Unplugged
I had actually sat down to write a piece on leadership and what employers should be telling their employees right now in this crisis. I woke up feeling pretty uninspired though this Monday morning and then I saw a Linkedin trail and someone commenting on the post remarking about ‘digital fatigue’ and it struck me that that’s what I am feeling and it got me thinking about everyone else out there.
Even as a reluctant extrovert, I find the constant impulse to turn on wifi and click and scroll, very repulsive after this many weeks. Anyone else tired of apps, screens, digital this that and the other? Do you feel like you are overdosing lately on people’s virtual verbal vomit? Or am I just irritable on a Monday? I now remember why I used to smoke.
More than ever during this pandemic we are now online and locked into some kind of screen experience be it the TV, laptop or phone. We play games, read content, scroll through endless memes and videos supposed to make us laugh which maybe did, 3 weeks ago but now not so much. We are desperately trying to connect and socialise, interact and have contact with someone..anyone during long hours and days spent indoors.
Gamers and software developers tell me the routine is really not a shock to their system as this is how they live anyway, in a word of pixels and content, imaging and screens and mostly from the couch indoors. Researchers and psychologists have hotly debated the anti-social effects on young people of so many hours shut indoors gaming and attached to screens. And now here we all are doing it 24/7.
Although this pandemic experience has definitely proven the efficacy of having a remote working set up and that we all need to be adaptable business wise, it has also shown me at least that no amount of online content or interaction can ever take the place of a hug from my friend or a true belly laugh with my running friends out on a track.
This would normally be the cue now for me to go on to write another list of tips for getting through this digital overdose, I could tell you to get outside for air and exercise and remember to take regular breaks etc but I am certainly not going to. I think you must have read it a thousand times over in the last few weeks, somewhere on some site or two or three and if you are anywhere as grumpy as I am this morning then you are done being lectured or patronised.
What I do want to say, to urge you to do is not forget that this cannot be a reality worth investing in long term, this can never be life. Don’t get too used to it, kick against the constant screen invasion and wifi access and occasionally shut the damn thing off entirely at the router. Let us please not be too enamoured with remote working, online relationships and streaming speed etc, let’s remember we inhabit physical bodies made to roam an entire planet of wonders and to meet people in the flesh and touch and feel. I may be a grumpy, reluctant extrovert but I still want to look you in the eye to know if you are really ok and I still want the reassurance of that hug or handshake to know we are all still real and haven’t morphed into some cyber world of androids and space.
