TECHNO;OGY has made life easier today than ever before. But there is a big “but,” and that is it could also create havoc on one’s personal life, unless one knows how to use it to his on her advantage. People using smartphones particularly are more prone to be victims rather than victors over the use of their time with the power of technology.
In an article in The Wall Street Journal dated October 27, by Jennifer J. Deal, a survey prepared by Source Center for Creative Leadership showed that 60 percent of people who use smartphones tend to work 13.5 to 18.5 hours a day, five days a week. Personally, I think, for some, it is more than five days a week because, even on weekends, these people work through their phones and tablets. Executive-level officers topped the survey, at 49 percent, for those who need to respond to their bosses and their clients evenings and weekends. At the bottom of the survey are professionals, who represent 22 percent.
I have clients whose top officers are abroad most of the time. There are times when I have to respond immediately even in the wee hours of the morning if I happen to see their messages in my phone, and there are times when I do not even have the time to look at their messages. But one thing I learned is that your clients know when to respect your personal time if you know how to set limits. If you want them to respect your weekends and afterwork hours, do not respond to their messages unless they are of utmost importance. I can do that because I am in public practice but for some who are employed, they have little or no choice at all. But I can see that some are not complaining because they have gotten used to it. And if you have a job that requires you to be on call 24/7, you just have to learn to live with it and enjoy it. It will make your job a lot easier for as they say, “a merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”
In the same article I mentioned above, one of its practical suggestions is we do not always have to reply to reply-to-all messages. I usually have a viewer for my messages, so I do not really need to open a message if I cannot reply to it immediately. That way, the sender, particularly who placed the message in a “confirm receipt” mode, will see that the message was not yet read, and there is no pressure on my part to respond to it immediately.
As I wrote this article, I was tempted to respond to a message in IM from a family member abroad. This delayed my attempt to complete the article by 7 a.m. We should learn to discipline ourselves and to prioritize our time, because we think it only takes a minute. Very often this results to delayed work. We should learn to separate our personal time from work time, too. But we should not allow technology to ruin our lives. We should also not allow the personal aspect to affect our work.
With technology advancing at a speed faster than we can imagine before, people should learn to cope and prioritize. The issue is always proper work and personal-life balance. That way, we can make technology work for us and make it our slave, rather than we being slaves to technology.
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Wilma Miranda is the chairman of the Media Affairs Committee of Finex, managing partner of Inventor, Miranda & Associates, CPAs and treasurer of KPS Outsourcing Inc. The opinions expressed herein are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of these institutions.