Switch off your phone (it’s possible, trust me). And if you want to read that article, great. But I won’t blame you if you stand in your garden, close your eyes and enjoy the feel of the sun against your skin.
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