Vacation season is on my radar today. It’s that magic moment when we all place some healthy distance between ourselves and our smartphones, focusing on living in the moment.
Or so we say. Given the sheer number of beach selfies crowding social media feeds, it’s clear most of us are not walking the talk.
As a humorous aside, some of these beach selfies bear closer scrutiny.
But in all seriousness, the relationships we have with our digital leashes should be a subject we consider beyond the bounds of holiday season. Research suggests 60% of us are addicted to our smartphones. One study found 25% of subjects aged 18-44 couldn't remember the last time we didn't have our phone directly at hand.
Studies universally say the pandemic deepened our relationship with social media, which makes logical sense given it was our main connection to one another for the better part of two years.
But being glued to a perpetual cycle of communication is not good for us. It raises anxiety levels, interrupts sleep, distracts focus, and inhibits thinking in depth. Struggling to work your way through complex ideas or reckon with abstraction in ways you once found much easier? A constantly interrupted train of thought might be the culprit.
Smartphone attachment can also disrupt exercise, work ethic, and even the quality of relationships. If you haven’t heard the term “phubbing,” you’ve almost certainly lived it. Treat yourself to a google search.
Perhaps most critically, constant attachment to our phones insidiously erodes and compresses time, and this is a major source of stress. Hordes of working age adults live with chronic stress and don’t really understand where it’s coming from because it is subtly baked into our routines. Smartphones are one way this happens.
As awareness of these issues increases, more people are turning to "digital detoxing" to help break their bad habits. Is this something you should consider?
Well ... only you will know whether you have a truly toxic addiction to your phone or merely need to bring your habits into a better place. The former is a very small category and the domain of professional advice. The vast majority of us occupy the latter category, and can make big strides with two simple steps.
1. Restructure. Over time, we've installed so may apps that we've unwittingly installed a hand-mounted switchboard permitting limitless, simultaneous, indiscriminate connections. We get pinged not just because it's essential or important, but because it's easy and convenient. This frivolity leads to overload.
Narrow your communication channels. Let your friends and family know which apps you are quitting. Uninstall the ones you don't need rather than simply muting them. This makes it more difficult for you to backslide into reopening a channel. When you're reachable via fewer methods, you'll get more essential messages and fewer frivolous ones.
Remember, that device in your hand is supposed to be making your life easier. So don’t be shamed or cajoled into adopting app usage that isn’t supporting the communication routine you want.
2. Carpe Diem. Have an agenda for spending your time which is proactive and purposeful (to include time deliberately doing nothing). During the segments of your time that don't involve your social media feed, mute your phone and physically exclude it from the environment. This breaks the cycle of having your mental agenda driven by your smartphone, which is to say driven by everyone except you.
Once entrenched, the cycle of perpetual response becomes merciless; we're so busy communicating that we don't have time to think about how we're communicating, whether it's right for us, and what it's doing both for us and to us.
One day we wake up and realize we’re not interacting with the world in the way we intend. We realize we’ve allowed the blessing of social media to become a curse of over-connection.
Consider this recent comment from a colleague, which I found illuminating:
I recently had a weekend away with no WiFi or phone signal (not planned) and the effect on both my mood and productivity was tangible. Moreover, I had deep and meaningful conversations with family members which I honestly don’t believe we would have had, had we been distracted by our phones. Terrifying.
When you think about it critically, being perpetually available to everyone in your life, even those most tenuously connected, for any reason, 24/7, is totally ridiculous. Yet, this is what most of us have unwittingly wandered into. 🤦♂️
But by restructuring app usage and retaking the initiative, we can reduce the toxic side effects of life in our amazing digital age, and feel much more in control of our time. When you have better control of how you spend your time, you will feel a lot less stress, be more productive, and ultimately have a more positive life experience.
A condensed version of this post originally appeared on LinkedIn. You can find and comment here.
Tony is a senior leader with three decades of intensive experience in both private and public enterprise.
Well written TC. I too have been camping with no signal…almost no ability to navigate since the maps app doesn’t work without signal.
It was great just stating into the fire thinking quietly and enjoying the company of my wife and pup. Lots of higher level thinking and planning occur when not tethered to a phone.