Overwhelmed by new technology? Learn to cope

You may think today’s world is dominated by technology but I wonder what it will be like in 20 years’ time.

Will the children who already spend every waking hour tapping messages into their hand-held device finish up in a fantasy world full of virtual dinner parties and online weddings, or will they rediscover the pleasures of eating as a family and handwritten letters?

Whatever the future holds I have come in for less criticism since I bought Alex a BlackBerry. It is well used and stays by her side but Alex never allows emails and text messages to take over her life — I will try to follow her example.

Q I keep hearing about the four-hour week phenomenon. Some bright spark thinks it’s possible to get rich with almost no effort. Is this actually possible? Is it damaging to preach theories like this?

A The term four-hour week comes from the cover of a best-selling business book in which author Timothy Ferris tells the story of how he increased his income 12 times by cutting his working week from 80 hours to four. He discovered how to make money by hardly lifting a finger through outsourcing to 'virtual assistants’ and only checking emails once a day. He turned Parkinson’s Law on its head by completing all his work in the minimum possible time. The Four-Hour Week is such a great title — it sold more than 1.3million copies.

At first glance the concept sounds appealing but I can’t help being a little bit peeved by perfect people. This four-hour week man is now another on my list of executives who appear too good to be true. From time to time I come across a seriously successful superman who seems to run a great business while living life to the full. But I wonder how anyone can socialise with A-list celebrities by night but be back in the office immaculately dressed at 7.30am after a session with their personal trainer to keep fit for the fortnightly triathlons. These role models have a perfect holiday home by the sea, four well-behaved children and a golf handicap of three: I find the whole package pretty irritating.

I prefer people with the ability to make a few mistakes, like me, mixing making money with a few day-to-day disasters — leaving a diary on the train, putting petrol in a diesel car and spilling Costa Coffee down my shirt. I don’t envy Timothy Ferris. There is a limit to how much time I want to spend on the golf course or tennis court and if I was on holiday for most of the year, it wouldn’t feel like a holiday.

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