My daughter recently sent me this picture of her son practicing “distracted driving” at age 18 months!
Hmmm, time for me to make some changes! I came to the conclusion that for myself and those around me, both at home and at work, I needed to proactively disconnect from the constant barrage of communication and information that my easily accessible phone provides.
Fortunately, The New York Times recently had a practical article on how to start this process:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/02/smarter-living/be-more-productive-hide-your-phone.html
This article is about making yourself more productive at work by making your phone inaccessible, or at least making it less accessible. According to research cited in the article, just having a phone in close proximity to you, even if it is turned off and even if it doesn’t belong to you, ‘reduces available cognitive capacity’. If you are trying to focus on a task and the phone is visible in your environment, then some of your cognitive resources are devoted to ignoring the phone. Not only that, but if you succumb to the lure of the phone and check out a tweet it can take up to thirty minutes for your brain to get fully back into the task you were working on. What a waste of time and resources!
The article says that ideally, if you are working on a cognitively heavy task then you should keep your phone in another room or locked up. That may not be practical all the time but since I read that article I’ve been deliberately keeping my phone buried in my backpack most of the day so that at least I have to make an effort to get it out. Even that small change has made a big difference; I find that my concentration is improved and those random thoughts telling me to check my phone occur much less frequently when my phone is out of view. “Out of sight, out of mind” works for me!
I started my professional career before ubiquitous cell phones entered our lives so I have a reference point for how it feels to work without the constant distraction of cell phones. I wonder how my grandson’s generation will learn how to effectively concentrate and be productive when they are surrounded by technology clamoring for their attention from a young age.
Wow–18 months! That is a powerful commentary on what our kids are seeing all around them. Thanks for sharing these tips.
To put this into practice within the clinical work environmnt, we’ll need to see a cultural and technological change at DFCI. The institute still relies heavily upon e-mail for communicating clinical/patient treatment information. As a result, there is an expectation of an immediate response, placing the demand on staff to be accessible via smartphones to reply to e-mail when away from their desks or ensconced in meetings. Pagers have not effectively bridged this gap.
I had the same thoughts as Shannon… but there must be a middle ground, or way to adopt slightly. One of my issues is I use my phone for EVERYTHING, personal and professional, so now some old school things are only accessible to me via my phone.
P.S. I can’t get enough of this photo… 🙂
Yup! I was just thinking to myself… a smartphone has not objectively made my life any better. I am lucky to own a computer in my own home, and I use a computer at work. I can (and should) check my email, check the train times, on a desktop computer. In 2006 I had a phone that could call, text, and act as an alarm clock. I also had an MP3 player. Other than the addition of a camera, I really don’t need my iPhone, which has a planned obsolescence! I’m the chump here. Tweet tweet!