I admit it. At first, I didn't understand why in the world people were so excited about cellular phone text messaging. I mean, why not just make a normal voice call? It just seemed to be so much easier. However, I decided to give texting a try and spent a month sending text messages to friends and family members. Here is what I discovered.

At first, it took me forever to write a simple text message on my cell phone. Something that would've taken me 5 seconds to relay over the phone, ended up taking me 10 minutes to type out on my phone. It was at this point that I nearly hung up the towel, but I decided to stick it out for a while longer.

All of that changed once I discovered abbreviations. When text messaging, most ?pros? use abbreviations for popular phrases or sayings. For example:

? = I have a question

2G2BT = Too good to be true

AFAIK = As far as I know

CYA = See you

This was like a serious breath of fresh air for me. I started churning out text messages in seconds, instead of several minutes, it was like a giant light bulb instantly went off.

The second thing that I really learned to love about texting my friends and family was the fact that I could respond to them whenever it was convenient for me. I didn't feel as compelled to interrupt my activities to reply as I normally did with a ringing phone. My productivity definitely increased as a result.

Overall, I have a new-found appreciation for cellular phone text messaging. Used in the right way, it can really be a useful means of communicating with friends, family, and business partners. If you haven't played around with text messaging yet, I definitely recommend that you check it out!