In conversation with one of my clients recently, we were discussing things which distract him. He talked about his phone and how it would grab his attention and, from there, lead him down a path of diversions which often had him coming up for air twenty minutes later, wondering how he had got there and what he was supposed to be working on. Sound familiar?
Our smartphones are highly addictive, powerful pieces of equipment that we are challenged to get distance from. A recent article in The Globe and Mail summarizes the science that is beginning to accumulate indicating that smartphones lower our attention span, negatively affect our personal relationships, and decrease our productivity.
The issue is gaining such traction that work places and schools are responding to the problem. Phones are being banned from classrooms, boardrooms, and public spaces during work hours. As more evidence emerges about the damage that is being done, the hope is that regulations will also help bring about change. Given the money at stake, and, given how pervasive our technology has become, such guidelines would be most challenging to implement and enforce.
Most of my clients come to me with organization, focus and motivation deficits, but the interruption from our phones is affecting us all. Indeed, a recent study of 7000 middle schoolers found a significant association between mobile phone ownership and the levels of inattention seen in people with attention-deficit disorder.
Finding a healthy balance in technology use is now an important part of the coaching conversation that I have with clients. It is integral to the self-regulation and self–monitoring that a person learns to do as they set goals and work to achieve them. So, how do we achieve a healthy tech/life balance?
Remember that there is no such thing as “effective multi-tasking”. Even if we are adept at switching from one task to the next, our brain must deal with each task one at a time: If you are engrossed in a writing assignment and a text comes in. You must disengage from your writing, and then switch your focus to the text, and then once you have dealt with that, you must then re-engage with your work. It is a sequentialprocess. A recent Stanford studylooked at the efficiency of heavy media multi-taskers and light media multi-taskers found that a person who is interrupted during a task is 50 percent longer to accomplish a task and makes up to 50 percent more errors. In every test, the heavy users did consistently worse than the light users.
Also remember that technology is a tool to be managed. Years ago before the advent of smart phones, I worked with a woman who was on the right track: I was starting a position as a child protection worker in Vancouver, British Columbia. Christa was training me. She was one of the best investigators on our team: direct, calm, relaxed. She had an intuitive understanding of how to manage her work. When I began, she showed me around her office. She explained that each morning she came in and checked messages, and answered important calls and checked email. She only did thisonce a day. The rest of her day consisted of client and team meetings. On Fridays, this was her “paper day” where she sat down and wrote reports, updated her notes, and organized her schedule for the following week. I remember going out on a couple of calls and stopping for coffee. As we chatted, Christa took great pleasure in savouring her break and enjoying the cozy café. As I write about the way she structured her work, I realize that it stood out for me because she was the only one in the office who worked in this manner. She made up this system to work as it suited her, not the other way around.
Like Christa, we can create a system to interact with our technology so that it works for us. How we do this can happen in many different ways, based on the individual. It requires motivation, conscious choice and discipline. We can look at the phone when it suits us, whether that is twice a day at scheduled times, or intermittently. This can occur after work is done, a meal is shared, a conversation is completed. It is mindful effort which is crucial to our productivity and our peace of mind. And it can often be made more palatable with a warm drink as an accompaniment!
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