Our Digital Lives Are A Mess. But What Are We Supposed to Do About It?

If you’re old enough, you might be able to remember when you were excited about getting email.

It may have been when you got a CompuServe address, with its funky “octal digits” format. Or perhaps you were an early Prodigy user.

More likely though, it was through an AOL account — thanks to their bombardment of signups from free CDs. Connecting to AOL meant listening to harsh, metallic sounds as your modem connected — followed by the satisfying “You’ve Got Mail” announcement.

Those were the “good old days” — when only a handful of people actually got through to your inbox, it wasn’t cluttered…and spam hadn’t taken over.

Today, things have gotten much worse. While the inbox was once a fun, new place to engage and discover information, it’s become a metaphorical dumping ground and a never-ending black hole for anything and everything.

Now we all have a daily onslaught of information, due to not only having multiple email addresses (for personal and professional use) and a lot more email messages — but also texts, alerts from apps, social media and more.

We’ve become inundated and overwhelmed.

The Rise of Digital Distractions

There are many eye-popping stats about what’s happening to our productivity. For example:

• McKinsey Global Institute estimates that high-skill knowledge workers spend close to 1/3 of their workweek — 28% — just managing email
• In another finding, informatics professor Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine discovered that office workers get interrupted roughly every three minutes — and after each interruption, it can take 23 minutes for a worker to return to their original task
• Software developer Atlassian revealed that the average employee checks their email 36 times every hour, and their IQ drops 10 points as a result — the equivalent of missing an entire night’s sleep

Who’s To Blame?

It’s tough to assign blame for the current state of digital affairs.

The fact is, we’re all guilty at some level.

• We collectively signed up for lots of services — using our first, second, third or latest email address
• Companies started building and/or buying lists and sending “email blasts” as a cheap way to reach people
• Marketers routinely ignored or flaunted rules of common decency and even laws like CAN-SPAM that required them to obtain true permission before sending electronic messages
• Hackers saw the value in getting to people’s inboxes — and started stealing and selling addresses on the Dark Web
• More services sprang up to make it easy to discover anyone’s email addres
• Employers started blurring the lines between “work” and “personal” time
• We all got smartphones that allow us to stay connected 24x7

What Can Be Done To Take Back Control?

There are no easy answers on how to fix many of the issues of digital communications that have spiraled out of control.

However, we believe there are some key considerations to any new solutions that will help stem the tide of noise and unwanted messages, streamline our lives and give us more clarity.

Email and phone numbers with boundaries. The underlying technology behind email exchanges hasn’t changed much in decades. It remains largely a simple, open protocol — which makes it extremely susceptible to abuse. Ditto for phone numbers…there’s little stopping anyone with your number from dialing for dollars.

True contact permission. If you accidentally left the front door to your house open, would you assume that gave anyone the right to simply barge in and interrupt you at dinner, in bed or in the shower? Of course not!

Unfortunately, that’s exactly how many companies view your email inbox — as an open door they are free to waltz through anytime — regardless of whether they even knocked once and asked if it was OK to come in.

Companies have to stop skirting the issue of whether they have your explicit permission to engage with you. What’s more, they should be prohibited from assuming they have carte blanche to contact you forever, or the ability to share your information with others.

You should only get emails from people and companies that you approve.

The ability to disconnect — or disappear. Likewise, you should be able at any time to remove yourself completely from a company’s contact database — meaning your email address and phone number. That means everywhere they have stored or shared your information — not just in a one-off solution like an email management system.

For those times when you want to engage with a company or individual for a finite amount of time — or even take a brief break — you should be able to start and stop the communications, on your terms.

Smarter alerts and interruptions. Whether you’re using email, phone and text messaging for personal or professional reasons, you should be able to gain much greater control and begin to curb the addictive patterns of constantly checking to see “what’s there.” You should be able to take time confidently to focus on what’s really important to you, knowing that only the best information is going to reach you — and that you can set parameters around what’s important enough to get your attention right away — versus what can wait until later.

We’re Working On It

We want to love email again ourselves.

We want to stop thieves from trying to send us phishing scams or call us whenever they please.

We want to take back our time and control over our digital spaces.

We’re eager to show off our vision for more productive, pleasant and protected communications and invite you to keep in touch with our progress.

Originally published at www.okclear.com.