However we didn’t bother you with another mail or SMS notifying you about how awesome the New Year is. And we did right by doing that.

We are so connected

There are so many ways you can reach me. You can hit ProjectHeena team on Facebook, Tweet directly to us, send an SMS, meet at any Startup event, WhatsApp any of us on our phone etc etc. While this seems to be a world of hyper connections, we often realize it’s a hyper-disturbed world too.

Rewind life a few years back and you realize that you had to actually meet someone to greet someone. At least till last decade call them personally and waste/utilize your 2 minutes giving them your greetings. Today things are all automated. Hit a message on WhatsApp and it will send to all your contacts or write it on your wall or twitter stream hoping that it will reach to the ones who care. Will it reach all? Absolutely not! But you are relieved from the burden of wishing all of your contacts.

There are more contacts but less engagement

We are now utilizing the same 2 minutes but reaching more people to greet. At the face value it’s a huge ROI but in reality those 2 minutes are utter waste. Anything more than 2 lines in SMS for new year simply gets cleaned off without reading. These messages as we all know are not even personalized.

I received 90 New Year messages and unfortunately attempted checking a few. For most of them

• The latest message was Happy New year
• The previous one was – Merry Christmas
• further back – Happy Diwali
• and back – Happy Dashera …..

The list goes on. The person wishing me these greeting only contacts me on an occasions like these. We never talk, never interact, and never collaborate. All we are doing is spamming. Is this of any use?

More connected = More disturbed

On the flip side we are hyper productive to being disturbed. Every single beep on the phone means we run and reach out to check who has messaged us. As if some dear one has had an accident and your act of checking the message will save their life.

Emails can be left unread but not sms? Till the time you don’t check them you just feel so much disconnected. There are hardly any important messages that you receive but you won’t realize this till the time you face a situation where you have forgot your mobile back home.

Is this what we really want to achieve

We as social animals understood connection. The power of collaboration and the awesomeness of working in a team. However the technology that made it all simple; is making it so simple that it can easily be a dumb decision.

If you want to collaborate.
Do so by engaging the person.
Don’t message, Call.
Don’t Call, Meet.
Don’t just meet, Care.

That’s how relationships were made. Technology can’t change the DNA of our being.

This year think about connecting to more people not in quantity but in quality. Connect and impact deeply. You don’t need the whole world to make yourself a huge success; just a few crazy ones are enough to become early adopters. Meet them, greet them and nurture them.

And by the way …. Happy new year …. to all…