Our gadgets are our saviors and our worst enemies. As parents, we have tools to reign in our children's time spent online, but it may be harder to impose restrictions on ourselves.
As I've mentioned before, the tools are not the culprits. It's what we, as busy-as-can-be, super-productive, highly efficient humans, do with them.
To that end, Lifehacker recently provided a characteristically useful set of instructions on how to avoid burning out on all the gadgetry around us.
Some highlights below.
- On access:
Train yourself to just keep the phone in your pocket more often. Find other ways to check the time. Decide to check your email a little less. If it gets problematic, don't take the phone with you or turn it off when you go out at night. Technology exists to make things easier, but if you're making your life more difficult by interacting with your devices, too often it ends up being more of a problem.
- On multitasking:
If you want to form good habits with your technology, consider interacting with one device at a time to avoid multitasking and the poor prioritization of digital interaction over real interaction.
- On getting organized:
Email is one of the toughest things to get under control and there are more solutions out there than you could ever really try.
Advice that's easy to put to work, immediately. As soon as you put your smart-phone down.