Digital Pings to Primp and Preen

Is it just me, or do you find the ping factor excessively annoying? Let me explain: Throughout the day, as I plug away at the office, I’m constantly interrupted by different types of digital notifiers calling for my attention: email alerts, meeting reminders, Google alerts, IM messages, RSS feed updates, incoming VoIP calls, virus scans, Facebook updates, and even cell phone calls and text messages.

I believe that's the entire list—I might be forgetting something. The point is, my computer sometimes feels like the 4^th of July, with windows and pop ups blanketing my screen without care or compunction.

Every day, I am forced to cull through these and separate the urgent from the important from the remind-me-later, and then trash the thanks-but-not-necessary and the waste-of-my-time. I find this irksome, since it’s hard to focus on a single task at any given moment and it makes me feel like I’m treading water instead of getting any work done.

Amidst the madness, however, there’s the one-off, totally inspirational, captivating or useful blog post or e-mail that makes it all worthwhile. And if it wasn’t for computer pings, I would never remember anyone’s birthday, to be totally honest.

As I uncork the most urgent pings and follow through on these, I become decidedly glad that my computer keeps track of my obligations for me, and a sense of accomplishment settles in. After all, there’s no way I would remember everything on my own. Sure, an agenda could help I guess, but it feels crass and I would treat it askance. I need digital pings to remind me of my day-to-day commitments, to clip away at the useless, and to keep me from dropping the ball.

So what about you? Can any of you claim you don’t depend on digital pings to get through you day?