Do you feel burnt out? Do you feel mentally drained? While there could be many reasons to it, my aim is to emphasize on one aspect, technological burn out.
Most of us have our eyes glued onto our phones. Phones have evolved from communicational devices to notebooks to cameras to clocks. It is virtually impossible to be without one.
While we gaze into our phones or devices and engage in social and communication media, there occurs information overload. Your mind processes so much information.
Further, social media may tend to aggravate emotions within us when we see the perfect moments captured on the timelines of the individuals we may friend or follow.
These could all sum up to technological burn out. The mind gets tired and worn down.
I would like to draw your attention to a particular life incident of mine where I was going through a life changing traumatic experience. One thing that helped me heal and bounce back faster was my decision to switch from a smart phone to a basic phone. I remember coming off Whatsapp, facebook and Viber for a considerable period of time. This gave me a lot of time to process my own thoughts without letting it get influenced with excessive virtual interaction nor information.
Another tactic I practiced to reduce technological burn-out is to barely resort to wi-fi on my smart phone. I have very rarely utilized the wi-fi option within the last three years. I switch onto mobile data on my phone when I intend to use it and immediately switch it off after. This helps me to avoid being virtually drawn all the time onto the virtual side of the world despite it being a comparatively expensive measure.
Another ploy I have been doing over the past few years is switching off social media notifications especially facebook, instagram, whatsapp and viber. This helps me to avoid been enticed into checking messages and being hooked into my device frequently.
One may argue that there can be an emergency. However in my case,l I believe I would receive a call in the time of a true emergency, very rarely would people be messaging me on a social network in any life threatening situation.
Another technique would be to avoid social media devices within the first half an hour of waking up and the last half hour before bed. The plot here being to give the mind space to settle. However, this is something I struggle with doing and I am yet to adopt it successfully.
These techniques may not suit everyone and be unique to person’s circumstances. However, I believe that the majority of us can work on being aware and reducing technological burn out in order to give ourselves a much needed mental break!
Zasha's Thoughts 