Do you have a boss that emails you about work after hours and on the weekends? Have you ever said to yourself - “there ought to be a law against that!”? Well then you will be happy to hear that a NYC legislator has recently proposed legislation that will prohibit your boss from having an all-access pass to your time. While we don’t all live in NYC, it is only a matter of time before other law makers follow suit. After all, we are several years behind other countries on this issue. Two years ago a law went into effect in France that gives workers the legal right to to avoid responding to work emails or texts at night and on the weekends. In NYC, the superhero working on this issue is Rafael Espinal, who is a city council member from Brooklyn. He recently introduced the “disconnecting from work” bill that will make it illegal for businesses to contact employees via email or instant message when they are off duty, on vacation, using personal days or home sick.
Absent having legislation to make this happen, what are the ways to disconnect from work, school and other obligations? Let your cell phone battery drain down and hide the power cord from yourself? Put an ‘out of office’ auto response on your email and ignore all incoming mail for a few days? Have a ‘no-phones policy’ for family meals and outings? If only it was actually that easy to unplug. I understand how impractical this is. There have been days where had I not checked my email at 6:00 am, I would not have known that my son’s 7:00 am band practice had been cancelled for the day. Or how about the time when my family and I were mid-vacation, away from home, and one of my son’s teachers emailed several homework assignments that were due the morning that school resumed. Had we not been ‘plugged in’ and regularly checking our emails, we would have missed these important notifications. So while we may not be able to completely disconnect, we should be able to frame boundaries that allow us to separate work time from personal time.
It is often said that Millennials and Generation Z’s interact more with their phones and apps than they do with other people. It is not uncommon to look across a restaurant and see the familiar glow of cell phones being used and tables where there is little or no eye contact or conversation. So called “smart phones” are making us more sheltered, isolated, less independent and more depressed. Because we are tethered to these devices, studies have shown that we spend an average of 4.1 hours checking our phones and email each day. Do the math...that’s almost 30 hours per week and 1,500 hours per year. What would you do with 4 extra hours every day? Would you read more, sleep more, or exercise more? Could you take your dog for a second or third walk, have the time to cook a healthy meal or spend more time doing something fun with your family or friends?
Instead of feeling pressured by the immediacy of our in-boxes and checking your emails dozens of time throughout the day, perhaps you can schedule official email times for yourself, similar to the office hours that your professors offered when you were in college. If we made a promise to ourselves to only check our emails at three or four specific times throughout the day, we would have a better handle on our attention and focus, as well as our emotions...all of which get realigned and taxed by the constant adrenaline rush of the “you’ve got mail” chime. This approach wouldn’t completely eliminate dealing with emails, which is the universal time killer, but perhaps it would help us to get a better handle on something that has become so completely draining.
I think there are many benefits of having what is essentially a ‘mini-computer’ with us at all times. I love being reminded every hour to drink water, having a way to track my steps and my food intake, a way for my husband and children to reach me whenever they need me, and the ability to google any question that pops into my mind. However, the drawbacks to being constantly connected seem to far outweigh the benefits. We no longer feel as if we can go to dinner, to the gym, to a movie or even to bed without remaining completely accessible to the outside world “just in case” you are needed for something.
Today I am granting you PERMISSION TO DISCONNECT! While I am not in a position to enact legislation to empower my prescription, nor will a note from me mean anything to your boss, I want you to take the steps necessary to disconnect...even if it just for a brief period of time each day. You absolutely need to do this to refresh your energy, refocus yourself, and stop running yourself ragged on autopilot. While it is not socially or professionally acceptable in this country to take an afternoon “siesta” and completely unplug, the people with whom we are in regular contact with may begin to soon notice that if they reach out at certain times of the day, they will get a less than immediate response from you than they would during other times.
The only way that we are going to be able to change expectations is to change our own behaviors. Stop responding immediately to every email that you receive. Create a template for business emails that you can easily customize to save the time spent on each response. Only respond to those emails or text that warrant a response. Turn off the alerts on your phone that ping you every time our President sends a provocative tweet or the meteorologists change the weather forecast. You may have to take baby steps to enact these changes. After all, our addiction to our devices did not happen over night. I promise you that the more time you spend disconnected, the easier it will become to do so. You may find that you are less anxious, have less stress, and have gained more free time. Being disconnected may actually make you feel more connected - to yourself, your loved ones and to the activities that ignite your passion. You will be feeling so much better that when someone asks you why it seems to be taking you longer than usual to get back to them, you will have no guilt at all when you tell them that you were given strict instructions from your Health Coach to unplug!