Two respected and dependable advisors to our firm have told us that any marketing effort should include connecting with peers, colleagues and other potential business growth resources via an internet site known as “LinkedIn”. In addition it is recommended that we establish “Facebook” pages, also on the internet, as another means of utilizing the power of cyberspace to spread our name.

We do strive to keep abreast of technology; we have a contract with Portland Computer Copy, Inc. to support, maintain, and upgrade our systems; and when it’s necessary, we willingly learn new software programs (despite the aggravation!) We subscribe to Virtual Office News – a monthly ezine (an on-line-only newsletter) that consistently seeks out and evaluates the newest products and websites available for improving our financial planning practices.

But computing technology, for all its wonderful qualities, increasingly seems to exist on some frenetic plane and frankly this effort to stay current sometimes feels like we’re participants in an endless and virtual cyber race. It is said that computing power doubles every two years, and that has most certainly given rise to the increased rate of productivity - a business statistical measure – over the last several decades.

Productivity and its partner, efficiency, are key to getting things done. Few would argue that these improvements have not had positive effects on our lives and on society in general; and all of these advances create important opportunities for communicating – for instance, even with loved ones in a war zone. Perhaps it is the summer season, though, that gets us thinking about salt and sand and sunshine and with it the memory of lazy carefree days; of sandals and surf, hammocks and fiction, picnics and baseball... Perhaps it is the summer season that calls us to step back from the hectic-ness of modern technology - even for just an afternoon – and reclaim a few simple hours. It might just be time to leave the BlackBerry at home.

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.
- John Lubbock