Читать книгу Stresshacking - Louise Lloyd - Страница 15

We can’t ignore the pace of life or the volume of information our minds attempt to process every day as potential causes of stress. In the digital world we now live in, we are fast becoming checkaholics and it is getting in the way of our peace, sanity and quality of actual real life. If your smartphone has become the third person in your relationship, the additional child that you focus your energy on, or the extra workload in your day job, then really think about whether it’s worth it.

Have you thought about the amount of extra work your brain has to do just to filter through all of that relentless scrolling? Have you thought about the lost time? I ran a lunchtime session in an organization a few years ago and we were talking about exactly this. One of the participants had said how stressed she was with having too much work to do. When we came onto the subject of smartphones interrupting productivity, someone brought up their screen time app, which this particular participant hadn’t realized she had on her phone. When she checked it she had already been on social media for three hours that day! Now, I doubt very much she had actually sat at her desk for three solid hours on social media. More likely, from the moment she had woken up until this session started, she had been checking her phone in between everything she was doing, or trying to do. By lunchtime she had put in three hours of scrolling.

The constant scrolling that many have become addicted to can leave a feeling of anxiety or dissatisfaction in life. While it is easy to blame work for feeling overwhelmed, we can’t ignore this voluntary overload of mental processing. Keeping up to speed with everything that everyone is doing is wearing us out. We have to question whether this addiction to being connected to everyone in our online world is robbing us of real-life connection. I am not saying it is, but it might be. Becoming addicted to ‘just checking’ creeps up on us until we are filling every spare moment with checking something. Before the emergence of mobile technology, those extra moments were an opportunity to be momentarily still; to pause, to take a breath, to process things happening in the day. If you want to significantly reduce the stress in your life, try going a few weeks without having your phone attached to your every move. After the initial withdrawal symptoms, you will likely feel space and peace opening up in your life that you hadn’t realized were so readily available.

I should also mention emails here too. Detox your emails by unsubscribing to everything that you don’t open or read. Keep your communication succinct when emailing, and don’t forget you have the option to pick up the phone, which can turn ten emails into a two-minute conversation.

# The hack

Pay attention to how much time you spend scrolling on your smartphone. Pay attention to what you spend your time, energy and focus scrolling through. Is it worth it? Do you need to do it? Does it add quality to your life? There’s no right or wrong here: it’s your choice.

Detox your emails.