Does technology stop you really switching off?

When did you last take time out?

Are you one of those people who spends half your two week vacation winding down from work, then the other half gearing up to it again, with maybe a day in between if you’re lucky?

Or worse: have you succumbed to the ‘magic’ of new technology and made yourself instantly available anywhere on the globe, even when you’re supposed to be on vacation?

When you take a day off work can you switch off or are you constantly thinking about things you need to do? When you’re away can you resist the urge to check your email or text messages, or do you phone in to check everything’s okay without you.

Take a few seconds to digest my next comments:

THE ODDS ARE PRETTY GOOD THAT THE SUN WILL RISE AGAIN TOMORROW, AND THE WORLD WILL NOT STOP TURNING BECAUSE YOU’RE AWAY FROM YOUR DESK – HONESTLY!

I know we all like to think we’re indispensable, irreplaceable, a vital cog in the organization or family unit. And we may well be, but this doesn’t mean it can’t get along without us for a while. In fact it, and we, would benefit from regular separation – genuine separation which also means not responding to messages or mails.

Whatever you’re doing, if you do it for too long without a break it can lead to problems.

In the workplace you may stop giving your best efforts, the ideas stop flowing, relationships with co-workers suffer. What was once interesting becomes routine and boring. Your enthusiasm for new projects wanes. You may find it more difficult to meet deadlines or hit targets because you’ve lost the motivation for achievement and success.

In the home you may become a creature of routine, allocating certain tasks to certain days religiously, and putting off other activities to keep to your routine. Adventurous cooking is replaced by a set pattern of standard meals and take-away pizza every Friday. You feel your efforts are unappreciated by others. New activities with the kids become daunting, it’s easier to let them sit in front of the TV or computer screen.

You meet up with the same crowd every Thursday evening at the same restaurant. You talk about the same things, tell the same jokes, have the same arguments. You even order the same menu each week, never trying anything new. It used to be something you looked forward to, now it’s no different to staying at home watching the box.

This isn’t a life, it’s an existence.

But it’s not difficult to change it.

People seem to think change has to be significant but it doesn’t. Change is so easy that it’s within anyone’s ability. Changing the circumstances of your life in ways you want to (as opposed to being forced to change through job loss or relationship breakdown) can be as simple as deciding to do it, especially when we’re talking about small changes.

One of the best changes you can choose to make is to get the right perspective on life: making sure you don’t have too much work and not enough play. Here are some simple steps you can take to start yourself on this new adventure:

* Always take a lunch break and get away from your workplace if you can. You are legally entitled to breaks, and for health and safety purposes you should take these or you could be a liability in your workplace. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, you can and should unlock the chains every day.

Get outside and give your senses a break. Recover from noise, bright lights, dust or fumes, too much air conditioning or too little. Even if you only have 10 minutes you can get some fresh air, rest your eyes and your ears. A walk round the car park is better than no walk at all. Change your immediate environment – even for a short while – and you’ll really notice the difference when you get back to your desk.

* Don’t leave urgent tasks hanging. If you’re about to take time away from work and have an ongoing task you’re likely to find yourself distracted by it while you’re away. Do as much as you can before you go, and if necessary find someone else to caretake in your absence so that you won’t be worrying about it.

* Leave your technology behind. This is easier if you have devices you use just for work, but if you combine all access through a single cellphone, Blackberry or laptop then you need to discipline yourself more. When you’re on vacation, sick, or taking any authorized leave you should view yourself as ‘not available for work’. Don’t initiate contact with your workplace, and don’t respond to anyone trying to contact you.

If co-workers are used to calling you when you’re not in work you may need to prepare them for this change. You’re entitled to make it so don’t back down if anyone tries to discourage you. Set up messages that direct people to colleagues who can help in your absence. Make people see that you’re not abandoning your responsibilities, but asserting your right to some time away from them.

* Leave ALL your technology behind. Remember holidays before cellphones? Those halcyon days when you had to remember to give people your airline and hotel contact details but only expected them to contact you in an emergency. Remember the postcards you wrote while drinking coffee in a quiet little cafe, that always arrived back a week after you? If you don’t remember these things you’ve a real treat coming.

You may want to let someone know you’ve arrived safely but do you really need to give all and sundry a blow-by-blow account of each day? And do you need to check how they’ve spent every hour out of your company. If you’re honest you know which are important communications and which are just habit. The whole point of a break is to get away from habits, so don’t take them with you.

* Change one activity. Suggest a different venue for a regular social activity, or a different activity altogether. Switch the TV off and do something different — play a game with the kids, read a book, go for a walk. Watch a different type of TV program, preferably one that makes you think rather than deadens your senses.

* Give your cell phone a break too. Doid you know you should turn your phone off occasionally to let it re-establish the signal? If you usually keep it on all the time, try taking it with you, but only switch it on if you really need to. Break the ties that have made you dependent on it. If you’re used to using your cellphone as a clock, alarm or other device, find alternatives.

* Relax and enjoy it! At first you may feel uncomfortable with some of these changes but fight it. Learn to enjoy the freedom you get from not being at everyone’s disposal. Refresh your mind and body with different experiences. You, and those around you, will be better for it.

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The internet has transformed our ability to communicate, and spawned a world of social networking sites. These are an excellent way for people to maintain existing friendships over a distance, and can be a way to get to know new people, but they need to be treated with some caution.

In a face to face situation you have the ability to see, hear and understand the relationship you’re developing. You spend time directly in the company of another person, you can control the speed and extent of the development. You can use judgment and commonsense. With the internet you lose many of these important aspects of the relationship. You rely almost entirely on written communication, and not everyone is at their best expressing their personality through writing.

In a recent BBC News article Baroness Susan Greenfield, a neuroscientist who currently heads the UK’s Royal Institution, commented about the differences between social networking and real life conversations.

In the real life situation you:
“…require a sensitivity to voice tone, body language and perhaps even to pheromones – those sneaky molecules that we release and which others smell subconsciously.
“Moreover, according to the context and, indeed, the person with whom we are conversing, our own delivery will need to adapt. None of these skills are required when chatting on a social networking site.”

Sometimes the anonymity online users are able to hide behind, makes them forget judgment and commonsense. This is regularly illustrated in blogging, where some people choose to leave hurtful or blatantly derogatory comments. Even more disturbing are the growing number of instances where online ‘friendships’ are a cover for bullying, grooming and other dubious activities, occasionally resulting in the suicide of vulnerable people.

Many users seek out more and more ‘friends’ to feed their need. Social networking sites fuel this constantly, developing new ways to show your ‘friendship’ – buy a virtual cup of coffee, send a kiss or a hug, join a cause – the options are endless it seems. And once you’re registered on a site you automatically give up a degree of control – friends of your friends may be able to view your information, and seek to become your friend; people you haven’t heard from for years – and don’t want to hear from – can crawl out of the woodwork and try to get back into your life.

Friendship, but with a specific purpose

The same thing can happen in blogging communities, where collecting ‘friends’ can be one of  the ways to increase the rating of your blog, which in turn means it will show higher in search results, which theoretically implies you will get more traffic. Friends take on a totally different meaning here. They are a means to an end. The definition of friendship has become similar to the transactional definition used in the non-profit sector in relation to its supporters, also called ‘friends’:

“If you give us money, we will be your friend. If we think you will give us money, we will court you as our friend. If you fail to give us money, we will eventually stop calling you. The more money you give us, the more friendly we will be.”

With blogging communities money isn’t usually changing hands directly but the expectation is that an offer of friendship will be reciprocated. The desire is that your ‘friends’ will visit your blog to increase your traffic; they will click on links to show they’ve been, or click on ads, which will earn you credits or money in some other system.

And in return you say you will do the same for them. But if you have several hundred ‘friends’ in each community you inhabit, how can you meet all these demands? If you do drop by regularly you’re most likely staying for as short a time as it takes to register your visit. You don’t have time to add real value, you’re just making the next notch in the belt.

To use ‘friendship’ as the description for these online transactional relationships is to devalue the true meaning of friendship. True friends, even online friends, spend time getting to know one another. They visit together, virtually or face to face, because they want to, not because they are seeking a particular outcome to the encounter.

Learn what makes a real friend, and how to succeed in making real, lasting friendships

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A few years ago I managed client database, which was used daily by several hundred employees. Occasionally we’d get a stream of calls from people stuck in the system, unable to work. When we took a look, we’d find a mess of blockages, like a whole stack of dominoes fallen over. Looking further we could identify the original blocker, the one whose action had affected everyone else.

Then I’d make the phone call:

‘Hi there, have you had any problems with the database this morning?’

‘Well I was searching for something and it was taking forever. So I closed the search and started it off again. It’s okay now though.’

‘Actually it isn’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘When you closed that first search down, you left the computer in a quandary. It had already started doing your search but it didn’t know what to do when it came back with the results: you’d disappeared, and it was just left in mid air with your information. The result was a blockage that’s affected around a hundred other people, some of them sitting right next to you. And now we need to ask everyone in the company to log out of the database so we can clear the blockage.’

‘It wasn’t my fault, it shouldn’t have taken so long.’

I can’t recall the number of times I went through this type of conversation.

A similar thing would happen with our technical guys, and sometimes people running system  maintenance or statistical programs. Something unexpected would happen and we’d go looking for the explanation. We’d either be able to pinpoint it to an action, or we’d have a ‘before and after’ scenario: it was okay last night when we went home, it wasn’t this morning when we arrived, so what changed over night?

Sometimes at the end of a long, frustrating conversation there would be the casual remark thrown in: ‘I did X but I know it can’t have been anything to do with that.’

Hiding my elation at the breakthrough in the interrogation I would, equally casually, suggest we look into this a bit further ‘just in case’. And if this did turn out to be the guilty action, as was often the case, there was never any apology. In fact I was usually given the impression that it was ‘my’ software causing problems with ‘their’ wonderful IT network.

Even when it was possible to pinpoint the cause with 100% confidence and demonstrate exactly what had happened, it was difficult to get people to acknowledge responsibility. In fact people were often offended at the suggestion that they might have had anything to do with  the problem.

Is it so hard to admit responsibility?

What’s the big deal about admitting you messed up, knowingly or not?

Surely it’s better to come clean and take whatever steps you can to help put things right, and learn how to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You’ll always get my respect if you do.

Related Articles:

Are You Sure It’s Not Your Fault?

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The idea can’t be faulted: no-one telling you what to do or when to do it, checking what time you arrived, how long you had for lunch, whether you left early. Then there’s the chance to do something you actually get satisfaction from (although often what you really want to do, and what people want to pay you for, can be very different). For many people the positives of making the move from paid employment to self employment are irresistible.

But it’s not always easy going. When you work for someone you usually know what you’re supposed to be doing each day. When you become self employed you’re faced with a blank page where you have to decide what needs doing, when and how. For people who like structure the change can be quite a shock.

How we stay motivated

It’s nothing to do with lack of interest in what we’re doing, more about that blazing ball of energy in the sky outside. And that’s a beautiful, cloudless, blue sky that we wake up to almost every morning for most of the year. Accompanying it is warmth which, given the English weather of the last few years, is a welcome change.

On its own the beautiful day could be resisted, but add to this the location and the daily fight is easier to understand. We’re renting a small apartment with views across to mountains on the opposite peninsula and to the local beach which is so long it takes a good hour to walk from one end to the other. It’s also sandy, shelves gently into a crystal clear sea which teems with fish, never gets really crowded even in the middle of August, and not 5 minutes from our door.

And after the worst winter for 40 years here in Greece it’s tempting to soak up the warmth while sipping a cool drink on the patio.

Help!!!

But: there’s this website beckoning: articles to write, products to review, blogs to update, research to do.

So how do we stay off the beach?

Try staying motivated with beaches like this just minutes away

Here are our strategies for staying motivated:

self employment means no work = no pay, and sand and sea water don’t taste so good

regular r&r days when work gets put aside and batteries get recharged

deferred gratification – the beach is the reward for successfully finishing the day’s tasks

and sometimes it’s just too hot to sit on the sand and much cooler indoors

Result: the door gets shut on that enticing scene, the computers are switched on and we get focused.

No-one ever said self employment was an easy option, and staying motivated can be one of the biggest challenges, especially in the early days. Read more about staying motivated

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I recently picked up a new book at a local charity book exchange. REAL AGE by Dr Michael F Roizen was published back in 1999 and claims to be ‘An Age Reduction Program That Can Make You Live And Feel Up to 26 Years Younger’.

I think it would be difficult for anyone to achieve that much unless they’re in pretty bad shape already and can benefit to the maximum amount from all the recommendations made in the book. They fall into the usual categories: weight, cancer, high blood pressure, stress, smoking, exercise etc. and you’d have to have been living on another planet not to be aware of many of them, although the technique of equating each with its potential for earning you extra months or years helps to bring the message home.

Here’s one I really like: flossing your teeth regularly can help you live longer.

What? Just say that again …

Daily flossing, together with regular brushing, help to prevent periodontal diseases by removing the bacteria lurking in plaque. And it’s suggested that these same bacteria can trigger responses in the immune system that cause arteries to swell, which restricts blood flow, which in turn can lead to a higher incidence of cardiovascular disease.

Apparently several studies have found that people with periodontal diseases have a higher mortality rate than those who have healthy teeth and gums. Chances are that anyone who significantly neglects their dental health to the extent that they develop gingivitis and periodontitis may also neglect other areas of their health but, everything else being equal, Dr Roizen estimates that a man with no dental disease could ‘add’ as much as 6 years to his life at age 70, while a woman could ‘add’ almost 5 years.

I’m convinced of the benefits of flossing for getting at those irritating little bits that get stuck in my teeth, a common occurrence since I eat home-made muesli for breakfast, crammed with small seeds, but now I know I’m improving my general health as well it’s doubly worth it!

Good dental hygeine could add years to your life

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A little while ago I started doing some proof reading for Project Gutenberg, an organization that takes out of copyright publications and makes them available to the public for free. It’s a long process that involves several stages of proofing and preparing the texts, and it’s all done by volunteers.

The final part of the process is called ‘Smooth Reading’. Here you’re asked to read a finished text just as you would a normal book, but staying alert for any remaining typos, or anything that affects the flow of your reading. Anything you find is fed back and addressed before the final text is released on the site.

A couple of weeks ago I submitted my feedback on a novel, thinking nothing more of it – job completed.

Yesterday when I logged onto the site I had a new message, which was about my feedback. The message thanked me for my efforts, and told me that I’d found errors that hadn’t been picked up by anyone else. The emoticon I’ve pictured here was included, whizzing around waving ‘thank you’ at me.

Small gestures create big ripples

Just a few lines in total, but it really made me smile. And it made me feel good. So good, in fact, that it gave me the resolve I needed to finish another smooth reading project, one that I’d almost given up on (my first action was to retrieve it from the trash can!).

All this from someone I’ve never met and may rarely encounter.

It doesn’t take a lot of time or effort to make someone feel good. A smile, a hug, a ‘thank you’ can go a long way. That simple action could be the catalyst that gets someone back on track, that changes a negative into a real positive. Like ripples from a pebble tossed in a still pool, you don’t quite know where it will end.

Try it today …

Related Articles:

How Are Your Strokes Balancing Out?

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It IS possible to survive without friendship: if you have food to eat, clothes to wear and a place to shelter, you have the basics for survival.

But for the overwhelming majority of people this isn’t enough. Survival isn’t what they’re looking for. They want to take it further, to the next level of need. They want acceptance by their fellow humans, and not just an acknowledgment of their existence, but the strongest form of acceptance: friendship.

Some people find it easier than others to make and keep friends

For some people making and keeping friends is as easy as falling off a log, but for others it’s a struggle, suggesting fear and disappointment.

My ex-boss is a friend of over 15 years’ standing. I don’t know why, but we just hit it off from Day 1 and the friendship has lasted through periods of very close working, more distant working, and now with the ocean and several countries between us. Even though we’ve not seen each other for a year, only communicating by occasional e-mail, I know that if we met up tomorrow we would still feel comfortable together and start up right where we left off.

But that doesn’t mean I’ve always found it easy to make friends. And since moving to a new country where I knew almost no-one I’ve had to start again, to build new friendships in my new life. This isn’t always easy to do when you’re older – it feels like being back on the dating circuit after many years in a steady relationship, with the same insecurities and nervousness. You need to be open to opportunities that might have the potential to generate acquaintances and friends, without seeming desperate.

This experience has led me to revisit my understanding of friendship. Learn what makes a real friend, and how to succeed in making real, lasting friendships here.

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As a career counselor with young people I often used to despair about their seeming lack of awareness of the realities of job seeking. A worrying number of those due to leave school seemed to have little idea of the practical steps needed to get their foot on the career ladder, whether this be through college or employment. And even those who knew what they needed to do didn’t always show the wherewithall to do it.

I heard myself explaining time after time that no-one was going to come knocking on their door one morning and offer them the job or course they wanted. They needed to make their existence and interest known to the people who had opportunities to offer. And I wondered whether my words were being digested, and if they would make any difference.

It was always a joy to meet that rare person who was motivated to succeed. They were the exceptions who proved that there were good jobs for young people and employers willing to give them a start, even in times of high unemployment when the outlook always seems bleaker for the young and inexperienced.

Having worked in career counseling through several economic downturns, it’s good to see that the current one could be different, at least for some job seekers.

In contrast with my ‘no-one’s going to come knocking’ mantra, JobAngels actually sets out to do that, after a fashion. In their own words:

‘At JobAngels, our mission is to help bring people together in a community setting where each person commits to a single goal: to help just one person find gainful employment. That person can be a friend, a family member, a colleague or a complete stranger. All it takes is one person helping one other person find a job. We are nimble, innovative, determined and impassioned to drive this movement and develop a fully operational non-profit entity that enables a new generation of talent networking that is both meaningful and results-oriented.

‘If you are interested in helping a job seeker find gainful employment, please know that help can come in many forms including spreading word among your network regarding the seekers career interests, offering real-world advice (if you’re an expert in recruiting or similar service), resume writing, and much more. Ultimately we are simply helping to put people back to work one individual at a time.’

From one person’s idea just 2 months ago (January 29, 2009 to be exact) the movement has quickly grown to a presence on several social networking sites. Job seekers and those who know of opportunities post information constantly, and the number of success stories is growing rapidly.  Over 1,900 people have already joined Facebook’s JobAngels group, and more than 5,500 are following them on Twitter.

If you’re a job seeker, or in a position to help job seekers in any way, you can get involved through these links:

Twitter – @jobangels
Facebook – JobAngels on Facebook
LinkedIn – JobAngels Group

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