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Daily Distraction In The Digital Age
Daily Distraction In The Digital Age
Are we distracted?
Our daily lives have become dominated by the eight-hour workday, leaving little time for family, hobbies, or self-care. In reality, many of us are only doing five to six hours’ worth of actual work – spending precious extra minutes and hours on pointless meetings or succumbing to distractions like our pinging phones. Not only is this wreaking havoc with workers’ well-being, but businesses too could be losing out big time; a recent study conducted by Udemy found that employees feel unfulfilled in their jobs yet don’t know what else they can do!
Digital distractions are constantly pulling us away from our work, but it’s more than just an inconvenience. A study by Gloria Marks shows that we waste over 23 minutes each time checking our phones and social media instead of staying focused on projects – a whopping 1,395 seconds! Does this have anything to do with the rise in working hours and a decline in productivity? Let’s think twice before reaching for those devices next time.
Stretching Our Brain
In the analog days, stretching our brains to their limit was hard enough. But fast forward to today’s digital world, and it feels as if you’re racing a Formula One car on a dirt road! We must develop strategies that help us focus on one task at a time (instead of frantically multitasking) or resist distraction. As a result, our productivity, accuracy, and quality suffer because switching from job to job can quickly deplete our mental energy reserves.
These days, our minds must process an unprecedented amount of information! In 2011 alone, Americans took in five times as much info per day than just 25 years before – think about it, that’s like 174 newspapers’ worth of data. Plus, we still find time to fit in 34 gigabytes and 100 thousand words during our leisure hours daily! I remember hearing that the average human 100 years ago managed the same amount of information in their entire life that a human does in one-day now. This was news to me well over 25 years ago.
But wait, there’s more; the world has 21 thousand television stations churning out 85k hours of original content daily while each person watches on average five whole hours a day, which equates to 20GBs- all this without counting YouTube, whose uploading juggernaut manages 6k hours of vids. Topping off these stats is gaming – its mass use surpasses any other media sources combined, including DVDs, movies, TV channels, etc.
https://www.fastcompany.com/3051417/why-its-so-hard-to-pay-attention-explained-by-science
What to do about it. Take a break. Put the distractors (cell phones) somewhere else when you are working.
Are Our Brains Healthy
With all the data we’re presented with daily, our brains must work hard to keep up! But putting in that extra effort can be taxing – it’s like squeezing an orange until nothing remains. Our neurons send fatigue signals when they’ve been overworked from having to differentiate between trivia and crucial information, and we ignore them. In addition, we may need to realize how much of what we see online or hear from others is competing for resources; whether mundane life choices or deeper moral issues, things take more energy than we think to process correctly.
No wonder we often feel exhausted after a day of absorbing all the information available to us! Our brains work hard to differentiate between what’s important and unimportant, but with so many inputs, it can become tiring. In addition, it takes energy for neurons to metabolize data into useful knowledge. If you are not feeding yourself and hydrating regularly, your brain will not function at its peak capacity.
How much of your day do you spend actually making a difference in the world? Probably not as much as it could be if we were being honest. We often get pulled away from what matters by all sorts of things like texts and social media that don’t impact our lives or those around us. It’s time to stop wasting this valuable resource – take back control over how you use that precious commodity called “time” and start cherishing it!
Is It That Bad?
With so much work, our attention span is shorter than ever, and it’s no surprise that analysts have reached the same conclusion: distraction, at its worst, can cost us a significant amount of time and productivity. For example, McKinsey & Co. estimated that 28% of high-skilled workers’ hours are eaten up by emails alone! And we still need to begin tackling issues like social media distractions…
While The Economist’s research determined that US workers spend an eye-watering $4500 of company time annually on social media, the Information Overload Research Group suggested even more alarming figures. Knowledge workers lose a quarter of their working hours to data overload. Together this adds to massive productivity losses and hundreds of billions lost from our economy each year!
Research from Udemy reveals that millennials and Gen Zers are throwing away 10 hours of productivity each week due to smartphone usage while on the job. This is because we’ve become so busy but have yet to get better at getting stuff done!
Trained Responses
We can’t deny it; the design of social media has us hooked! From needing to answer a text or email instantly to checking Twitter updates compulsively – we’ve been conditioned by persuasive design. To break free from its grip and train ourselves to focus intently again requires effortful practice every day.
If you’re among the many who have lost your ability to truly focus, don’t worry – it’s not gone for good. Instead, please give yourself a reboot and join us in our Distractions in a Digital Age workshop! It’ll help get your head straight again so you can reach maximum productivity potential.
We all know that time is of the essence, but it’s incredible how easy it can be to let minutes slip away. So don’t underestimate those “just a second” moments on Twitter, they quickly add up, and you don’t want them to cost you down the line!
The original article this information was gathered from can be found here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2019/04/19/our-digital-malaise-distraction-is-costing-us-more-than-we-think/
Is There A Solution
If you frequently find yourself easily distracted, it may be time to consider some mitigation strategies. You control your level of distraction, and there are many things you can do to improve the situation. Please register for our upcoming workshop on digital distractions an gain access to the Seven Sins Of The Digitally Distracted to learn more about how to manage this issue in your life.
Till next time
Stay Informed. Stay Safe
