Hold the phone

IT’S likely to be in your pocket or buried at the bottom of your handbag. You may have two, or even three of them.

Even when it’s silent, it’s still making noise. It’s not truly off even when it’s off.

It invades all aspects of your life, making life easier while also adding hugely to your stress levels.

You do everything on it, you do everything with it and you can’t imagine life without it.

You get separation anxiety if it’s not within your eyesight or earshot. It may even be in your hand right now.

It’s the social wrecking device that has allowed your working life to creep into your personal life.

It has sped everything up, so that people expect an instant response, either verbally or in writing.

You can instantly get documents in the palm of your hand, on the train, in a cafe, even when you’re driving.

Could you imagine how the world kept spinning without it?

Actually, yes. Just stop for two minutes and think back to a world before the smart phone.

Think of inventions and technologies that shaped the world, such as the automobile, aeroplane, satellites, telephone, computers, and even atomic energy.

All of these existed before the smart phone, as did hundreds of nations.

Churchill won the second world war, Europe was rebuilt, we even went to the moon.

If you think that it all happened without people checking their text messages or twitter account, you’re half way to getting the point I’m trying to make.

If you visit the old Parliament House in Canberra, you’ll be surprised by a few things that have changed since our leaders left that building to occupy the new Parliament in 1988 (yes, it’s not that long ago).

The Prime Minister’s suite is the biggest in the building, but it’s minuscule. It crammed about 30 people into what would be a small suburban home.

Those people banged out work on manual typewriters and sent faxes to foreign powers, using an actual human switchboard operator — and the country functioned.

The PM had an analog phone on his desk, and a television in his office — no computer, no email, no text messages. No tweets from the US President and yet strangely the world kept turning and working.

Australia is on the short-list of the hardest working nations in the world, also working the longest hours.

We have one of the highest instances of heart disease. One in four Aussies have depression.

Take a look at that not-so silent piece of equipment that you cherish so dearly and ask yourself, is this too much of a good thing?

Is it solving problems or is it part of the problem?

Separate the work from the personal, at the very least.

If your boss texts or emails you after hours, ignore it. I know that’s not easy when the workforce is so casualised and you need the work, but don’t do any work tasks in your own time.

Don’t even think about work at home.

The same advice should also apply to teenagers and school — do your homework but then switch off. We know how effective smart phones are for cyber-bullying Turn the damn thing off at night — don’t leave it sitting on your bedside table buzzing and vibrating every time a piece of spam email comes through offering you Viagra at a knockdown price, or someone tweets that they’ve just seen their cat smile, or instagrams you a photo of their latest selfie. We work hard enough without worrying whether the buzz was a work email, and worse even is that it might be and you read it. And now you can’t get back to sleep. Your personal time is your own. Work should, and can, wait until the morning. If you’re old enough to remember a world without smart phones, try going back to that world even for a few hours a day. If you’ve grown up with a smart phone welded to the palm of your hand, try to picture some more relaxing ways to spend your valuable time. We don’t get very long on this mortal coil, and no one is going to remember that you had smashed avocado for breakfast, despite you having sent the picture to 112 of your very best friends.