Lynn on Leadership No. 7—Death to Distractions

We have all heard it before, phones are bad for us. They distract us while we are out to eat with our friends, while we are at work, during meetings and even while driving. Technology interrupts our linear thinking and pulls it into many different directions, leading us nowhere and causing us to spend more time on daily tasks. How can these distractions from a simple device destroy us as leaders? Let’s start with the basics—science.

Dopamine

?My favorite drug, yours too! Dopamine is essentially our “feel good” hormone. We get it from anything that we like to do like receiving a hug, eating a piece of cake, playing videogames… or mindless scrolls through social media. We are social habitual creatures, meaning, we are meant to interact with each other. However, with social media the lines of physical communication have shrunk…a lot. This isn’t any breaking news, but as a leader it is important to be aware of. In today’s context, when we are interacting with friends or colleagues, we use “likes”. A “like” feels good, which releases dopamine. We love the feeling of getting recognized.  We think, “People care about me. They like what I’m doing. I must be doing something good”. Boom—dopamine hit. Every like is a dopamine hit. Dopamine is also very closely related to sugar addictions or drug addictions like cocaine and heroin, which release large amounts of dopamine. Seeing how addictive this hormone release is, it is no wonder why so many people are addicted to their phones!

Effects on Leaders

Upon waking up in the morning you hear your phone, “Ding—ESPN, Ding—Facebook, Ding—Instagram, Ding—USA Today”. Four distractions have already pulled 30 minutes out of your day just to find out “what’s new”. This happens to us throughout the day and we feel like we have to know what it is we’re missing out on. This is called FOMO; the fear of missing out. It is, in fact, very real (think about this next time your phone goes off and you don’t look at it, can you stop thinking about it?). Notifications pull our train-of-thought into different directions. Derailing us from becoming productive leaders. That being said, the less productive you are, the more it affects you, your family, your team, and the entire organization you work for. No longer are you applying the time you could have spent planning a productive meeting, taking care of family situations, or paying 100% attention to your subordinates. All because you wanted to know who liked your post, which ultimately has no benefit for you.

Solutions

How do you get away from being so distracted from your phone? Discipline, and a lot of it. Remember, those “dings” are essentially as addictive as crack-cocaine. Depending on how glued you are to your phone, the more discipline it will take. One practice I like to use is to simply put my phone in a different room and do whatever it is I need to. If you are an Apple user like me, disable your iCloud account because emails, texts, and other notifications sync together, making it difficult to break away.

Thankfully companies are willing and able to help us out and provide features like “sleep mode” or “do not disturb”. Turn these on when you need to focus on whatever it is which requires your attention. You can also designate specific hours of your day when these devices are off like first thing in the morning to actively go over your day or in the evening to spend time with your family.

Lastly, turn it off. Sounds pretty straight forward but there is a deeper reasoning to this. A study showed that even though a phone is on but in a different room, we sometimes have a [what I like to call] a “phantom notification”. This can happen in your pocket or in a different room. Basically, your brain actually tricks you into thinking your phone went off. What it is doing is trying to get that dopamine hit by looking at the latest “news”. Knowing that your phone is off can mitigate phantom notifications.

Are you a victim to being distracted by your phone? I am. Let me know what you will do in order to break away from this bad habit and become a more effective leader!

As always, like, comment, share and CONNECT!