Something that I deal with regularly is the fact that Technology is always changing. The buttons move around; the functions change; our programs go in and out of existence. Change is a part of the game. As a technologist, I accept this as a part of doing business, but it always amazes me how many people don’t like it when things change. To a degree, I get it; having to learn a new way of doing something every six months or so can get frustrating and time-consuming, but it can be a good thing in most cases.
1) Change is Unavoidable – I always laugh at shows where the way that they have been doing things is how it’s been done “for thousands of years.” Really? Do you have someone dragging a wagon or swinging the Sam hammer for thousands of years? I get that in some. Cases the processes might not vary that much, but not change at all? Sorry, I don’t buy it. Certainly, in our societies that have stretched across the centuries, there have been changes in how things are done with nearly every generation. Some big, some small, but changes all the same. Technology has made it so that these changes can go much faster and be much more drastic than before, but people have always changed things. It’s how we’re built.
2) Change is Inevitable – Have you ever had the same piece of Technology for 20 or more years? I’m not talking about types of Technology (like the pen as an example), but I’m saying the same thing (the Bic pen you had in high school you’re still using) 20 years on? I doubt it. Your stuff wears down, it wears out or becomes useless, and something better always comes along. There is a better pen with cooler ink (or whatever) which makes it so that you want to change what you’re doing now to something else. The same is true for hardware and software. When I started writing this blog, I used a Laptop and a program called Evernote. I still could, by the way, but I changed both of those things, so now what I’m doing is sitting in a chair writing on my iPad in a program called Notion.
3) Change is good for the soul – There are very few things in life that don’t break down and need replacing. Whether it be clothes or Technology or furniture, stuff needs to change every once in a while. I fully grant you that sometimes there is an adjustment period when the change happens, but once that happens, I know that I feel so much better about the change. I have dealt with people who have been resistant to changing out their devices because “While it’s not great, I know how to make it work good enough.” I find it hilarious because, almost without fail, there is some nervousness about swapping over to something new, but once the swap occurs, they are so much happier and productive.
There are some people who love change (I should know, typically I’m one of them), and for those people, the ever-changing technology landscape is no big deal—nearly the cost of doing business. I do understand the point of view of the people who are less interested in change. Lots of the time (from a surface level), some of the changes can seem superficial and unnecessary. I can’t tell you the number of times iTunes moved a button, and my wife would be pretty angry that she would have to figure everything out again. The fact of the matter is that (from a software point of view) making these changes can improve an inefficiency, and sometimes they will do a bug fix as a part of the changes. From a hardware point of view, changing your hardware can give you a better camera, a screen with more pixels, or even more RAM, making working with a device that much faster. Change is good, so it’s important for people to embrace it and not fear it.
How do you deal with change?
Let me know in the comments section below. If you like this blog post and want to see more, you can follow me on Social Media (LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @jasonlovefiles) or Subscribe to my blog to get new content delivered directly to your mailbox.