Busy Bachelor Syndrome: To iPhone or Not to iPhone?

About author / Josh Gunn

Bachelor chef; southern cooking; mixologist; university professor. Josh's recipes will delight (and sometimes terrify) you.

Last night, I was trying to catch up on all the work that had piled up because I was out of town for five days. In the midst of exhaustion, I realized that I was totally on auto-pilot, and then wondered: how the heck did I get so busy to become so mindless? Lately it seems like I am rushing to get everything accomplished, and that such rushing has become so routine I am not thinking about the reasons for the rushing themselves.

I readily confess that the nice thing about having a live-in lover or spouse is that the two of you force each other to keep on track, to divide the labor (or perhaps even more delightfully, to share a two-income account). We single guys must keep track of ever-dizzying schedules, meeting commitments, tee-times (well, some of us), project deadlines, and pet feeding schedules all on our little lonesomes, and presumably with no help from mother.

To assist with these tasks, I was given a "day planner" when I graduated from high school. I used it for the duration of college, until I got to graduate school. Then, I bought the equivalent of a "palm pilot," which I used for about a year until I finally threw it on the ground and stomped on it in frustration. My anti-planner self was born then, and has flourished ever since.

Typically I keep a master calendar of to-dos on a bulletin board in my office. I print out each month from a program that prints out month calendars. So for about six years, this has served me well. But my dizzying lifestyle recently, and a missed appointment today (which was pretty embarrassing) has led me to think about perhaps going back to a planner. And more specifically, moving to a Blackberry or iPhone or something similar, something that has some sort of calendar on it with an appointment (and birthday) reminder feature.

Here's my dilemma: I am addicted to email. I long for it, though I'm not as good as responding to it as I am to reading it. And I worry if I get, say, an iPhone, I'll carry my addition into restaurants. I have been out with friends who have these devices, and I can see the longing in their eyes, the desperation, the powerful desire to answer their email right that minute. Indeed, I went out on a first date not too terribly long ago when my date would periodically check her iPhone text messages and emails while we were sitting at various bar tables and bars throughout the evening. She was very hot, but apparently I was not---or at least, I couldn't compete with the txt lng, the OMGs and TTYLs (there wasn't a second date). So, will my desire to be more organized only fuel my email addition and public displays of rude-ity?

So there's my dilemma, dear readers, and I entreat your advice: do your Blueberries and iPhones really help you organize yourselves? Do they enhance your email addictions? And if they do, what strategies have you devised to keep yourself from giving into the addiction? I entreat your advice!