How does technology impact our lives?
Unlike our kids who were born into the world of technology, many of us are old enough to remember a world before the internet, before smartphones, before tablets and other gadgets. 
What a quiet world it was then! Other than books and TV, there was not much else to distract us at work, at school, at home and during our leisure hours. We spent more time connecting with family and friends in those days, compared to today with our addiction to mobile technology.
Oh, you might say, but look at all the time-saving apps that we have now – surely our productivity has increased tremendously since the days when we relied on nothing but “non-mobile” phones to communicate with each other?
But wait a minute, let’s really think about the above statement.
Do all these apps and gadgets actually save us time and increase our productivity?
Or do we in actual fact, find ourselves spending more and more time learning how to use them, troubleshooting them, tweaking them, upgrading them and backing up data, not to mention “re-skilling time” as well as “recovery time” equating to loss of productivity, when they crash or when we change/upgrade devices and have to learn way around a different operating system?
And as for productivity, well, between checking emails on multiple accounts, updating Facebook statuses, tweeting on Twitter, exchanging messages on Watsapp, uploading photos to Instagram, chatting on Viber…how can we actually focus on getting any real work done?
And how, as we spend our days in a digital haze, can we set aside time to experience and nurture personal relationships and interact one-on-one with family and friends?
Has technology actually caused you to become more productive, or just more stressed out and distracted?
OK, for starters, what if, instead of all these devices, we just carried a good old-fashioned pen and paper notebook? Instead of checking our smartphone every 5 seconds, why not just wear a watch?
“What??” you may scream in horror. “All my friends and colleagues have the latest smartphones, tablets, laptops and wearable tech devices. They will laugh at me!”
OK, yes, that’s true (they will probably laugh at you ?). But, as the old saying goes, he who laughs last, laughs best!
The point is this – constantly interacting with technological devices every minute of the day, allows little time for mindfulness, reflection, planning, thought and focused execution of the tasks on your task list.
Instead of channeling our focus and energy towards developing our personal skills, taking time to reflect and meditate, completing our own tasks, achieving our own goals, taking better care of our family and friends, or any other personal goals we may have, we waste precious time and energy glued to our gadgets, more often than not looking at pictures of cats, vacations or what our friends ate for lunch, or playing mindless and addictive games.
Ever wondered why social media is so addictive?
It’s because our brain is naturally wired to want to avoid work and be distracted and entertained instead. This is why the more frequently you check in on social media in a day, the more addicted your brain becomes to it. Some are driven by the desire to check their phones every 5 seconds! ?
Our attention spans and levels of concentration need to be “re-programmed” back to the levels they used to be at, before our lives became cluttered with too much technology and “always-on” entertainment.
This is not to say that technology is a bad thing. In fact, technology is fantastic. The advent of technology has fueled heights of creativity and innovation that the world has not yet seen. Young people today are able to create things that generations before them did not even dreamed about.
But the same time, many of today’s youth are also socially awkward, maladjusted and unable to interact effectively with people. They prefer to be glued to their devices, ignoring outside stimuli.
Perhaps, we should strive for a balance that maximizes all that technology has to offer us, while at the same time, knowing when to practice the art of the technology detox.
For example, some of us are a slave to every buzz, beep, ring and ping. The first step of your technology detox is to disable all alerts – ringtones, buzzes, vibrates, everything. Disable your packet data connection, even. You can still receive important phone calls and SMSes, which you can decide whether to take or not. (The phone should be set to silent. To alert you as to important calls, you could try putting it on vibrate mode).
With your phone silent, you’ll suddenly find you have so much more time and mental space with which to focus on your work, your to-do lists, your own projects and other important things. You’ll be able to focus on your office emails and work without being distracted by a funny meme or joke or Youtube video.
This does not mean you should ignore your smartphone. Instead, you could identify a time block in the day when you will spend focused, uninterrupted time on your smartphone. This could for example, be after lunch when you would normally find yourself feeling sleepy or generally not as productive as in the morning. If this is the block of time you’ve allocated, then during this time, go for it.
Enable your wi fi or packet data connection on your phone, fire up your laptop or tablet, update your blogs, check all your social media feeds, surf the web, play candy crush, check out all the youtube videos, watsapp your friends. Basically, give yourself an hour or two a day to get your tech fix and keep in touch with all online activities. And then, once the allocated time has been spent, switch everything off again, and Get Back To Work ?
Let’s make technology work for us and not the other way round. Try a technology detox today and watch your productivity and quality of life improve!
