Last week, my friend Samantha had requested me to send her a video of myself doing something. I shot the video with my smart phone, and then I tried sending it to her.

At that very moment, my head went into a complete blank, I didn’t know how to send it. It had been a while since I’d sent a video that was longer than 15 seconds, and not through Instagram. This was a 3 minute video, therefore the file was larger, and I needed to send it via email.

Then I did what I thought I would never needed to do, I asked her “Uhm, how do I send this video to your email?”

At that very moment, the feeling I had felt perhaps best resembled that of our baby boomer parents asking us “How do you turn the computer on?”

Up until about 5 years ago, I was a bit of a mobile phone savvy person. I’d tested out many phones, and was reasonably well versed with what was on the market at the time. My knowledge came from spending lots of time with my friend Andrew, a mobile phone guru. You have a mobile question, shoot it his way, and he’s got an answer. I was his little apprentice of mobile phones. I remember one day we were chatting, and we’d laughed about how corporate companies would spend a ridiculous amount of money to bring someone in just to teach their VP/Director/Some Big Shot how to use a Blackberry to write and send an email. I thought to myself “That’s so crazy, why not just take a little time and explore, and you’ll figure it out.”

Then something happened to me. I popped a couple of kids out. Did you know that raising kids takes time? I did, or so I thought I did. I did because you hear about it, but I didn’t know it, at least of its full extent until it actually happened.

When I had my first child, it was pretty hectic for the first year. I tried to keep up with my love of mobile phones, but the more you pay attention to a thing, the more your infant child wants it, so I had to hide my phone from her all the time, and would only take it out when she was sleeping. But when she went to bed, it was my time to go to bed shortly after. Well, I had about a 2 hour window, but that time went mostly into cleaning the mess in the house that the baby and I made during the day. When she was a toddler, things got a little bit easier. I slowly went back into my love for mobile phones, and still kept up with some of the gadgets on the market. Then our second kid happened, and this time around, I definitely had no more time.

This explains why often times, when I was in my 20s, I would encounter from those that was then my slightly older generation of co-workers (which is where I am, and I think you as well are presently), the ones that are higher up in the corporate ladder, with family, with very little time, that comes to me and ask “Do you know how to do such-and-such? Can you just quickly show it to me?” The word “quickly” was always used, because if it took more than a couple of minutes, it was too long. Time is precious, very precious.

It’s not due to laziness. It’s not due to being not-the-sharpest-pencil-around. It’s not due to an unwillingness to learn. It’s not due to lack of patience either. It is because there’s not the time to learn it. The amount of time it took to learn something, that time was being used towards something that’s more of a priority for them.

It makes sense.

Now I understand why big corporate companies spend the few hundred bucks in bringing someone in to tutor their VP/Director/Some Big Shot on how to use what seems to be a very simple device. It’s only simple if you actually have the time to explore and test things out.

Time is precious, time is money. It’s worth it to spend that tutor money, especially if the time it took for you to familiarize your phone, you lost out on a million dollar project. That loss could potentially affect your paycheck. Nowadays, instead of giggling, rolling my eyes, and being a snob, I agree that a couple of hundred bucks for the tutor is absolutely worth it.

As for me, at the moment, I don’t have time either. Sorry, let me rephrase that, I don’t care to make the time for it, as it’s not my priority. Making sure that our two girls are growing up with food and shelter, and a little bit extra like arts, sports, and culture is a priority. I’m the one now approaching some young adult asking “Do you know how to do such-and-such? Can you just quickly show it to me?”

Mobile phones, you lose for now. However, I do think when my girls are old enough to start experimenting with mobile technology, I’ll be back in the game with them, and perhaps I’ll introduce them to uncle Andrew, I’m sure he’ll have a few tricks up his sleeve.