The cult of multitasking: about gadgets, productivity and happiness

Elizabeth never thought she had a dependency, much less on gadgets. She is 33 and she is proud to lead a healthy, balanced lifestyle. She regularly walks and rides, eats well and gets enough sleep. She likes to work in a friendly, family-oriented company and have time for regular meetings with friends and her young man. At the weekend, after going to church, she works as a volunteer. At first glance, her life seems to be full, but in fact, she feels unhappy. “When the day comes to an end, it seems to me that I did not have time to do anything useful, although this is not so,” Elizabeth complains. She wants to talk to her priest or even see a doctor, but she does not understand what the problem is. Her career is progressing, relationships are full of love, and her life matters - what more could you ask for?



She found the answer to her difficult question in an unexpected place - at a time management seminar held at her company. Thanks to the seminar, Elizabeth realized that she misused her phone: using it deprives some aspects of her life of meaning, and ultimately Elizabeth herself happiness.

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Each of us complains that he "does not have enough time." Well, “time audit” will help you keep track of exactly what each minute was spent on. And if time is money, then an audit of time will show what you are using it for.



As part of a time management workshop, Elizabeth began to monitor the duration of any activity — from hair styling to being in a traffic jam. Some colleagues ignored this idea - to keep track of time for a month, but Elizabeth was looking forward to the results. It seemed to her that she was distributing time wisely, and was curious about what she could find out.



The results shocked her. Immediately after waking up, she picks up a smartphone to turn off the alarm. Then, it takes 10 minutes to check e-mail, find out about the weather, surf the Internet. At work, she is sometimes distracted by several series of games in Candy Crush . When standing in line at the grocery, it is in correspondence with friends or her boyfriend. In the evening, while watching TV, she skimmed through Pinterest. And before going to sleep she got into the habit of reading on the Internet something light and uncomplicated.



“I usually spent 5 to 10 minutes on the phone, no more,” says Elizabeth. "But in a day, the minutes accumulated and in the end it turned out that I spend on the phone from 90 minutes to two hours a day."



It turned out that its usage time is quite normal. However, there are different types of research: some consider only the time they spent on a smartphone, and some add the minutes spent on any screen device. On average, we spend from one to more than two hours a day on our gadgets. Or 20 days a year.



“When you start to look at the situation from such an angle, it’s really frustrating,” says Elizabeth. “It's longer than any of my vacations.”



It’s easy to spend 5 minutes on this or that. In the end, what's wrong with playing a little bit in Happy Street while standing in line at the store? A time audit will show you on a larger scale how these small “phone breaks” add up to far more serious time periods.



“I have always considered myself to be a special type of people — healthy, harmonious individuals who can sometimes be stressed, but still find time for their family and friends,” says Elizabeth. “However, thanks to the audit, I saw that I spend more time on the phone than preparing healthy food, doing or even being with my family. I can't believe that I spend so much time staring at the screen. Am I really so dependent on my smartphone? ”



Elizabeth never bothered such habits, but she believes that "the numbers do not lie." “I did not realize the problem so clearly, until I had an audit. And now this situation worries me in earnest. ”



Her anxiety coincides with the fears expressed by doctors, psychologists and those researchers who are worried about increasing the length of time spent in front of the screen, especially among children. This entails an increase in the number of patients with obesity and diabetes, this relationship was considered in the HBO documentary The Weight of the Nation.







Researchers are not in a hurry to directly associate excess time spent on gadgets with health effects. Instead, they say that the influence of our many devices may come later. But even in this sense, the frequent use of gadgets is “patching holes” in our unmet need for communication and self-esteem.



Most studies focus on how much time we spend in front of a TV or mobile device - an increase in this time leads to passivity and a certain abstractness of consciousness. And this, in turn, distracts our attention from the family or diet, but this is not how modern people and Elizabeth, including, use their smartphones. Such habits can be attributed to different models of using gadgets with breaks - here a minute and a minute there, during or between other matters.



Studies show that multitasking is just an illusion : what we actually do is quickly rush from one class to another. Actually, doing two things at the same time has the opposite effect: it slows us down, reduces our productivity and prevents the brain from absorbing information.



According to a Fox News article , multitasking can reduce your productivity by up to 40 percent. The University of California, Irvine (University of California, Irvine) reported that multitasking can cause heart palpitations. The University of Utah (University of Utah) also found that drivers who write messages spend more time reaching their destination. In addition, according to the New York Times , students who were talking on the phone on the move suffered from what researchers call “inattention blindness” - technically they “see” everything that surrounds them, but in their subconscious mind they don’t really perceive what they see, even if it is a clown on a monocycle.



According to the Wall Street Journal , in short, if we cannot fully concentrate our attention, we will not be able to remember important details, and this may reduce our degree of satisfaction with life. Elizabeth realized that she was suffering from “inattention blindness” when she discovered that the phone was absorbing her attention, diverting from the present moment, which led to an elusive feeling of dissatisfaction. “Sometimes I need to break away from the phone and make sure that this does not happen to me again,” she adds.







A month after the time audit, Elizabeth was sitting in a cafe, drinking coffee and studying the table of time spent, as if she was looking at a self-portrait in search of clues or flaws. But instead of a visual image, in front of her lay her life, decomposed into hours and minutes. She had an idea of ​​who she was and who she wanted to be, but the audit results spoke of something else.



Elizabeth was not only dissatisfied with the waste of time on the gadgets, she also found that she was inefficiently spending time on running errands, but still the phone took too much time, and this was not at all tied to her ideas about the right lifestyle. “To a degree, I blame myself for this,” she admits. “How could I be so thoughtless and careless that I spent so much time on the phone without even realizing it?”



In fact, Elizabeth does not depend so much on her phone as she thinks - she does not miss him, does not lose her temper, if she cannot touch it and does not become unhappy, if she cannot use it. It is not possible for her to continue her “purification from digital technologies” ( digital detox ), and, in the end, she doesn’t really need it.



Elizabeth is a man "on autopilot", which is between those who are very dependent on their device, and those who are almost independent. People like her turn to the phone automatically to “kill time” or relax. They, as a rule, are immediately abstracted as soon as they pick up the phone.



The idea is to restore awareness when using a smartphone - to understand how often and why you take it in hand. Audit often opens your eyes to how much time you spend on the phone, but after it comes the hard part of working on yourself and small but important attempts to change.



Elizabeth forbade herself to use the gadgets in the bedroom. Now she begins every morning with a stretch or uses her vacated time for meditation or prayer. In the evening, instead of playing on the phone or surfing the Internet, she talks to her boyfriend or reads a book.



While watching TV, she began to knit or rock the press, but Elizabeth confesses that she occasionally watches Pinterest. During breaks in work or standing in line, she continues to play games on the phone, but, in general, she now uses the phone much more consciously. “Now I feel that the way I spend my time really reflects the kind of person I am, and I like it,” Elizabeth shares. "Especially how I start and end my day."



More importantly, it has become more conscious and meaningful to choose the time in order to use the mobile. Now, when she picks up a smartphone, she asks herself why she did it and why she needed it. “Considering how many times a day I used the phone, I check my feelings and understand what I most often need,” adds Elizabeth.



She was surprised at the results. For example, she realized that she often gets bored at work, so instead of playing games on the phone, she began to take on more difficult and interesting tasks. She also found that sometimes she felt that she was moving away from her boyfriend and instead of writing to each other, they began to spend more time together. Elizabeth stopped filling moments of depression and dissatisfaction with the phone, and life became fuller and brighter.



“I try to keep track of the mood in which I use the phone — when I’m lonely or when I just need a little mental stimulation, and sometimes I think of a more effective way to satisfy this need than just dig into the phone,” Elizabeth continues. “I try to remember that my phone is not an interlocutor, it’s just a tool to meet my needs and requirements — sometimes it is a really great solution, and sometimes there is something better.”