PricewaterhouseCoopers partner Brian Cullinan is having a rough week. One of two accountants entrusted with overseeing the ballot process at the Oscars, he’s been identified as the man responsible for handing the wrong envelope to the best picture presenters, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway, which led to the now infamous Oscar debacle for the ages.
As if the mistake itself wasn’t bad enough, Cullinan’s Twitter account revealed that he was tweeting photos of the event just moments before the grand gaffe. As described in this Washington Post article:
“He [Cullinan] acknowledged both the simplicity and paramount importance of his role during the show itself: ‘It doesn’t sound very complicated,’ Cullinan said, ‘but you have to make sure you’re giving the presenter the right envelope.’ But that obviously didn’t happen, and some swiftly suggested that Cullinan’s attention wasn’t solely focused on the task at hand: Just moments before he handed the wrong envelope to Beatty, Cullinan tweeted a photo of best actress winner Emma Stone clutching her statuette backstage. The tweet has since been deleted, and PricewaterhouseCoopers has not commented on Cullinan’s social media use.”
We’ve all experienced the regret that can come when you don’t have (or won’t allow yourself to have) immediate access to your phone. You might miss a great photo opportunity. You might miss a text. You might even miss a call you really needed to take. It’s understandable why so many of us, not just teenagers, can be reluctant to redirect our attention from the phone in our hand to the world in our view. Nobody likes missing out.
But the regret of “I wish I hadn’t been so focused on my phone” can be so much worse. If you’re doing work that matters to you, if you’re having an important conversation, if you’re reading or studying or especially if you’re driving, the effect of diverting your attention can harm your work, your relationships, and in the most severe cases, your life.
How much do you think Brian Cullinan regrets using his phone in that vital moment? How much better would his life be this week if he had just focused on the important, live-televised task at hand? Was that tweet worth the lifetime association his name will carry with the biggest mistake in Oscar history (Google will never forget even when the rest of us have long since moved on)?
The next time you divert your attention away from something important to focus on your phone, stop and ask yourself if it’s worth the risk. And more importantly, can you live with the regret if things go wrong?