Grad Hacker

Photo by: moriza

In life, sometimes no matter how hard you try to do good, there are those that try to undermine your efforts. Today’s culprit: The New York Times.

Since March 2008, when I originally advised people that walking fast would improve their efforts to act productive, I have been on a tireless mission to coach people on how to not only be productive, but how to also act productive. That is, put their productive habits on show so as to both inspire people and improve your perceived value.

But today, in a dirty-handed move to discourage people from such a basic display of productive multitasking, the New York Times has published a seemingly serious and scientific-study-filled article on how cell phones and walking don’t mix.  Those bastards. They put the “ir” in irresponsible; trying to prevent people from being productive with scare tactics like a shameless story of an innocent 16-year-old boy who “walked into a telephone pole while texting and suffered a concussion.” Have a heart.

It doesn’t stop there, however, they also cite an innocent “68-year-old man who fell off the porch while talking on a cellphone, spraining a thumb and an ankle and causing dizziness” and even start the whole article off with a tale of a 25 year old Tiffany, who was walking while talking to her grandmother and ran into a truck, which the Times adds “was parked in a driveway.”

Perhaps what disturbs me the most about this article, though, is that they don’t just stop at little anecdotes. They try to add science. That hits too close to home. They cite work by a graduate student at Ohio State, which finds that “slightly more than 1,000 pedestrians visited emergency rooms in 2008 because they got distracted and tripped, fell or ran into something while using a cellphone to talk or text.” Who is this grad student whose research is making people act less productive?! I need to give him a call, perhaps I’ll do it on my afternoon walk.

So what do you do when someone tries to compromise your life’s work? You fight propaganda with propaganda. So I am writing this post to encourage all of you to talk, text, play iPhone games, even set your home DVR with DirectTV all from your phone, while walking! Show people that you are too busy to walk and do nothing else at the same time!  Check your Gmail! Text your friends! Read papers with a smartphone pdf reader! Even read the New York Times itself! But walking and texting is such a basic productivity maneuver, I feel bad leaving it at that. Try more impressive productivity displays such as biking and talking, or better yet, biking and texting (If this is outlawed where you are reading, then do not do this. Grad Hacker is not responsible for you breaking the law. Breaking the law is not productive.). Whatever you do, don’t listen to the haters, and make sure you act productive.

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Find the full list of How to Act Productive posts here.