Check Your Addiction Levels
When was the last time you checked your addiction levels? In training I often have ‘that-little-voice-in-my-head’ reminding me that I could do with practising what I preach. I strive to find, live and share “best practices” in all areas of my life. The area I find I have most consistently grown in is that of ‘time management’, or as I call it in my training, ‘time optimisation’. You cannot manage time. We are all blessed with 86400 seconds in a day. It is the only thing, I am aware of, that all of humanity has in equal amounts.
It is what you do with what you have that makes the difference.
That brings me back to my opening question. Do you know where your time goes each day? What is your mindset around time? Are you inclined to complain about always being busy, or never having enough time, or ‘days flying by’? Maybe the days drag for you, you are bored, you can’t wait for the weekend? The way we set our mind to think about time usually determines how we process the time we have. Our eyes and ears see, hear and observe what our mind is looking for. A great way to check your constructs around time is to watch your thoughts and words. Do you describe going to work as something you “have” to do or something you “get” to do? Do you have a standard default reply to the “how are you doing?” question that involves describing how busy you are? Do you use your weekends to escape your reality or enjoy your life or create the future reality you would like to have?
These are all thought provoking questions I like to use to stir conversation and discussion. Most people are not conscious of where their time goes in a day. To help increase awareness we get people to keep a 15 min time sheet for 2 weeks. Keeping a note of what you have done with your time through every 15 minutes of a day highlights how much of our day ‘disappears’. The biggest culprits are usually identified as one of the big 3: interruptions, distractions and procrastination. The most common creator of these … your cell phone!
Designed on the same principles as pokie machines, cell phones use various techniques to keep you staring at them for as long as possible. From notification sounds, vibrations, buttons through to the intermittent rewards we get from emails and social media. Have you ever picked up your phone to do something only to see a notification and read it and like/comment/reply, which then leads to looking at the next item on your ‘feed’. Realising you are distracted you put your phone down only to remember why you picked it up in the first place. You pick it up to see the person you replied to has replied to you asking for something that leads you to look in your files, emails and photos and you reply and put your phone down …
According to a study of over 11000 people using RescueTime the average person spends 3 hours and 15 minutes a day on phones and checks their phone a staggering 58 times a day (30 of these during work hours!). You can check your screen time stats on your phone - are you above or below average? Is it intentional time or are you addicted to your screen? Following a webinar this week I realised I still spend more time than I like or intend looking at my screen. A ruthless elimination of notifications has proved liberating. Do you need an addiction check?
