The rate of technology advancement is at hyper speed in the 21st Century. One prediction indicates the 21st century will not see 100 years of progress, but the equivalent of 20,000 years. Buckle Up!
We are enjoying this burst of tech progress in so many wonderful ways. Like modern-day royalty, we have access to any item or service at our fingertips. We can search the world from our phones or laptops, book airline tickets, hotels and a rental car. With the use of an app we can take an Uber to the airport the next morning and arrive on another continent ready for a meeting or to vacation.
The tools technology offers us can save us time, energy, even money. We regularly shop online to find the best price for new shoes, have them delivered free in 2 days to our door or two hours for a minimal charge. If they don’t work out, we are able to return them for free.
Ease and convenience such as this means we can now enjoy life with much more free time, we can work with less stress and in our off hours have time for things other than technology. Sadly, the reality is quite different. Like a Trojan Horse, all the devices we love to use, have hijacked our lives and now control a disproportionate amount of our time. My experience, observation, and research reveal that an alarming number of hours is spent on phones and computers. Life is now lived on screens.
Here are a few highlights of the research.
- People spend an average of more than 4 hours a day on their smartphone.
- Two of those four hours are on social media apps, with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter being the top five.
- Over a lifetime, as much as 5 years and 4 months will be experienced as social media. That’s 2 years more than the time we engage in eating and drinking.
- There are other significant costs to our physical and mental health, relationships, communication, and human social interaction.
How can we ensure that such technology will serve us rather than be mastered by our tools?
My top 10 ideas to reclaim your life from technology dependence.
- Take a serious assessment of your use of technology: smartphones, computers, pads, and media. I didn’t realize how dependent I’d become until I unflinchingly faced the facts.
- Limit your time on electronics not related to work. Set a timer and don’t ignore it.
- Limit your consumption of data and get away from unlimited data plans. We recently switched carriers and have a 1GB monthly data diet per phone. We have yet to use the whole GB in a month.
- Leave your phone and pads at home or away from your body when you are with people. Proximity often equals distraction. Be present with people, let your voice mail do its job to take a message. Look at people and not your screen.
- Use time in checkout lines, waiting in the doctor’s office, etc., to notice people, engage in conversation, or read a book rather than look at something on your phone.
- Stop use of all your devices in the evening and don’t begin your day using them.
- Turn off notifications so you are not being lured to check the latest tweet, post, photo or text.
- Live an unwired life some of the time. Remember the days when you weren’t tied to a phone and computer!
- Take a no-technology day off each week and a limited or no-technology vacation.
- As a coaching moment-
Think about how you might live those 4 hours a day differently? What project have you put off? What new skill could you learn? What people could you engage in face to face conversations, especially those right in your home and office?
Technology is here to stay. The choice is yours to live fully present or on your screen.
The best to you!
Jim