“Email’s down!”
That used to be a pretty common occurrence here back in the day, but it hardly happens anymore. There’s always email. Except today.
I’m sure our tech team is on it but in the meantime I can see people’s faces going ashen, their eyes darting and fingers twitching. How will we function without interoffice email?
Well, there’s always the phone. Or your feet. You can walk over to someone’s workstation and actually have a real conversation. Radical, I know, but it works sometimes.
I’m making fun, of course, mostly of myself, because I’m as addicted to email and texting and social media as anyone, probably more. But if you’d told me 25 years ago that in the future most of my daily communications would be written, I would have thought you’d gone back in time. Isn’t that what everyone did in the old days? And yet I find myself writing emails to people who are sitting 20 feet away.
I know. Generally speaking, digital communication is efficient. It connects us as never before. Yet it can also be limiting, impersonal and all-consuming. A couple I know started the year off by doing a digital detox weekend. They unhooked from email, texting, Instagram, Facebook, everything digital. They even turned their cell phones off.
“It was a little like detoxing from drugs, I imagine,” one of them confessed. At first they were nervous, fidgety, distracted, short-tempered. But as the weekend wore on the digital detox took effect. They relaxed, talked more to each other, spent quiet time together, went for walk… you know, did things that didn’t require a password or high-speed connection. “I even slept better,” my friend told me.
On Monday, when they reconnected with all things digital, it was an unsettling feeling. They really weren’t comfortable at first. “It took me two days to check my Facebook page,” one of them said. “I usually check it every two hours.”
Of course, what I’m saying is heresy. I’m supposed to urge you to use the Internet and social media more, to check out our sites and Facebook pages, manage your Guideposts account and order products. It’s easy, fast and saves money. You should definitely do it.
But every once in a while it’s probably good to digitally detox. I might even try it myself… one of these days. I just found out email is back up. Sorry. Gotta go…
If you’ve done a digital detox, tell me how it went. Post below.
