Some years ago during a department meeting we talked about a shared informational website. One team member complained that when she tried to enter information onto the site, she was blocked. Someone else spoke up to say the data needed to be added in a specific format to work. The first person said she understood the format and it didn’t work. Round and round we went, until it was discovered that some of us had “view only” access while others could “do” work on the site. We came up with the titles of “viewers” and “doers.”
Same meeting, later on: the conversation turned to a lengthy Compliance Alert which laid out rules and processes for an on-going problematic issue. Here again there were divided sides. One group brought up points that contradicted each other, while the other group said they hadn’t even been aware those points existed.
The actual document was produced for dissection, and sure enough, the points at issue were embedded in the overly verbose language.
How was it that one group had latched onto the discrepant items while others had not? We decided to name those two groups as well: “Skimmers” and “Noticers.”
The skimmers had gone through the alert with the mindset that many of us have in this busy life: “How does this affect me?”
The noticers were more concerned about the overall effect on the department, not just their own responsibilities. So they read more deeply to understand how the different components would produce a new end result for the team at large.
I was reminded of that meeting and those issues when I recently read Wired to Create by Carolyn Gregoire and Scott Barry Kaufman. They quote neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson as saying, “…the way we live today is causing national attention deficit.”
Dr. Davidson went on to offer that by allowing ourselves to be constantly pulled to check our phones and other electronic gadgets for emails and texts as well as updates on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and news sites, we end up skimming: giving partial, unfocused attention to everything else.
One recent statistic stated that a typical smart phone user checks his/her phone approximately every six minutes. Do the math. That’s ten times an hour and most of us spend at least twelve hours of wakefulness. That comes to a total of 120 times a day.
In her novel The Accident, author Chris Pavone shares the story of a young child’s funeral. The service has just ended, and the distraught mother is standing off to the side watching through a window as people leave. Almost to a person, as each one passes through the funeral home door and approaches the sidewalk, they reach into a coat pocket or handbag and pull out their cell phones and check to see what has happened in the past hour that absolutely needs their attention RIGHT NOW. Reading that broke my heart a little.
We have become addicted to interrupting our own real lives. And what kind of life is that?
To my readers: Please share a story about an interaction you would have missed had you been on your phone.
This is not an interaction I would have missed but the opportunity to say this is just one more reason among others why I do not use a smartphone, Facebook, and so on and, thus, avoid the “gossip centers” and NOT miss what is going on around me, including the sounds of the birds and wind and taking the time to look at the beauty of my world!
My career involved the use of technology for many, many years. However, when my day of work was done, I was always glad to step away from it entirely. Technology can do wonderful things (this blog, for example) but, unfortunately, I’m afraid much of it is being used in ways that do nothing more than separate us from others and “dumb us down” in so many ways.
Please try very hard to leave your technological devices at home or in your purse or pocket, preferably turned off, when you are in the company of others not work related and just enjoy your time together! Try leaving them off at home too if you don’t need them for work purposes. You might be surprised how much you enjoy the loss of that “apron string!”
Having been retired from my former day job for 30 days as of today, I’m going to confess that when I DO pick up my phone, my first instinct is to check my “work” email. It reminds me of former smokers telling me that in some situations they’ll find themselves patting their pockets or searching through their purse, then stopping and asking themselves what in the heck it is they’re looking for. But let me just add that I say Hallelujah!! when I realize I have no day job Outlook email with 178 new emails vying for my attention. Yes, goodbye apron string! Thanks for commenting, Betsy.
I’m sorry to say (or maybe glad to say) I don’t have a story to share about missing an interaction with someone because I had been on my phone. I still have the “flip phone” I purchased ten years ago. I keep telling myself that as soon as the battery dies, I will get a new phone. I mean, it does have a camera (sort of) and I do text messages occasionally, and I carry it in my purse when I leave the house (in case of an emergency). But then I have been witness to adults as well as children who text or play games on their phones while at restaurants, baseball games, family events such as birthday parties and wedding receptions, walking down the street, or worse – when driving a car. I don’t know – maybe my battery will last another ten years.
I think you should write to your phone manufacturer and tell them how long the battery has lasted. Maybe they’ll give you a free upgrade! But yes, seriously, just last weekend a man looking down at his phone crossed the street in front of my car (he was not in a crosswalk) without looking up in either direction. I don’t believe it ever registered with him that he could have been hit by me or the driver coming in the other direction. As always, thanks for the comment.