Chapter 5

Practising Mindfulness in the Digital Age

In This Chapter

Making technology work for you rather than control you

Using technology mindfully to enhance communication

Focusing with helpful techniques

T his chapter helps you to manage one of the most beneficial but also most challenging aspects of living in the information age — digital technology. Mindfulness offers you the presence of mind to be able to choose when to use technology, to identify what sort of technology you need and to recognise when a more real-world approach is called for. When you do use technology, you discover how mindfulness offers a way of working with it that involves a greater degree of presence, wisdom and compassion.

Choosing When to Use Technology

Technology includes any application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes. In the industrial age, technology was dominated by mechanical machinery driven by the steam engine. But in the 21st Century, your daily life is probably dominated by digital technology. The explosion in the use of digital technology is impacting every single organisation in some way.

The evolution of the human brain didn’t take modern technology into account. So these changes are creating a big challenge, even for the powerhouse that resides in your skull. The pervasive use of technology often means that you may not even question your use of email or texting to communicate — mindfulness offers a chance to momentarily reflect before you immerse yourself in sending another deluge of messages out into the World Wide Web.

Recognising the pros and cons of technology

Digital technology certainly has many benefits in the workplace. Communication via texts and instant messaging is almost immediate. Video conferencing means that time isn’t wasted on travelling to meetings. Work can be completed on the move. With laptops and smartphones, you can stay connected and keep working on planes, trains and in automobiles. And with the processing power of computers, technology is used to manage huge amounts of data from customers to help you decide how best to serve their needs.

Are there any drawbacks to the use of technology? We think so, especially if you use it unskilfully. Here are a few disadvantages that are often overlooked:

Mindfulness can help you to notice your new relationship with technology so that you’re more in control rather than being a slave to your digital devices.

Rebalancing your use of technology

Using technology too much is a problem. If you’re used to checking your phone every minute of the day for messages, you may struggle to concentrate when in a meeting or listening to your boss. Inefficient habits when online may mean that you end up surfing from one website to another instead of completing your tasks. And deciding to always communicate via technology rather than meeting face to face can lead to loss of opportunities to discuss new ideas and create a deeper and more trusting relationship with colleagues or customers.

Having described the downside to over-use of digital devices in the preceding section, you need to recognise that an aversion to technology can be an issue too. If you’re the CEO of the organisation and decide not to make best use of technology, your competitors may surpass you. Using outdated technology may frustrate your staff and mean that you struggle to attract the talent you need to succeed.

A balanced approach is the answer. Most companies have embraced the use of technology, and that’s probably a good thing. But you may not know how to use technology in a more mindful way so that you’re not in a constant state of distraction or miscommunicating with others as you respond on a purely emotional level. We think that a set of strategies is required in the workplace to help individuals make more conscious choices in their use of technology.

One of the most effective ways of managing your technology is having downtime — time when you switch off from technology. Computers are different from humans. Computers work best if they’re never switched off. They can go on and on working without rest. However, if you stay connected and switched on without time to recharge, you burn out. Your attentional resources deplete rapidly, as do your energy levels, enthusiasm and intelligence. So having a few minutes, a few hours, a few days and sometimes a few weeks away from technology is key to your success.

Here are a few ways to create digital downtime, based on how much time you have available:

Communicating Mindfully

Communication lies at the heart of being human. In the workplace, you’re bound to be communicating often with others. And when you’re not communicating with others, you’re communicating with yourself, being aware of your thoughts, emotions and even sensations in your body.

Mindful communication is about bringing a greater level of conscious awareness and reflection to how you communicate. With greater awareness, you’re better able to understand what others wish to express to you, as well as able to choose when and how to communicate your own thoughts.

Communication has been transformed by technology. Whereas in the past face-to-face conversations were the only way to communicate, you can now share your thoughts in lots of different ways. With the advent of the telephone, a person on the other side of the world was only a few button pushes away. And with the creation of the internet came not only email but also live video chat via platforms such as Skype and Google Hangouts — and free to boot! Finally, communication took another step change with the creation of social media, dominated by Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

For example, just today we’ve been on social media to share a blog post, exchanged several emails about a meeting tomorrow, had two phone calls from colleagues about work on a website, and exchanged three text messages and some WhatsApp messages. And this is a very typical day, where we kept our phones off for large chunks of the day whilst working on this book! If we didn’t know about that discipline of switching off technology, we would be getting disturbed all day.

Face-to-face conversations are now just one option and are often the less-favoured option because of the investment of time required. Are face-to-face meetings worth the effort? Regular face-to-face interactions build up social networks in the brain through subtle visual cues and signals. If you spend thousands of hours online, you miss out on this training. Young people growing up in the modern age may have a reduced ability to socialise resulting from lack of face-to-face time.

Face-to-face communication has many inherent benefits that aren’t so easy to access online or over the phone. These benefits include:

A mindful communicator chooses what is the most effective form of communication and then gives that communication their full attention. Mindful communication also keeps in mind the limits of the medium of communication.

Here are seven forms of communication, rated hierarchically according to the level of feedback they provide — least to most:

Emailing mindfully

Email is both incredibly convenient and incredibly stressful. As the existence of more than 3 billion email accounts demonstrates, however, it is certainly popular.

Email is a tool for your own use. If you check email when you need to, and respond efficiently, all may be well. But you may be in the habit of checking email too often, hoping for that next interesting message to come flying through.

Mindful emailing is using email with greater awareness and wisdom. The purpose of using email is to communicate for the benefit of both you and your recipient.

Try these tips to help you use email more mindfully and productively:

Be mindful and present as you deal with emails. Use your favourite mindful exercises before and after emailing to help you achieve greater focus.

Turn off your message notifications, so that you aren’t alerted each time a new one arrives. Doing so is your first step towards reducing the amount of time you waste in this way.

Phoning mindfully

One day one of our clients wanted to do something different. When he received a routine email from accounts, he decided to phone the sender rather than simply email his response. The phone seemed to ring for quite some time before a tentative voice said, ‘Hello?’ Our client told the woman that he was the person she’d been emailing for years but had never actually spoken to. They went on to have a pleasant conversation and the person in accounts said the call made her feel less like a machine and more like someone who actually works with other people. That encounter was certainly a wake-up call for our client!

Mindful phoning means bringing a greater degree of awareness to the process of being on the phone. With mindful phoning, you need to be aware of several things:

Try this exercise next time you make a phone call:

The key to mindful phoning is to do a short mindful exercise before phoning. Then you’ll be more focused and present during the call itself.

Using a smartphone mindfully

Smartphones are pretty smart. With them you can check emails, update social media, surf the internet, take photos and make videos, edit videos, upload to YouTube, write a blog post, access loads of apps, work with documents, enable video chat, manage your calendar, find a restaurant, use global maps with GPS, find out the time anywhere on the planet, read and listen to books, buy products, and even learn mindfulness! Oh, we almost forgot: You can make phone calls with them too.

Smartphones are particularly addictive and can drain your mental focus and creativity when used excessively. Compulsively checking your smartphone becomes a problem when it starts interfering with your everyday life. Reading your emails instead of listening to someone speaking in a meeting is one example. But what about scanning through your Facebook updates when you’re listening to a customer on the phone — such behaviour may cost you and your company lost revenue.

If you think that you need an injection of mindfulness to bring your smartphone habits under control, give these actions a go:

If you can afford to do so, use one phone for work and another for your personal life. That way you can literally switch off from work at the end of the day.

Here are a few strategies to help you manage your smartphone with mindfulness:

Engaging with social media mindfully

Social media, such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, has changed the way many businesses operate. Entire companies have emerged to help organisations manage their social media — the way they connect with their customers and suppliers. And traditional advertising is finding itself working less effectively as social media is far more interactive, engaging and fun for consumers.

Here are some key principles to consider when using social media in a way that means personal and business use overlap, as often happens in small to medium-sized organisations:

Writing mindfully

Pretty much every modern business in the world has a presence on the internet. And websites need content. Although such content is increasingly in the form of video and audio, the internet is still awash with the written word. To be successful online, you need to be able to write well or hire someone with that skill.

Writing effectively is also important for communication. Emails, text messages, reports and even presentations involve writing. So, how can you write in a way that engages your readers? And what does mindfulness have to contribute to the art of writing?

Having written five books, Shamash has spent a lot of time over the past few years just writing. And here’s what he learnt about writing in a mindful way:

If you write on a computer, lots of software is available to help you stay focused. Shamash likes to simply put Microsoft Word into ‘Focus’ mode. Then you just see the document you’re writing and all other windows disappear — ideal for you budding mindful writers out there! Another option is Ommwriter — available for Mac, PC and iPad.