Attention, Attention, you have been interrupted…
Ok, let me start this article with a different statement.
“Many of us have slightly lost the power of true focus, losing productivity and life quality”
The aim here is to openly discuss mental health in the era of smartphones and unlimited apps and notifications.
If we go 10 to 15 years back, mobile notifications were not a reality, even having a mobile phone, our attention was not required by some sound or vibration every 10 minutes.
The average number of Apps a normal smartphone user has is 80, considering we install and delete new apps in 25% to 30%. There is some excitement in installing new apps and discovering new things, quite normal, but I would like to raise some attention that every single new app will ask your permission to many things, camera, contacts, storage and notifications.
I know, we are living in the cybersecurity era, and data, is the new gold right? Yep. It is. But today is not about that. Forget all the digital permission you’ve been required to, focus only on the notifications permission. That specific permission connects you with the digital world, your phone, and whatever is happening online, some message, app notification or unbelievable discounts that are required to be seen at that moment.
But wait, after I’ve been interrupted, what I was doing? Dejavu humm ?
I’m afraid to say we are not code. We are not a very static runtime that when interrupted just go back to the last execution and retry, we are humans. We have feelings and emotions and we are not able to be interrupted without a chemical flotation. After being interrupted when we may need to take a breath, remember what we were doing, deal with extra anxiety of a notification, deal with the emotional distress of a bad message and many other examples. This is how our bodies work, we can’t control the nature of being human.
But we can control the notifications.
The average number of notifications we receive on a normal day is 42, and this number can be drastically worse as you have more apps. It’s fair to say we can be interrupted at least 2 times per hour during business hours, and we know my calculations are wrong, we are interrupted way more than 2 times in an hour.
Give yourself to review your work life balance by reviewing you on notifications settings:
With all the information above, the main aim here is to let us reflect:
Are we using technology in a sustainable way, looking forward to our mental health?
Quote of mine: “Your time, more than ever, is somebody else’s money”
Cheers !
