Imagine a company – maybe even your workplace - where people are starting to come into the office maybe 3 or 4 times a week.

How is everyone communicating with each other?

We’re guessing they’re using some combination of E-mail, Slack or Teams. Yeah…even those sitting in the same office use these tools to “talk” with each other.

Now, why do people prefer using these tools – over say an old fashioned 1:1 conversation with each other? One answer – which is surely obvious -- is that you don’t have to schedule a set time for these. It’s asynchronous – which means the conversation can take place with time lags in between. This offers us a great deal of flexibility, which we love! Now, our colleagues in different time zones can contribute when it makes the most sense to their work-life sensibilities. Fantastic right?  

Yet, there’s a downside.

As unread email and slack messages start to pile up – so does the anxiety that you are falling behind or not doing enough. After all, each unread message notification represents a person, a colleague or client, waiting for your response. A recent study found that the average person has 200 unread emails at any given point in time. That’s just a small part of the digital debt we’re all carrying around. E-mail volume alone is 30% higher since 2020 and rising.

So, not only are you spending time commuting to and from the office – you also start to find ways to work outside of “in-the-office” hours responding to e-mail and IMs. Maybe after putting the kids to bed. Or while standing in the grocery line. Or maybe even while driving. A client once remarked how he was so blessed that he could check email while playing golf. He had a rule not to reply to emails during that time but made sure he read everything inbound.  It didn’t occur to him once how much more he might enjoy playing golf without worrying about what’s in his email.

This cycle unfortunately never ends. As the stress builds from being “always-on”, it eventually leads to burnout. What at first looks like productive activity negatively affects the company’s top-line (employees basically “quiet quit” – hence are less effective) and bottom line (attrition rises and costs rise).

Trends like asynchronous communications – which on the surface are net positive innovations, get mangled up when we experience them through the lens of attention seeking notifications and persuasive design.

No one ever taught us how to live with technology, and so we all struggle.

This is where digital wellness comes in. Through simple frameworks, you can learn ways to thrive alongside technology without getting overwhelmed by it. Instead of focusing your energy on counting screentime hours, or hiding from your devices, it can help you identify and amplify innate traits that may have become (or made) dull by overuse of tech.

As technology evolves, it’ll be critical to protect our sparse attention and overstretched productivity. Our effort is to get digital wellbeing prioritized with every employer and school. You can start taking control of your own digital choices today – and we invite you to visit scrollbychoice.com to learn more.