Why waiting somewhere doesn't bother me anymore
I'm just sitting at a Stockholm metro station waiting for the next train. As it looks, something is wrong, since the display with the info about upcoming trains is dead, and people are getting impatient.
Until December 2008, a situation like this would have annoyed me a lot. I cannot imagine anything worse that standing/sitting somewhere, just waiting (for the train/plane/bus/doctor/friends...). But in the end of 2008, I bought my first real smartphone (in my case an iPhone), and since that day, delays and unexpected waiting don't bother me anymore. Thanks to 3g/WiFi and a smartphone, there is always something you can do when you are waiting. And I don't just mean playing games or other entertaining but still time wasting stuff. I mean real work or tasks that somehow belong to your daily routine. I'm sitting here, doing what I was planning for later this evening: Writing a post for this blog. So instead, I'm doing it now, using the waiting time in a productive way, gaining spare time for later. I also could scan through my RSS feed or stream the news. Thanks to the mobile lifestyle, people are not that depending anymore on external factors/services for being productive and getting tasks done. We have gotten much more flexible, and I enjoy that a lot. Only sometimes, my first reaction to an unexpected delay is anger and irritation. A few seconds later, I usually realize that I still can use the time efficiently. Of course, everything changes if there is no internet connection or if your battery is empty. To avoid the latter, I'll now try to find an alternative way home anyway.
