The Fourth Horsemen of Digital Apocalypse
…and how to slay it
Goal: Discuss fourth digital danger we face every day
We are all crazy busy. Most are not very good at finding a balance between work and life.
What is scary is that we are connected to work 24/7/365. We have grown accustomed to being connected digitally from the moment we start our day, throughout the day, and on the way to sleep.
Our comfort with allowing companies to have a digital connection to us for large portions of our days and lives is scary. We want to be reachable as if reachable means important.
Why?
It is the culture and we have fallen for the deal. We don’t want to miss out. Our FOMO (fear of missing out) level for work is super high.
It is a fear and I have heard from people who fear that they would be let go if they were not reachable 24/7/365.
Scary…
With that FOMO we are placing ourselves in a position where we have to process huge amounts of data that is being produced around us. We are drowning in that data.
Most believe that multi-tasking is a necessary skill and the only way to get it all done. BUT the reality we are serial taskers by design and have fooled ourselves into believing that we produce anything but crap when multi-tasking. Yes we can walk and chew gum BUT that is limited. DOing two mentally challenging tasks at the same time is a setup for failure.
What is seldom talked about is how inefficient and mental cost of switching. By switching tasks, we use our prefrontal cortex and striatum. The cost of using those is in paid by glucose and oxygen. These two are badly needed by our brain in order to be able to stay on task. (Daniel Levitin book The Organized Mind…)
So we increase our processing costs and get a poor result.
BUT it gets worse than that. Depletion of the glucose and oxygen makes us exhausted and disoriented. That should not be surprising since we just robbed our brain of nutrients just for switching. In the end we feel tired and this results in poor cognitive performance.
The fourth horseman is Digital Distraction.
So what can be done to slay this horseman?
By realizing that the switching costs are too high, by some estimates 40%, we have to minimize switching. The how is to think in terms of longer blocks of time dedicated to a single task. Maybe you schedule a task for 2 hours instead of two one hour sessions.
What we also have to realize that the 2 hours needs to be broken down into 30 minute sets. Work for 25 minutes, get up for a 5 min recharge break (Pomodoro technique). After 2 hours, take a nutrient break and get a healthy snack to refuel.
Another thing we can do is remove as many phone and computer notifications in order to keep our minds on task.
My nineteen cents….(this is what I earned from Medium.com for Dec. 2020)
I gotta go…my future self alarm went off
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