Our work life experience as human beings on this planet seems like a race against time. How much information can we handle before our brains implode? Notwithstanding my dramatic flair, you have to admit we’re on a collision course with the consequences of “distraction” which likely has long term implications as you’ll read in the New York Times this week.
Hooked on Gagets
The New York Times featured an article by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Matt Richtel entitled, Hooked on Gagets, and Paying a Mental Price in which he covers the mental, psychological, and physical implications of “technology overload.” It’s a great read and dives into some of the effects of your “brain on a computer.”
Scientific research and potential solutions are included in the article and sidebar stories. For example, don’t check your e-mail every two seconds, don’t text and drive, limit your news sources etc. But in order to find the solution that’s right for you, in my opinion, you have to determine where you fall short in what I refer to as the “UPED U Cycle” which I have been teaching about in my lecture series “Practical Chaos” for the last decade.
The “UPED U Cycle”
Cycles have points within them that if altered in a minor way can change the outcome of an experience. Think of Chaos Theory. Just a small aberration in the initial conditions, can drastically change the long term behavior of a system. If closely examined, here’s how our work life daily existence can get tangled in a never-ending chaotic twist of continuous sensory overload. I call it the UPED Cycle which is based on our 24/7 climate of ease and access to communications and the addiction to respond:
- Unlimited Incoming: A barrage of information is coming our way. The internet, tv, radio, blackberry, i-phone, newspaper (not so much anymore) family life, children, work, community etc.
- Perceived Availability: Because we’re all wired to our families, work and communities and because everyone else knows you’re wired, people think you’re always available.
- Expectation of Instant Gratification: That perceived availability leads to other people’s needs to be attended to. To be heard, answered and payed full attention to their needs in the moment.
- Desire to Deliver and Excel: Our nature is to not fall short. To nurture and want to please in what is a competitive working environment. To make our boss or clients happy, we desire to deliver and excel to keep up with the Jones’.
- Unlimited Interruptions: So, in order to please everyone at the same time, we are often taken out of the moment, are lead astray from the initial task and surrender to multi-tasking.
And so the UPED Cycle begins again. The trick is to monitor your incoming, and make concrete choices somewhere in this cycle to stump the system. Where do you think is the best place to stop the cycle? Please share your solutions along the chaotic journey to an UPED U. Get it.. UPED U!
