Do You Take Your Work Home with You?
We are all to blame. Well, it depends on which side of the equation you see yourself on. Are you an obsessive perfectionist who can’t break away from the tedious and intricate details of your daily occupation? Or are you simply bored with your ‘outside’ lifestyle?
Nowadays, most people can’t avoid either. We look for distractions in both scenarios. Your phone, in which I will from here on out refer to as 'my primary hand’ (considering one hand is soley there to hold a steering wheel or a pencil, while the other is to navigate my trusty device), connects us in new ways, every single day. It shoots us data, notifications, event invites - at least every 15 minutes. I mean, let’s face it, PhotoshopExpress for iPhone is a pretty handy toolkit (when Instagram’s 17 filters just don’t cut it of course). I can use Dropbox, Evernote, and iCal to set up meetings, share pertinent documents or even take note of an on-the-whim thought. Taking your work home with you (or rather, taking your life anywhere you go - ), is almost inevitable/impossible to avoid - unless you power down (and who wants to do that?).
Don’t feel too discouraged. There is obviously more to life than our handheld life-alerts and email threads. Or is there? Our lives have become increasingly more and more based around 'instant-getification’, training us to live with with an unhealthy level of anxiety and anticipation when we don’t return a result or value in less than 40 seconds. Even in Airplane mode when flying (away or to the office) is hard enough. 5+ hours from DC to SFO/LA with no roaming?! No Facebook?! It’s almost too much to think about. Just remember to breathe. Or count some farm animal jumping over a fence 90 times in a row.
All in all, try to stay focused and enjoy your surroundings when not on the grind. We all know that picture of your friend’s Instagrammed dog is well worth the swipe, but just once, try to switch to 'do not disturb’, and see how far it goes. Set your pushes to every 30 minutes instead of 15. Life itself has plenty of delays, and in the scheme of things 20-30 minutes more of grey space will only provide you with an extra 20-30 days of having full color in your hair. Or at least, I like to think so.
Just food for thought. So remember, stay productive, stay alert, but don’t short change the scented roses in between.
Creative Director + Cell Phone Enthusiast / DarwinApps