This week, we spoke with Chris Flack, a social entrepreneur at Unplug to bring you top tips for creating the ultimate technology balance in your life!
After spending 15 years working in IT sales experiencing the stresses of modern working life, Chris decided to make the leap to the nonprofit sector. He started studying meditation and yoga in India while working on retreats across the world.
As someone who has experienced huge benefits from meditation, his mission moving forward is to revolutionise meditation to meet today’s needs through fun, realistic and sustainable programmes.
Chris sets out 3 key tips for gym and studio owners who wish to establish a technology life balance once and for all:
1. Set Specific Times for Checking Emails, and Stick to It
With today’s societal pressure, we feel we have to be online 24/7. When we have access to our mobile or desktop, there’s no excuse for not checking our emails and replying instantaneously, right? Wrong. Scientific evidence proves that multitasking in this nature just doesn’t work and instead, reduces your attention span to the activity you should be focused on. As the saying goes, it’s better to do one thing well than lots of things poorly.
It’s time to disable the popup mail notifications and change your conditions for replying to emails. Find a way to make it work for your profession, whether this means limiting checking your emails to twice a day or four times, it has the potential to make a big difference to your productivity.
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Discover more 2. Have ‘no Tech’ Times
Although Chris is certainly not anti technology, he is pro conversation. There’s no doubt that we’ve developed a social etiquette with technology over the past few years and it seems the only way we can really get back to the more ‘mindful’ space we used to be in is to have some down time where we reboot and switch off the technology.
It’s important to note that technology is not exactly the core issue, how we act when we’re constantly surrounded by technology, is. However by unplugging ourselves every once and awhile, we’re allowing the balance we need to come through. You don’t have to go a whole week each month without technology, but we should be focusing on creating tech free elements of our life for our family, partners and friends. For example, no screen sundays where you take a trip to the park instead of browsing through social media all day.
3. Create a List of ‘no Tech’ Zones
If we look at the entrepreneurs of the world, they didn’t come up with revolutionary business ideas with 8 tabs open on their desktop, or looking at videos of pandas doing head stands. They came up with ideas when there was silence and nothing going on. That’s not to say that ideas don’t spring from busy moments, but one thing is for sure, we do need to give our brains a space to think.
Chris created a list of ‘no tech’ zones such as dining areas and the bedroom in an attempt to encourage balance and contemplative moments. It may sound boring to some, but interesting enough, studies show that we actually need this boredom to bring out the creativity within us. Give it a try, you might surprise yourself!
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