"Yes, that's right, one phone has SMS only, one phone has EVDO only, neither have voice, though both are linked to the same account..."



It was 1am and I was sitting in a hallway on a payphone at JFK, having just landed from flight starting many hours earlier in Los Angeles. I was using the payphone to call into an 800 line, a conference call number the tech guys had set up moments earlier for me so I could actually speak to someone and try and get an idea what the hell was going on with my phones. And to make it that much more interesting, prior to this call we'd been communicating almost exclusively through Facebook - as I was able to use the mobile features through my one device that EVDO was working with.

They'd shipped me the new phone a few days earlier to check out some new features on it but all hell had broken loose when I tried to add it to my account. Rather than just transferring the services to the new device, it had split them between two devices, losing some along the way. No one involved in any level of the problem solving had ever seen anything like that before. I'd just finished reading 'Crooked Little Vein' on the flight and was wondering just how much of the protagonist's shit for luck had rubbed off on me.

"Crazy how missing this one communications link feels so debilitating..."

That's what one of the guys said half way through the chaos and it got me thinking. One link? How about the only link!

My problem previously was having too many communications options. I had several phone numbers, countless e-mails addresses, and a handful of SNS accounts that I used regularly. Every second I was checking something else, and consolidation has been a major effort in reducing that. I now have one phone number and all e-mail and SNS accounts forward to my gmail account so I only have one thing to check. And I have that all running to one mobile device. This is great for having less to worry about, but clearly there were other problems I hadn't thought about. What happens when the link to that one place where all of your communication is going on breaks? How much redundancy is too much is just good planning?

Tim Ferriss has talked about how much time we spend trying to make sure problems don't arise, much more time than it would actually take to put out those fires as they pop up. No longer worrying about preventing things from going wrong frees you up a lot of time to do other, non-worrying kinds of things but sitting on that sitting on that airport floor juggling several devices and trying to take step by step reprogramming directions from the support on the other end of the payphone - i was kind of wishing I'd taken a few extra precautions. But what would those even be? Having two phones with independent service is kind of insane. And I see a psychotherapist on a weekly basis so I'm pretty comfortable saying that.

The problem was finally isolated and corrected so I only had to skate around this crazy situation for about 48 hours but still has me questioning things. How much do you rely on a single device? How would you cope if all the sudden that stopped working? What parts of your life would be unaffected, and what parts would need serious readjusting?

(photo by seanaes )