Reboot: The use and abuse of technology time

Social/mobile technology is the most helpful, timesaving, thought-provoking thing since… sliced bread. It’s also the most detrimental, time-sucking, mind-numbing thing … if we abuse it.

Rezonant clients are always asking how best to leverage technology in smart ways to get new business, keep existing customers, and inspire ideas and innovation. Our answer is, it can work for all of those things, but only it you keep it under tight wraps. Monitor it. Build a strategy for it.

The lessons in healthy technology come from our personal life, where we must navigate the tempting, endless seas of device time that send us adrift, away from real relationships and meaningful interactions. The same thing occurs when we use technology for the silly, the banal, the unnecessary in business.

Perhaps we can apply some of these life lessons to sound choices for incorporating technology when marketing (and running) a business.

If it takes away from your relationships—remember talking and interpersonal communication?—put it down or on hold, or start setting some limits. You can always talk at a device, but you won’t always get a second chance to engage with a child, make a new friend, or really listen to candid feedback from a customer.

If it takes away from your creativity—remember being undistracted enough to have room for new ideas, yes, even those crazy ones—step back and think about how you can either incorporate technology in a way that actually encourages creativity (think: an Evernote-book filled with tidbits from life that could turn into something great) or replace those 20 minutes of Facebook time with a truly creative activity.

If it takes away from your balance—can you remember a time when you had a “feeling” of calm and control over your life?—consider taking an inventory of just how much time you spend each day on each device. Would you really feel better after 15 minutes of yoga or Angry Birds?

It comes down to this: Are you enhancing your life through technology time or wasting precious moments? For Rezonant, and hopefully for the clients we advise, technology is simply a tool. It shouldn’t rule. People are still in charge.

But it takes a little discipline and a lot of guts to put it to good use. To be more productive. More efficient. More thoughtful. More giving. More inspired. And sometimes that just means turning it all off. Turning it down. Or simply rebooting—turning it on again with new eyes.

- JK