Risk & Business Magazine Hardenbergh Magazine Fall 2019 | Página 7

REDUCE CELL USE
know bright colors and flashing lights
attract your eyes. Same with phones.
So, turn your phone to black and
white. All functionality is still there!
You just aren’t attracted to it anymore.
If you have an iPhone, go to Settings
– General – Accessibility — Display
Accommodations — Colour Filters —
Grayscale. Yes, conveniently buried
under six menu options! But you can
do it.
3. ADD EXTRA SWIPES BEFORE WORK
So many of us are merging our lives
into one phone. Do you have your work
email on the same phone you want
to take out on Friday night? If so, my
suggestion is to separate the accounts
(for example, use the Mail app for
your personal email and download
the Gmail app for work, etc.) and then
move the work app a few screens away.
What do the extra three or four thumb
swipes do? They give your brain a
conscious one-second pause before you
subconsciously check your work email
at midnight after the bars.
4. NIGHT SHIFT MODE
Recent research from Australia shows
that exposing our brains to bright
screens before bed reduces melatonin
production — the sleep hormone.
Bummer! What helps? Well, if you can’t
stay off your phone then at least enable
Night Shift mode. Mine is on from 7
p.m. to 7 a.m. It dims the screen and
reduces that blinding brightness which
makes your evolutionarily slow brain
think it’s morning time. If you’re on
an iPhone, go to Settings – Display &
Brightness – Night Shift.
5. BUY AN ALARM CLOCK
Any retailer will happily sell you an
alarm clock for $10 or $15. If you’re
using your cellphone as your alarm
clock — stop! Consider the $15 an
investment in your mental sanity as
it will allow you to wind down and
wind up without getting pinged with
the latest Trump tweet. It’s much nicer
when you get back to waking up with
Roger and Marilyn.
6. DISABLE NOTIFICATIONS
What’s the first thing every app
asks you when you download it?
“EatMoreDoughnuts would like to send
you Notifications. OK?” You click OK
because, well, you’d like to eat more
doughnuts. And you just downloaded
it. And the app never lets you forget it.
Get intentional. If you’re on an iPhone,
go to Settings – Notifications and
scroll down your list of apps. Start by
turning them all off and then cruise
the list again combing for anything
that might be crucial.
When everybody has an addiction,
it sort of looks like nobody has one,
doesn’t it? We get in line for coffee…
so it looks kind of normal. We keep
our heads down and locked on our
cellphones on the subway…so it looks
kind of normal. But is it?
Adam Alter, New York University
business professor and author of
Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive
Technology and the Business of Keeping
Us Hooked, explained: “You only
develop an addiction when there is
some psychological motive that hasn’t
been fulfilled for you: loneliness, that
you’ve been bullied, or you can’t make
good things happen in your life. It
doesn’t actually matter what you use
to soothe that addiction, whether it’s
playing a particular game that lulls
you into a distracted state or whether
it’s taking a drug. In terms of soothing
those psychological ills, behaviour and
substance addictions are very, very
similar.”
Neil Pasricha is the New York Times-
best-selling author of The Happiness
Equation and The Book of Awesome
series, which has been published in
ten countries, spent over five years
on best-seller lists, and sold over a
million copies. Pasricha is a Harvard
MBA, one of the most popular TED
speakers of all time, and after ten years
heading Leadership Development at
Walmart he now serves as Director
of The Institute for Global Happiness.
He has dedicated the past 15 years of
his life to developing leaders, creating
global programs inside the world’s
largest companies and speaking to
hundreds of thousands of people
around the globe. He lives in Toronto
with his wife and sons.
GLOBALHAPPINESS.COM
I’ve listed six tactical ideas that are
slowly helping me, but the longer-term
solution may be latching our minds
onto something else.
Like what?
Buy some hiking boots and commit to
a new uphill hobby. Check out my 3
Books podcast to get back into reading.
Grab fresh trunks and sign up for
swimming.
I don’t have all the answers, but I know
it’s time for an intervention. +
*Reprinted with Permission
7