Yesterday was a long and arduous day, spent at a client's site, assessing people and putting them through the paces of an Assessment Center. When I got home, I did what I usually do - check my calendar on my Android phone to review the appointments I had for the next day. To my utter horror and dismay, I could not find any of the entries in my calendar which uses the pull technology to synch events from my Google Calendar. I jumped and switched on my computer and went into my Google account to see what had happened to my calendar in the computer. Thank God, it was still there.....Phew.
Toy as much as I could, I was unable to get the calendar on the phone to sync up with the one on my computer. I tried a number of things including switching off and switching on my phone, changing the battery of my phone, uninstalling some apps on my phone that were not used for some time etc...but the damn thing would just not show the events on my calendar on my phone.
I was in a fix and hence I turned to the person that I usually turn to when I am in a such a fix...my daughter ( or my son )_...both "Gen Y"ers. True to my silent prayers, within a short period of time she comes to me with a smug smile and says, "what are you gonna give me if I fix it for you ?" My calendar was fixed and it was repopulated with all the events for this month and all future entries..... and I was back in business and breathing easy again!!
I later got to thinking about the difference in our approach to solving the problem. It was clear that while I preferred to "experiment" and fiddle around with the gadget and learn by trial and error, she went straight to the online forum for the phone, read about the experiences of people who had faced the same or similar problem and fixed it in a jiffy.
Gen Y - web savvy, techno-geeks and don't want to waste time by experimenting...quick fixes and learning from others experiences allows them to arrive at solutions faster. I asked her how she fixed it...she said, "well the calendar cache had all sorts of data which had to be cleared first before the calendar events became visible again". It was all Greek and Latin to me and I still cannot fathom why the events did not appear from the phone calendar.
But now I know the fix - thanks to my daughter! I surmised, in my limited understanding of how these things apparently work - like the slowing down of a computer because lots of "Temp" files get generated somehow...once in a while I ought to clean it up.
But wait...what else did I learn ? We can and must learn a lot from our younger generation..
"They tend to be quick to embrace new technology and it doesn't just stop at generations X and Y. It goes younger still. The old quip, "show me a house with a VCR flashing on 12 o'clock and I'll show you a house without a 12-year-old", needs to be updated for DVD & Blu-ray and the age probably needs to drop about five years".......
but you get the point: Younger people adapt really quickly to technology.
Our attitudes to learning should also change. It must be focused, and go straight to the source where we can get exactly the knowledge we seek. But more importantly we must be AWARE where such knowledge resides...we should be able to "google it" or go to some obscure FAQ stuck somewhere in the World Wide Web and most importantly be able to sort out our issues pronto with the least bit of fuss.
An article about what we can learn from other generations caught my eye and I append it for those who want to learn more...about how to learn more !!
Soo Very true.. While the older generation always believes in engineering a problem all by themselves, the younger generation doesn't want to put many efforts on an already solved problem. Why reinvent the wheel?, rather use Google to find out the solution and then spend rest of your time to do something more enjoyable is the Mantra of today's generation.
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