#TOW — Stop for a moment!

Stop whatever you are doing! We have some interesting facts for you!

• 35% of people look at their smart phones the first thing in the morning;
• On average, we check our mobile phones every 6,5 minutes;
• We use our smart phones 3 hours and 40 minutes for searching and checking information, not taking into account the additional time we spend on having conversations on the phone;
• We spend 90% of our free time using an application on our mobile phones;
• 46% of smart phone owners can’t live without their phones.

These are some of the results from several researches which analyzed the influence of technology on our lives.

Stop for a moment and think how many times today, or this morning, you turned off the alarm on your mobile phone in hope that another would go off and you wouldn’t fall asleep again? How many times did you check your e-mails, favorite portals and applications on your way to work? How many times did you tinker with your phone the last time you were out with your closest friends or when you were at a business meeting, simply because you had nothing else to talk about, nothing else to do or were just bored? Stop for a moment again and ask yourselves how you felt when you forgot your mobile phone somewhere or due to another reason you didn’t have it on you?

I don’t know if you’re aware, but the rhythm of our lives has been completely altered. On one hand, as technology constantly evolves its progress keeps us active (we constantly have something to do, read, listen to, watch) and on the other hand it directly influences our lives. It prevents us from spending quality time with the people closest to us, it negatively affects the time we need for sleeping, it hinders us from completely enjoying the majority of things that we do. Even the way we communicate with others and the manner in which we give information has changed. Instead of expressing an emotion personally, we now use one of the many emoticons, gifs and similar applications.

I often find myself facing the desire to establish a sort of balance between my professional and personal life, to be informed about the things which interest me on account of the time I would wish to spend with people that I care about and at the same time have control over technology and its influence on my every day activities. I’m suggesting several tips which I’m trying to implement myself that I believe will be useful for you as well:

• Use technology wisely — I know it sounds like a cliché, but we should really use technology wisely. When at work, we should be at work. When at home — we should really be at home. Try not to check your e-mail or mobile phone when you’re with the people you care about. For example, try to turn off your mobile phone for two hours after you finish work so that you can fully dedicate yourself to the things you like.
• Appreciate your private time more — Set a time frame for when you should check your e-mails or communicate with others. Only because we’re available 24/7 by installing different applications on our phones, doesn’t mean that we should reply to all our e-mails and phone calls as soon as we receive them. Make a priority list and answer the most urgent and most important ones first.
• Be more proactive and less reactive — Focus on being completely dedicated to completing your tasks one at a time. Instead of working on several things at once (like for example writing emails, talking on the phone, arranging to meet with friends or to have a business meeting with clients and getting panicked that we don’t have enough time but we have a lot of work to do) let’s try to finish one obligation fully before moving on to another.
• Be connected with others, but not dependant on technology — Try to communicate with people as much as you can in person and use technology to be more productive in conducting your tasks. By doing this you’ll additionally work on improving your communication skills, active listening skills and on developing your creative thinking skills.
• Look around you — Rushing to accomplish our goals, we slowly forget about the others around us. How many times have you made an effort to get to know something about the person next to you while riding a bus or while waiting to get inside a meeting instead of checking your mobile phone, which is actually not that important? The other day, while riding on the bus, I noticed a guy help an elderly man get on the bus and I accidentally overheard their conversation. It turned out that the guy was unemployed and the elderly man had a close friend who had been looking to hire someone with exactly the guy’s profile.

I wish you success with your changes!