The Search for Unity

Over the course of the past few months -- as my schedule has become increasingly stressed -- I've found myself on a great search to unify all my ... well ... everything.

I have about a dozen e-mail accounts. Of those, I check 6 of them multiple times a day. I have 4 schedule managers: one at work, one at home, one on the web, and one on my phone. Speaking of which, I have 3 phone lines: one home, one work, and one cell. On my cell, I make regular use of SMS, and also access various instant messenger services. And don't even get me started on the news, blogs and social networking sites that I try to stay on top of. My iGoogle portal page has more links than an eBay search for "new."

I'm one of the most connected and accessible people on the planet. The problem lies in the fact that it takes me an entire day just to check my own status. By the time I figure out who contacted me for what, I don't have the motivation left to return a call.

My ultimate goal is to have everything at my fingertips, and preferably through my cell phone. I bought it for this very reason, yet I seem to lack the time to get it configured to do the things I bought it to do. And to add to that fact, nothing natively wants to talk to anything else. My phone won't natively sync to Lotus Notes (which, I must say, is one of the all-time crappiest groupware solutions known to man -- so of course, it's corporate mandated), so I need a third-party app to act as a conduit. In order to check all my mail from one location, I need to forward mail to a central account, which means configuring mail filters so that spam doesn't get forwarded as well. Ah... Spam. Between 500-2,000 per day. You think I'm joking. I'm not. And people wonder why I tell them not to bother e-mailing me.

I'm hoping it storms something fierce this weekend. I need a good excuse to stay indoors and sort this mess out.

While I'm at it, I should probably add that the only reason I'm blogging this on blogger.com is because I can get to it from one quick click of the mouse from the iGoogle main page -- without conifiguring another link to another service for which I'll have to remember yet another password.