Apple executives, Facebook billionaires endorse tech ‘diets’
AT GOOGLE, some employees use a tool that restricts time spent on email. A senior Apple Inc. executive said his wife used a device that sets iPhone and iPad limits for their children.
Members of a venture capital firm meditate before phone-free quarterly meetings. Slava Rubin, co-founder of crowdfunding site Indiegogo, has a strict no-screen policy for gatherings and adopted a similar rule for his bedroom.
“Literally, the only electricity we use is one lamp,” he says.
Faced with a deluge of text messages, social-media updates, emails and other distracting alerts, tech executives, entrepreneurs and rank-and-file workers in Silicon Valley are trying to limit their use of the gadgets and digital services they helped create. The efforts show how the industry is grappling with its own concerns about the attention-sapping effects of the smartphone age. A survey released by Microsoft Corp. this week acknowledged that new digital technology can make businesses less productive.
“It definitely took a long time and much misery before I figured out where to draw the line,” said Joe Hewitt, who led Facebook’s early efforts to put the social network on mobile phones.
Some employees of Alphabet Inc.’s Google use software called In Box When Ready. Downloadable for the Chrome browser, the program lets people schedule “lockouts” so they can’t access messages during certain periods.
At Facebook, wood-working and analogue art-making areas at the headquarters campus give employees the chance to step away from screens. In San Francisco, Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, now running the business software company Asana, encourages younger employees to turn off notifications on their phones. Rudin of Indiegogo only checks email during designated times, limiting his messages to quick exchanges.
Alexander Ljung, the cofounder of SoundCloud Ltd., says he turns off all notifications on his phone outside of a messaging app that few people can reach. Thomas Meyerhoffer, a former Apple industrial designer, also blocks alerts on his phone and moved all apps off his iPhone X home screen. — Bloomberg