I’m switching my phone off to see real world
“I have recently been taking some drastic action that required a monastic level of discipline. For the past two weeks I have been turning my phone off the moment I’ve left the office. Now before you roll your eyes and scoff, just hear me out. Burnout Britain is existing on a knife-edge.”
Ihave recently been taking some drastic action that required a monastic level of discipline. For the past two weeks I have been turning my phone off the moment I’ve left the office.
Now before you roll your eyes and scoff, just hear me out. Burnout Britain is existing on a knife-edge. We seem to be surgically attached to our phones, sending late-night work emails, constantly monitoring social media streams, unable to stop “looking down” at whatever device we have to hand. We can’t sleep, focus or plan like we used to.
Yet no one seems terribly bothered. True, adults might wring their hands in concern over the effect the dreaded internet is having on their children – but they do little to rein in their own pathetic reliance on digital devices, which has a proven deleterious effect on their offspring. And so nothing is changing.
Such is the extent of the problem that the charity Working Families has dedicated seven whole days to encouraging British workers to rediscover life away from their jobs. The National Work Life Week was set up six years ago, and we’re slap bang in the middle of this year’s. I bet you didn’t even notice.
Yesterday was officially “go home on time” day. It’s extraordinary that we even need such a thing; even more depressing is a new study of 1,000 Britons which found that the majority of us use our weekends to complete household chores we couldn’t face doing during the week. Worse still, a sixth of us find ourselves at a loose end on a Friday after work because we’ve been too “busy” to put anything in the diary.
As the Volkswagen scandal rages on, the company can at least take some comfort in the fact that it was considered groundbreaking three years ago, when it decided to ban out-of-hours work emails in order to help its employees to relax. (I wonder, did they chill out a little too much?) While a few companies did try to implement something similar, it didn’t really take off.
It is a horrible irony that the Information Age, fuelled by the internet, has done nothing more than turn us into a nation of device slaves. Technological advances should have brought greater flexibility, boosted levels of productivity and allowed us more insight than ever before.
But the opposite has happened – we feel emptier and less nourished. This is why the American entrepreneur and author Aaron Hurst (interestingly, he is the nephew of the man who coined the term Information Age) believes we are now living in something he calls the Purpose Economy. The rise of the web and online communication, he thinks, has left many of us feeling alienated and also hungry for meaning and deeper connections.
But we are looking for these in the wrong place. Most people don’t have a job that sates this yawning desire for purpose. Their daily toil functions simply to pay the bills. And even the lucky few who are fortunate to be paid to do what they love still need to find their significance elsewhere. Turning off your phone may sound simple, but really it’s a step towards something much tougher: true disconnection from work and re-engagement with the real world.
A better night’s sleep, less anxiety and greater sense of purpose are guaranteed – as well as a decent Friday night out. Now who’s with me?