Rise of Digital Fatigue in a WFH and Hybrid Work era: Strategies for a Healthier Tech-Life Balance
Digital Wellness - the pursuit of an intentional and healthy relationship with technology, both in the workplace and in personal life.
Digital Wellness 🧘 is not about becoming ‘Anti-Tech’. It’s about being ‘Healthy-Tech’ & encourages you to use it to get the best out of it without it taking the best out of you 🙂.
With the world moving to work from home 🏠 the obvious side effect was the time one spends in front of a screen, be it phone 📱, laptop 💻 or a TV 📺 or other devices. With nowhere to go these devices became our obvious choices for news outside the world 🗺️. And since then this has become a habit which has been hard to leave. Studies 📚 have shown that excessive screen time can lead to eye strain, poor posture, disrupted sleep patterns, and even anxiety and depression 😓. In addition, excessive use of social media and other online platforms can be addictive and contribute to a sense of loneliness and disconnecting from real-world relationships.
July 2020 saw a rise ⬆️ of 10.5% in social media usage compared with July 2019 according to a GlobalWebIndex survey. The data speaks and it is saying we are spending more time on the internet with each passing year. According to Statista the number of Microsoft Teams users in 2021 was 145 million compared to the 300 million in 2023. Even daily Microsoft Teams calls or meetings have gone by up a huge margin during the pandemic times.
It is quite evident that we are increasingly spending more time⏳online than the year prior. It has become the need of the hour to take cognizance of the time that we spend online since everything nowadays is connected to the internet starting with the usual suspects, the phone to the innocent watch.
Now the million dollar question❓can we keep the time we spend in front of screens📱 in check?This is something everyone struggles with and there is no correct answer to this. I list down the steps I take but this by no means is the definitive answer.
With hybrid work mode being followed employers try to schedule your office visits which coincide with big calls. While some calls📞 are short and wind up soon but other longer calls may take hours and visiting office for those calls may decrease Teams fatigue. (with the increased advantage of connecting with colleagues in person). Hybrid is the way going forward (taking in the benefits of WFH and Fully in person)
Try to set up a nightly routine that you follow before going to bed 🛌. These can be putting your phone on DND mode and keeping it out of your reach because the moment you look at one notification it opens the floodgates and you are swimming in an abyss of notifications and surfing.
Switching to an analog clock at night ⏰ is a useful idea too as it improves the quality of sleep
Designate days or times or hours of the week when you intentionally stay away from devices. Start small and keep increasing it. By doing this the anxiety that you are away from any kind of notifications doesn’t hit you.
Take vacations to places that do not have cell coverage.(This is extreme, I know). But this puts things in perspective where you realize you weren’t that bad off without your phone/notifications or internet for that matter. It does recharge you though.
Digital fatigue is real and it’s affecting us even if we are aware of it or not. Whether it be attending numerous Teams calls in the office or spending a lot of time in front of gadgets at home. It’s high time that we become mindful of the time that we spend on devices. In the end our time is both our health and wealth!
-Apurba Kumar & Rijul Arora
