You want to hear something sad? Yesterday, I didn’t check e-mail for five hours…in a row. I was playing hockey and, afterwards, had a few post-game refreshments so before you could say slapshot, five hours had evaporated without the inbox being diligently checked for new arrivals.
It is a sad state of affairs when you’re so digitally connected all the time, although running your own business often means work doesn’t happen from nine to five. Then again, all work and no play makes Jack/Jill a dull boy/girl, and too much time on the Web has the potential to gnaw away at your physical and mental soul and health.
Part of the problem with our connected world is it’s so difficult to get unconnected. With more people doing their own thing, and the proliferation of mobile devices, it’s nearly impossible to escape work. This explains why many people check their mobile devices almost as often as they breath.
On the weekend, I saw the father of a young child in the park wearing one of those ultra-geeky Bluetooth headsets. All I could wonder is how this guy thought that he was going to get an important enough call on a Sunday afternoon to justify walking around looking like a dork.
This isn’t the first time that I have railed about digital overload but it was sparked yesterday by two things:
1. A study that appeared on the front page of the Globe & Mail looking at how our “well-being hangs in the balance” because we work too much and play too little. We’re spending too much working and too much time online, while spending less time exercising and time with family, including eating dinner together.
2. I appeared on a panel at the NXNEi conference about social media, and how people are consumed about sharing things on Facebook, Twitter, etc. that are uninteresting, inane, irrelevant and unproductive. All of the panelists – who are digitally engaged – agreed there are lot of people wasting a lot of time focused on using devices to share the moment as opposed to living the moment.
I concede that the Web has increasingly become an integrated part of our personal and professional lives but too many of us (including myself to some extent) are consumed by the Web at the expense of other things, interests and people. Our need to know, learn, update, tweet and see what’s happening is becoming increasingly unhealthy.
So, what can we do to make things just a little better?
Maybe it’s little things like keeping your mobile in your pants when out for lunch or dinner as opposed to placing it on the table as if to announce that if the phone rings, it has more priority than the person you’re with. Maybe, heaven forbid, we could leave the mobile at home when going out for the night. Or maybe take a vow not to check e-mail for three hours.
What do you think? How do you keep yourself digitally sane?
More: Here’s a great post by Peter Bregman about how he returned his iPad because it was too good and, as a result, left him with little time to be bored. In other words, he was too digitally engaged for his own good.
