Convenience over Connection

A Typical Day…

Imagine a day where you don’t talk to anybody. Not a single person.

As you leave the house, you put your headphones in. Music on as you you board the train. You know it’s going to be busy where you get your coffee, so you order using an app. As you leave the train, that very same app allows you to skip the line. A few hours working and its lunchtime. You open the food delivery app and order lunch, ah yes. ‘Leave at Door’ you think - you are too busy with this project for any kind of conversation or distraction. But would it be that bad if we just said hello to a couple of those people?

In our fast paced society, there are many examples of this, from the self service check outs at the supermarket, to online shopping. We can do virtually everything on our mobile phone. It is so convenient, much faster than speaking to a person or going to a store to buy something.

More and more we are valuing these conveniences over human connections; the conscious choices that we make to erode face to face human interaction in order to save time, or because we are too ‘busy’ to talk to others.

But at what cost?

Casual Interactions

Research suggests that on a typical day we might interact with 10 - 16 people on a casual basis. The barista, our colleague in the hallway or the shop assistant in the bookstore. And it is these casual interactions that are most in danger from our pursuit of convenience. There is evidence that these interactions can help us overcome loneliness, expand our social circle and ultimately make us feel good. When we connect socially with others we are rewarded with hormones that encourage more of that activity.

I firmly believe that so many of these casual interactions turn into life changing ones, how many people met their life partner, best friend or just had a life changing experience through one of them?

Tomorrow I fly to Oslo to meet with a close friend who I met during a graduate careers event in Melbourne! An initially causal interaction on the face of it that has added so much to my life, but we all have these stories.

You too will have a story of the casual interaction that turned into something much bigger. Or maybe it didn’t, maybe it just made your day better.

How far will it go?

The point is we should reject the idea that every innovation needs to make things more convenient. Let’s dig a little deeper, let’s think about these ‘small’ interactions that are constantly being eroded by these choices. How far will it go??? Are we really that busy that we can’t talk to people?

Next week will focus on these very casual interactions that turn into something very meaningful. The idea of ‘insignificant’ interactions changing your whole life course. If you have a story of one of these interactions that changed your life, please get it touch!

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Thank you for your support, have a great rest of the week.

Cheers

Chris (chris@100coffeemovement.com)