5 Tips Professionals Need for a Healthy Relationship with Technology
In a world where technology reliance is forever increasing, it can seem impossible to separate yourself from the screen and recharge your own personal battery. As Ad/PR professionals, we know the rising reliance on technology and business messaging platforms for instantaneous communication. It can be hard to keep up with and mentally draining. Let’s talk about 5 tips to keep you refreshed from technology in our tech-reliant, post-pandemic world.
Using ‘away’ features on professional messaging programs
Most professional messaging platforms have features that show others your current activity (much like Facebook) that you can turn on and off to let your colleagues know when you are online and available to message. If you aren’t changing your activity status when you hop off these messaging platforms, you’re not alone, but you may also be struggling with the stress of work-life balance when you’re continuously receiving pings after hours. One way to combat this is switching that activity status to away and sending the message to fellow professionals that you’ll be back at another time to answer their inquiries. Plus, turning off the current active status may reduce the number of messages you’re receiving—I know I am more likely to message someone if I see they’re active. Here’s how to do this with Slack, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Microsoft Teams, Brosix, and Ryver.
2. Having one meal a day technology free
This tip may seem odd to some but hear me out. One in three people don’t eat without their phones, even the small enjoyable moments of our days are spent catching up on unread messages and responding to colleagues. But do these behaviors allow us to recharge from our constant technology use? By spending one meal a day without our phones and laptops by our side, we allow ourselves to recharge that mental technology battery that we’ve been using all day. You might be asking yourself, well what am I supposed to do while I eat? Here’s a list of 6 non-technology things you can do while eating:
Chat with friends or family
Look at the nature scene outside
People watch
Tell yourself some positive affirmations
Write down what you’re grateful for
3. Remind yourself of the tech-response golden rule
Reply within 24 hours. Every single ping you receive does not have to be responded to immediately, and taking that extra time to respond when you’re overwhelmed can do wonders. It may be called instant messaging but you can allow yourself a buffer period between responses. One way to manage this is by only responding immediately to urgent matters and responding to other messages when you have the capacity.
4. Mute notifications after a certain time
If setting your status to ‘away’ isn’t enough and you get caught up seeing the messages that come through when you’re supposed to be offline, you may need to mute your notifications altogether. There are many ways to do this: mute notifications on your phone, create a set notification schedule on business platforms, and fully set your phone on do not disturb. Set those boundaries for yourself and do something that makes you happy to recharge.
5. Create an automated response for when you’re away
One way to easily separate yourself from messaging back immediately (and not feeling bad about it) is by creating an automated message. Having a unique sign-off that sends a note back to the messages you’ve received allows you to tell others you’ll respond to them as soon as you’re available without having to manually message them! It’s a great way to put a personal touch on kindly letting people know you’ll be back to chat in a bit.
These 5 tips are sure to help you step away from the screen in order to have a healthy technology relationship in our tech-reliant profession. Go be mindful of your relationship with technology and don’t forget to take some time for yourself.
About Jenna
Jenna Ashmead is a senior majoring in Advertising and Public Relations with an advertising emphasis. This is her first semester at GrandPR as an Account Associate. Jenna is specifically interested in social media content creation and management and hopes to one day secure her dream job as a social media specialist. She also hopes to gain more experience producing campaigns and blogging at GrandPR this fall.