When is it Time to Unplug?

The Matrix has you, Neo. It’s constantly bombarding your brain and all of your senses with visions, sounds, movements, smells, and feelings. Messages that together create one version of the truth. But is it your truth?

If you are in the business of designing, coding, co-creating; marketing, selling or simply using technology, this is for you. If you’re a human, and you own a PC, tablet or smartphone, this is also for you.

When is it time to unplug?

Are you focused on being and becoming the best and most beautiful version of yourself? Is the way you handle your communications and relationships also helping you to become that, and inspiring others around you to do the same? Are you using your technology in such a way that it helps you realize whatever your potential for greatness is? Or are you:

• Allowing a device and the impulses it gives you direct your feelings, thoughts, and actions on a day-to-day basis?
• Letting ‘likes’ take time away from the people you Love?
• Letting an online or work persona take away precious time and energy from the best version of you, your face-to-face social life, and priceless alone time?

The Matrix has you, Neo. It’s constantly bombarding your brain and all of your senses with visions, sounds, movements, smells and feelings. Messages that together create one version of the truth. But is it your truth?

Isn’t New Technology the Answer for Everything?

We are more and more starting to realize the negative impact these technologies have on our peace of mind, focused attention, productivity, relationships and overall psychological, social and environmental health and well-being.

Children and teenagers are reporting alarming rates of depressive or even suicidal symptoms. Working adults are more distracted than ever, and we see more burnout and related symptoms than ever before.

At work, we are asked and required to look at ever more and more sophisticated digital interfaces. Our teams meanwhile are not getting any more productive, let alone more fulfilled or happy.

Implementing the newest of the newest technology again and again just won’t do the trick. More screen-time is not helping; engagement or user adoption cannot be the end goal, can it?

Digital marketing and media technology has made it possible for us to spread lies and other unethically persuasive messages to a more and more precisely defined and targeted audience. Consumerism is still raging rampant. Fake News is helping the political debate become more and more polarized worldwide.

Social and ecological disturbance is the current normal state.

But the new technology in itself is as neutral as print books were in their infancy. Therefore, this is not a call to war against digital technology. It’s a call to using technology more consciously, and a call for more balance. When is it time to unplug?

The only time is now.

These words are here to remind you of the magic you have a tendency to forget nowadays. The constant creation of endless new possibilities that is life. That is (y)our life.

Turn over the touch screen 

Take it out your pocket, that thing, that part of you that’s 
If — you hadn’t been cradling it in your hand already 
To begin with. 

Comfortable, isn’t it? A familiar feel? 

Now, turn over the touch screen — not left to right, 
But in your mind: thoughts go from me to screen; 
That’s the general direction of thinking 
In these our digital times, right? 

But why — Don’t we turn it around, and look down one bit deeper? 

’Cause: who decides where mind is focused, and where focus fails? 
Who initiates, who interrupts, and who decides where who gets lost? 

Who directs messages, and thoughts, and what feelings may come alive? 
Who decided, even this morning, what was the first thing 
On your mind? 

What is still our own? What is still true? 

Turn over the touch screen 
Be here, be real, be You.

Unplug and become the best version of yourself

If you want me to, I’ll help you put away the device more often — and help you unplug. To step out of the rat race for a second and give yourself some white space. That’s where the magic is. 

Are we addicted to our digital technology? How is it helping us become a better version of ourselves?

Image source: www.lifebeyond.one

My new book “Life Beyond the Touch Screen” is out now, you can get it here as an e-book or paperback. It’s a meditational booklet designed to increase our consciousness around the impact of digital technology on our lives as individuals, in organizations and society. A reminder to choose. Take back your energy, focus, and time.