First of 7 Reasons Why Email On Your Smartphone Might Not Be So Smart After All

Smartphones are so empowering. They put a world of information at our fingertips. They make it possible for us to send and receive e-mail everywhere we go and at all times of the day. They allow us to keep doing business long after business hours have closed.

But for most people, this hyper-connectivity means that the servant has become the master. Smartphones can be addictive. Otherwise-sane people check their smartphones obsessively, sending and receiving e-mails first thing in the morning, all day long and last thing at night.

So how can we outsmart our smartphones? How can we reap the benefits of connectivity without becoming its slaves?

Reason #1: It causes hyper-connectivity

With email available via our smartphones, we are never disconnected, constantly interrupted and always checking email.

Clay Johnson in his book The Information Diet writes about the similarity between indigestion and infogestion. He compares the poor eating habits so many of us have acquired where we are either snacking all the time or starving ourselves and then bingeing on food. It seems we tend to do the same sort of thing with incoming information and email.

Unfortunately, what happens is that these repeated and rapid downloads of information and data are taking the place of thinking and reflection. Just look at any form of public transport and you’ll see the majority of passengers looking at their smartphones rather than using that time for reflection or musing.

All this skipping from one email to another or to social media or an app or a website tends to overdose us with the inconsequential and trivial while we may miss or overlook the essential and important!

These days the problem is that being so highly connected we risk a serious ‘disconnect’ – from each other, from what’s important, from reality.

What do you think?

All the best!

Steuart