Overconnected? Here’s How to Reclaim Control and Rediscover What Matters.
Lately, I’ve been traveling a lot for work, which means I’ve fallen out of my normal routines. I’ve noticed I’ve fallen into a familiar trap - I’ve become overconnected. And it’s taking a toll.
You probably know the signs yourself. It’s far too easy to find yourself endlessly checking your phone, scrolling through social media, or responding to notifications at all hours. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We have the power to take control of our connectedness, rather than letting it control us.
For many years, I’ve been on a journey to be mindful of how digital connectedness affects me - physiologically, mentally, socially, and creatively. I’ve run lots of personal experiments on ways to manage that connectedness, and I’ve discovered the significant benefits of doing so deliberately.
The truth is, overconnectedness has the very real power to disconnect us from what’s most important in life.
Here are seven reasons why we need to be intentional about managing it:
1. It Can Derail Your Focus
I’ve written before about the power of focus and how digital connectedness can sabotage our ability to maintain it. When we’re checking our phones every few minutes, we need to seriously evaluate our connectedness if we want to preserve our capacity to focus on on an important thought or task.
2. It Can Impact Your Ability to Build and Nurture Community
Tell me this doesn’t sound familiar - you’re gathered with friends, sharing a meal, catching up on life, and then someone pulls out their phone. One by one, others follow. In The Hyperlinked Life, David Kinnaman and Jun Young describe this well:
“There’s a propensity to reduce people to just one of the many data sources transmitting information. We ‘skim’ these friendships just like we do with every other piece of information that calls for our attention. Friendships become just another node in the digital life we have to manage, just another app among the dozens on our screens that we can ‘play’ when we have a moment and turn off when it’s inconvenient.”
3. It Can Harm Your Intimate Relationships
At a recent conference, a keynote speaker shared that she and her husband have a rule: their first point of connection in the morning is with each other, not their devices.
It sounds simple, but the presence of our smartphones can have a very real detrimental effect on even our closest relationships. Studies show that just having a smartphone on the table during a conversation can reduce feelings of intimacy. Yet, for many of us, our devices are ever-present, even when we have the opportunity to connect deeply with those we love most.
4. It Can Disrupt Your Spirituality and Centeredness
In Hamlet’s Blackberry, William Powers makes a thought-provoking observation:
“Beyond the sheer mental workload, our thoughts have acquired a new orientation. Of the two mental worlds everyone inhabits, the inner and the outer, the latter increasingly rules. The more connected we are, the more we depend on the world outside ourselves to tell us how to think and live… We hear the voices of others, and are directed by those voices, rather than by our own. We don’t turn inward as often or as easily as we used to. To be hooked up to the crowd all day is a very particular way to go through life.”
What does this constant external connection do to our ability to look beyond and within ourselves? How does it shape our inner life and our connection to what truly grounds us?
5. It Can Distort Your Identity
In a prescient statement made even before social media entered the culture, Robert Inchausti warned:
“To the extent that the modern world has become ruled by the crowd, it has become a theater of emptiness and vanity. When we look to each other for a model of Being, the self turns into a Mobius strip.”
Would your sense of identity be any different if it weren’t constantly in contrast with the curated lives you see on your screen?
6. It Can Limit Your Capacity for Problem-Solving and Original Thought
Digital connectedness and multitasking go hand in hand. The quick navigation from notification to notification, tab to tab, affects the way we process information - whether its content deals with the trivial or tragic.
In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr reports on the findings of Jordan Grafman, head of the cognitive neuroscience unit at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, who explains that
“the more you multitask, the less deliberate you become; the less able to think and reason out a problem.”
This leads to
“an increased likelihood to rely on status-quo ideas and solutions, rather than a propensity to engage in original thinking.”
In Conclusion
It’s easy to overlook our level of connectedness and the effect it’s having on us. It takes effort and intention to take control of our digital lives. But its also completely doable, and absolutely worth it.
Questions: In what areas or situations do you find it most difficult to take control of your connectedness? What benefits have you found by making the effort?