Reading a tweet created by Fred Verheul led me to read the article 'The Cost of Continuously Checking Email' , a topic most people should be able to relate to nowadays- not only those whom are working in IT. I thought to myself "oh my, I probably do have the mental energy of a worm at the end of each day, after all the multitasking that I consider as being normal nowadays." Do you know this feeling when your brain feels drained from texting on WhatsApp, posting Tweets, following with continuous pop-ups on our screens from emails, facebook, to name only a few.. I do! I notice that I barely let go of my phone, I carry it with me everywhere- I keep checking it, just in case, feeling a craving and longing after e.g. a meeting where I would have left my phone in another room, or when the battery runs out and no charger is in sight. Issue #1: The addiction to being online all the time, circulating the continuous news-feed.
Issue #2: After reading the article I realized- I am not able to complete with one task at a time. It is all multitasking- emails, preparing a presentation, scheduling an appointment at the doctor's, writing a shopping list, responding to the latest tweet, posting a picture a group you have with your friends on whatsapp....and so on- I am not even able to write a list of TO DO's before I get distraced by the next pop-up on my screen. I find this extremely exausting and I admire everyone (little side note) who has one of those old-school mobile phones like Nokia 3310 with no internet access, only text messaging, phone calls and only one game to play...Snake .
To make a long story short- I would love to discuss with anyone who feels like this is happening to them as well about a possible 'Set of Rules', applying some methodologies of DT could be a way to do so in a training, what a topic! Unfortunately not so easy to do online, but we could start a brainstorming for a Set of Rules on how to unplug, without immediately disconnecting from the rest of the world. If you have already dealt with this 'multitasking issue' yourself, and found a way to work it out, I would be very interested in reading about it and would highly appreciate your sharing!
Thanks for reading and re-thinking,
Cheers Julia