10 reasons for not keeping your instant messenger on automatic sign in

I heard that instant messengers slow down the computers. I can’t realize if it is true or not, but I can tell for sure that they slow down humans. Why? Let’s picture one day of work in 10 steps:

1. In the morning, you start your computer, your programs load, including the instant messenger, which signs you in automatically

2. A bunch of online friends start saying ‘hi’ to you

3. You spend about 30 minutes replying and having short conversations

4. You decide to start working, so you change your status from ‘available’ to ‘busy’, hoping that you’ll get to do your task

5. The ‘busy’ tag acts like the fly-paper for the flies: it’s like all buddies in your list decided to ask you something very important and urgent, in the same moment

6. You lose focus, jump in a few conversations with other ‘busy’ buddies and before you notice, one hour already passed

7. Convinced that you want to finish your job before lunch time, you switch the messenger on ‘invisible’

8. No more messages coming; you focus on your work for about 10 minutes or so, when you get a popup window with the message ‘Hey, are you there?’. It is from one of your buddies, who usually keeps his messenger on invisible, so he is checking on the others, knowing that there it is possible to find them, even though they appear offline

9. You ignore him, but there is no escape: a new message from him comes in, with some funnies for you to see when you’ll log in; two more ‘invisible’ friends ask you if you are there: you ignore them, too, but you cannot focus on your task at all, surrounded by this ‘invisible’ crowd of so called ‘friends’ or ‘buddies’

10. A message from your girlfriend arrives (she knows that you might be on invisible, so she tries to see if you are there). As your morning is already compromise, you answer her and spend about 30 minutes chatting with her, hoping she would forget that you spent your Sunday at tennis with your friends, instead of taking her out for a walk.

This was your morning, now it’s the lunch break. You’ll have to speed up in the afternoon to finish your jobs for today.

Most important of all, by the end of the day you deactivate the instant messenger’s option to sign in automatically at computer start up. Tomorrow you’ll have the most productive morning at all! On your way home, you realize that tomorrow is Saturday, so the pleasure of a quiet, nice morning work is postponed until Monday.