Does technology actually save you time?

Today marks the end of my first week back at work after nine amazing months of maternity leave. To say it’s been a tough week is most certainly the understatement of the year and I’m sure is unsurprising to most working mums. What I’m sure will also come as an unsurprise is that the one thing desperately lacking in my life right now is Time.

Which is what fascinates me when I’m watching things like Downton Abbey (after my swooning and outrage and gasping at the storyline, of course). For instance, how long does it take to clean that house without a vacuum and Mr Muscle? How can the baby sleep without a Grobag? How do you achieve skin like that without Clinique? Or look so coiffed without the GHD? To do any of these things the old-fashioned way would just take ages – did they not have things to do?

I’ll admit you have to be able to use it properly if you want technology to actually save you time. I am fascinated by the fact that my washing machine can be pre-set to come on at 4am, but I’ve never figured out how to do it successfully and always end up with a stagnant pile of linen that’s been sitting in the machine since midnight.

Syncing my email and phone address books sounds extremely useful but one always ends up overwriting the other and I have to send an embarrassed text asking ‘Sorry, who is this?’ back to people like my mum.

But then, on my very first day back in the office my other half texted me a photo of Little Bean (who was sent home from nursery with a tummy bug on her very first day – must be a record, right?) playing with a new toy bus he’d bought her. Instantly my day was a million times brighter. And that, quite simply, is why I love technology.