Too Much Contact

Many people were surprised to see that I went back to my high-paced, competitive and stressful day job as a marketing director after being declared free of cancer. It’s usually customary to make big changes in your life after surviving the intense treatments, prompting some to live more on their terms. The thing is, though, I love my job. Also, and more importantly, this is Honolulu. There is a hefty price tag to live here, and that isn’t going to go away. But if I am in a position to make an impact however large or small in the community and get paid for it, then I’m in the right job.

And I can control how much I allow work to stress me out. I’ve chosen to only allow my work to bring me joy.

But in order to truly do that, I have to take steps to minimize stress by simplifying certain tasks.

My job comes with a number of small-but-huge perks, including a company phone. Unlimited talk, text and data — all without the struggle to pay for it.

I remember when I first started working with the company in the summer of 2008 and they handed me a BlackBerry and assigned me my phone number and email. The device already had more than 2,000 contacts from the previous owner, which I kept. Then I imported my personal Gmail and synced my contacts with LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and my Outlook work email. My contact count went up to more than 6,000.

While it’s useful to have that many contacts, it’s also proven to be a bit of a nuisance at times. If I am scrolling to select a contact, my phone will freeze. When I do get to the right name, there will be three or four entries for one person — and I’ll have to guess which one is for the email and which has the phone number. When I switched my work device from a BlackBerry to an iPhone, the contact situation only escalated. I now have more than 13,000 contacts.

If your contact list is similarly out of hand, linking contacts is one way to deal with it. But it might not work for those with many duplicate contacts. I’ve tried a lot of the free applications, but after locking up and crashing all of them, I decided this service is something worth paying for.

For $2.99, the Cleaner Pro app has proven to be a great spend. It took me a half-hour to merge more than 1,600 duplicate contacts. Plus, I felt comfortable allowing the app to do its thing, seeing that it backs everything up before getting started.

Chipping away at small details like this makes my day-to-day work life even more enjoyable. It’s the little things, really.

@SUPERCW

CHRISTA WITTMIER IS “SUPERCW” ON ALL SOCIAL MEDIA. FIND HER ON SNAPCHAT, SOUNDCLOUD, TWITTER, VINE AND INSTAGRAM. BY NIGHT, SHE IS KNOWN AS DJ SUPERCW. BY DAY, SHE IS KNOWN AS SENIOR MARKETING DIRECTOR FOR YOUNG’S MARKET COMPANY OF HAWAII. HER NIGHTLIFE BLOG SUPERCITY RUNS EVERY WEDNESDAY ON HONOLULUPULSE.COM