Disconnect for a Good Life?

Arianna Huffington’s life experience and her own startling wakeup call led her to write her 14th book, Thrive. I heard her speak recently in Boston and I hoped this was not another in the long line of books advising us (women) how to balance our work and our personal lives. As it turns out, Arianna has smart, pragmatic, wise and witty gender neutral reflections on life; why and how we need to transform our individual and collective experience. 

She encourages us to ask “What is a good life,” look at the answers and ask how much our definitions of success (money and power) are unsustainable. She believes we have a longing for the “third metric,” which in essence means living up to the best version of our own eulogy. Huffington said, “Have you noticed that eulogies don’t sound like our LinkedIn profile?”

She asks “why do we take better care of our smart phones than ourselves?” I admit that when my phone tells me “10% remaining” I am hunting out the charger or taking it to one of the “charging shrines” at home or on my desk. I’ve left my phone at home and returned to get it as the idea of commuting on public transportation without it marked me ‘agitato.’

Why do we feel the need to be so connected? Why and how does disconnecting make us feel healthier? The book is sprinkled throughout with practical tips topped by dollops of common sense. It has 45 pages of appendices listing the evidence, and research studies. Her number one recommendation is …

CONNECTEDNESS, TECHNO STRESS AND DIGITAL DETOX — OBSERVATIONS 

• “Over connectivity  is  the snake in our digital Garden of Eden”
• The average knowledge economy employee spends 28% of time dealing in with email = more than 11 hours a week. (2012 McKinsey Global Institute study)
• It takes us 67 seconds to recover from each email in the inbox.
• Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology Officer CISCO Systems spends her Saturdays doing a digital detox. “If the CTO at CISCO can do it, so can you.”
• Companies helping employees ‘turn off’ — e.g. Germany VW — issue company phones that turn off at 6pm and turn on at 7am.

10 TAKEAWAYS

1. Get more sleep – don’t treat it as a dispensable commodity – it’s a stress reducer and I might live longer with more daily clarity. 
2. Start practicing more mindfulness, aspire to not look back and not look forward.
3. Start small with ‘mindfulness’ — take a few daily habits and think about what’s happening, like when you brush your teeth, rather than the meetings you have or the list of things the kids need for their school project.
4. Get rid of the ‘obnoxious roommate’ who judges (that’s the voice in your own head). 
5. Start disconnecting — there are 15 pages of appendices with practical tools and apps to help me turn off (e.g. someheadspace.com — a mindfulness meditation app starting with bite sized practices)
6. Think about outlawing the ‘reply all’ button.
7. We’re hard wired to ‘give.’ Don’t wait for a natural disaster to tap into our humanity.
8. Wellbeing, wisdom and wonder — we all need more.
9. Be alert to “Hurry sickness and time famine.”
10. Remember no one says: “he never stopped working; he ate at his desk every day.”

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

1. Do you spend about 2 hours a day on email?
2. Could you leave your smart (but not wise phone) at home one day?
3. Do you now own at least 4 types of chargers (car, kitchen, desk, bedroom … ) to avoid that ‘10% remaining’ panic?
4. Do you have your phone in your bedroom?
5. Do you experience time famine?