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On a scale of zero to six, how much do the digital technologies you use make you feel worn out, with zero standing for not at all and six for so worn out that you can’t even keep looking at the screen?
Paul Leonardi has asked that question of more than 12,000 people, starting in 2002, after he was finding himself digitally exhausted at the end of the day. In 2002, the average exhaustion score was 2.6, just below the midline. By 2020 it had climbed to 5.5 – extremely worn out.
“The data reveal a disturbing trend: People have been growing increasingly worn out by their use of digital technologies at work and at home,” the professor of technology management at University of California, Santa Barbara writes in his book, Digital Exhaustion.
He began before the advent of social media but even then a problem was starting to show. The first big jump he saw came in 2010 and 2011, as social media was added to the relatively new smartphone. And, of course, numbers climbed up again – perhaps the correct verb is zoomed – during the pandemic.
He’s not cataloguing general exhaustion. People tell him they have the energy in the evening to play basketball or immerse themselves in other activities. And although the focus is on digital depletion, he argues it’s not the devices themselves that are the problem. It’s the way we use them and the social, organizational and cultural expectations associated with our patterns of use.
“In today’s world, if we want to work an office job, be a good friend or sibling, interact with most of our civic institutions and maintain relationships with people near and far, we can’t escape digital technologies and the threat of exhaustion they bring,” he says.
He has identified three major forces that shape digital exhaustion. That “exhaustion triad,” as he dubs it, are the way we pay attention; how we constantly make inferences about ourselves and others while using the devices; and the emotions we feel when we’re in front of the screens.
We are continually inundated with demands for our attention (as we simultaneously fight for the attention of others). The result is that our attention is fragmented. We lose focus and become easily distracted, the brain not made for handling multiple tasks at once. “We mercilessly divide our attention across so many different and incommensurate information inputs that we are literally fatiguing our brains from the moment we wake up,” he notes.
When we switch contexts, our brain must disengage from the cognitive processes related to the initial task and reorient to the demands of the next. For example, you are immersed in writing a marketing report when an email comes in with a question on another topic, reminding you to check with a colleague who has yet to send you the missing data on another topic. Then you check Facebook and The Globe and Mail site for the latest news, before returning to your report.
But he points out it’s more than the constant context shifts in topics or issues – it’s also the leaping between devices. Each device or application gives us different capabilities. They all look different and are formatted differently.
“Although it barely seems like a notable switch to move between applications of a similar type like Zoom and Teams, our experience on each of those platforms is unique because we need to readjust to their layouts, colours and buttons to be able to use them effectively,” he writes.
This constant switching of attention – between topics and devices -- depletes us. In addition, we are depleted by a desire to know what is motivating others and driving their actions; as information floods in about their actions – in the form of late emails, likes on Facebook, uncompleted thoughts in texts – we are trying to guess intentions and perhaps second guessing our own intentions, which can be exhausting. And all of that affects us emotionally, which we must process and regulate, taking a further physiological toll.
To regain energy, he recommends you check all the digital tools you are using and aim to stop using half of them, concentrating on those apps that are most necessary. Also, embrace waiting: Don’t be so prompt in responding to emails, texts and other requests. Some people may judge you poorly; most won’t even notice. And in that vein, stop making inferences about what they may be thinking. It does you no good.
Quick hits
- Conversations come in three types, according to the late organizational anthropologist Judith Glaser: Transactional, an exchange of information; positional, the battle for influence; and transformational, co-creating and discovering together.
- Consultant Karin Hurt compares attending a meeting to getting on a boat for a voyage you don’t control. She suggests you look at your calendar for the week ahead: What boats are you stepping onto without thinking? Where are you showing up more out of momentum than meaning? Try picking one meeting to gracefully bow out of.
- Peacocks want to be admired, says consultant Roy H. Williams, while parrots repeat only what they have heard. Each of us, he adds, has a little bit of peacock in us and perhaps a little parrot, too.
Harvey Schachter is a Kingston-based writer specializing in management issues. He, along with Sheelagh Whittaker, former CEO of both EDS Canada and Cancom, are the authors of When Harvey Didn’t Meet Sheelagh: Emails on Leadership.