Do you:
1. Check your work e-mail, LinkedIn account, or business Facebook page right before going to bed?
2. Within minutes of waking?
3. Do you panic if you accidentally leave your mobile device that can access the Internet on your desk or at home?
4. Is eating your lunch often combined with texting or surfing the web?
5. Do you find that you must check your email the moment you hear the arrival chime?
6. Are you spending more time on your computer than you spend in conversations with customers, prospects, and referral sources?
If you answered yes to any one of these questions, you’re in danger
of becoming a Cyberholic. Two or more, you’re well on your way to
Cyberholism. Three or more, and you’re already a cyber addict. Four or
more and it may be time for treatment!
Technology is wonderful, especially in how it gives us access to
information at a moment’s notice while allowing us to log, store, and
search information much more effectively. In addition, as a tool for
quickly sending someone a note or a document, it almost never can be
beat. However, more and more people are allowing themselves, and their
time, to be thoroughly consumed by the click and clack of a keyboard and
the hypnotic trance of gazing at output screens both large and small.
What’s suffering? Our connectedness with one another. A true
meaningful connection with another human being is not through a portal.
It’s in conversation, a meeting, a handshake, and a smile.
Pick one day this week to turn off the device and turn up the volume
of conversations you have with the people that really count. It’s time
for some Radical Accountability, an unwavering responsibility for
getting done what matters most. And what really matters at work is not
that next text or email, it’s that personal touch of taking time to be
completely present in the presence of customers, prospects, colleagues,
and employees.
Cyberholism is curable, one day at a time.