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Technology, the Future, and You

April 27, 2017 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

by Amy Blankson

For those of us born before 2005, I’m sure you can think back to a time in your life that was not lived side by side with technology. When you had to go down to the library to look something up instead of searching for it on Google. When you had to make plans with your friends in advance of showing up somewhere. When you had no idea how many steps you had taken that day or how many times you asked a girl named Alexa a question.

The younger generation, on the other hand, spends an average of six-plus hours per day on their phones, literally changing a quarter of their life experiences from what we have known in the past.

With technology living in tandem with human beings, supporting nearly every function of our busy lives, the question now being asked is, are we happier? Would we be better without technology? Where are we heading?

These are some of the questions I ask in my new book, The Future of Happiness (April 2017, BenBella Books), which outlines several strategies for balancing productivity and well-being in the Digital Era. When people ask me these questions, I respond with some of these ideas:

Is technology making us happier?

Knowing that technology is here to stay, we need to learn how to live with the complexity of technology, not escape from it, but that doesn’t mean we have to sacrifice our well-being. That is not the price we pay for having access to information.

That being said, in order to live in harmony with technology, we must make a conscious effort to focus on what’s most important in our lives and to not get distracted.

Consider this: when you’re flipping through Facebook, posting pictures on Instagram or using any of the apps on your phone, stop and ask yourself, ‘is this making me happy?’ If you don’t know the answer to that question, create a trial period for the app that you’re using. If you feel happier or more productive after a month of using the app, make a mental note of your progress and continue to use the app.

If the opposite is true, you know what to do. Toss it out like yesterday’s newspaper. Life is too short to be wasted on apps that are not contributing to our overall well-being.

When it comes right down to it, technology is merely a tool to help us, not the answer to all of our problems. It is up to us whether or not we will allow technology to control our lives and our happiness. We all have the innate power to control technology so we can continue to live positively and productively.

What can we do to maintain a well-balanced technology diet?

In order to maintain a satisfying level of happiness and well-being in the Digital Era, it is important to consciously curate the amount and quality of technology consumed every day.

There are several strategies you can implement to find the right level of technology consumption that does not affect relationships or productivity in other areas of your life.

Establish tech-free brain breaks throughout your day to help your brain recharge, whether it’s right before bed, taking a phoneless walk on your lunch break, or playing with your kids. When interacting with others, close your laptop, and take your earbuds out to say hello when someone walks into the room.

Establish hard-and-fast rules for your use of technology and model digital citizenship in a way that makes sense for you. Not only will your life become more productive, but as you start to form good tech habits, it will create a ripple effect for those around you, especially your kids.

Beyond these ideas, one of the most important things to keep in mind is that you have the ability to change your mindset. Just like Dorothy had the power inside of her all along to go back home to Kansas, you have the innate power to shape the future of technology and your happiness. You are welcome to let technology run your life, but just as simply, you are allowed to take control of your technology. Our devices can have a positive effect in our lives, but only if we allow it. As Shakespeare once said, “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

To learn more about strategies that can help you be more productive and happier with technology, click here to order The Future of Happiness.

 

AUTHOR BIO:

Amy Blankson is a happiness expert on the forefront of testing new technologies to foster well-being.  Amy’s upcoming book, The Future of Happiness: 5 Modern Strategies for Balancing Productivity and Well-Being in the Digital Era, (BenBella, April, 2017), brings her years of experience in happiness research and consulting to deliver a roadmap for those feeling overwhelmed by the wave of technology. She has a BA from Harvard and a MBA from Yale School of Management. She has been called upon by the likes of Google, NASA, the US Army, and the Xprize Foundation to consult on positive psychology strategies.

 

 

Filed Under: Personal Development, Uncategorized Tagged With: happiness, technology

Will achieving your life’s dream make you happy?

May 16, 2013 by Rosemary Leave a Comment

When I was 10, I wanted to be an archaeologist. Something about the King Tutankhamen treasures touring the country inspired me, and I desperately wanted to find dinosaur bones. Then at some point, I found out that archaeology involved a lot of fruitless sweating, kneeling in the dirt, and being bitten by insects. I moved on to dream of becoming a children’s book writer, which involved none of those things.

king-tutankhamun

Are you working toward a specific life’s goal, either personally or professionally?

Have you stopped to analyze the reality of achieving your goals?

For example, if one of your career goals is to become a famous speaker, giving keynotes all over the world for big-time fees, have you considered the travel involved? Time away from your family, hotel rooms, TSA inspections? Yep, that’s glamorous.

If your corporate goal is to bring in 10 Fortune 500 clients, have you thought through the realities of servicing an enterprise customer? Massive bureaucracy, expectations, slow decision-making…and reliance on a few large customers can be risky as well.

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.

The homework today is to review your goals, both written and unwritten. Take a half hour to visualize what your life would be like if you achieved them. Is it the life you want?

If not, you need new goals.

Author’s Bio: Rosemary O’Neill is an insightful spirit who works for social strata — a top ten company to work for on the Internet . Check out the Social Strata blog. You can find Rosemary on Google+ and on Twitter as @rhogroupee

Image via Flickr CC: Mediocre2010

Filed Under: Business Life, Inside-Out Thinking, Strategy/Analysis, Successful Blog Tagged With: bc, Dreams, goals, happiness, visualization

The How to Happiness – Top 10 Ways to Start Living Your Life

January 26, 2007 by Liz 173 Comments

(Updated in 2020)

Photo Credit: Liz Strauss

Everyone Gets the Same 24 Hours

“I need to get a life.”
I want to start a new life.”
“Tell me the how to happiness.”

You don’t need to get a life, you’ve already got one.

Life — it’s what we do between the time we get here and when we go. We only get one, and despite what other folks might suppose, it’s ours to determine what to do with it.

We don’t measure life in hours and minutes. We measure life in memories and moments.

What do you think of when you read this sentence?

 

It was the time of my life.

We don’t say that often enough.
What would it take for you to live life saying that?
Isn’t that idea the how to happiness?

The Top 10 Ways to Start Living Life

Life either happens to us, or we take hold of life and live it.
Here are the top 10 ways to get a life and start living it.

  1. Give yourself permission to claim your life. That’s right — permission. You’re the only one who can decide you are in charge of your life. Even though it feels like you’re not supposed to do so, turn off the internal editors, the old tape recordings, the “shoulds, have tos, and musts”, and the rules that didn’t come from you.

2. Define what living means to you. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Just picture yourself at the end of your life looking back. What words would you want to describe how you lived your life and who you are as a person?

3. Stop living in the future. Every time you think “someday” or “when I have time I will,” stop. Ask yourself, “Why not now?” Think about this sentence, “I always wanted to, but never did.” Start doing the things you always planned to do. Choose to start a new life every morning. Plan one thing you will do today to feel alive.

4. Surround yourself with people who enjoy living. They’ve obviously discovered how to have a life and live it. Why not hang with the pros?

5. Lay down your pain and your anger. Carrying them around makes living harder and less fun. It doesn’t bring anything, and it steals a lot. Choosing what fuels you is how you start over in life.

6. Let the losers win. Don’t argue about things that you don’t care about. Unless there’s some real threat, let the folks who have something to prove, prove what they need to. Why waste your living time trying to fix what’s wrong with them?

7. Create energy. Jump to forgiveness and love, then figure things out. Most conclusions we jump to are not only wrong, they’re negative. Negative conclusions lead us to prepare a defense. Being on the defensive isn’t living. It’s hiding from life.

8. Learn the physical symptoms of when your head and heart become disconnected. We know when we’re having a knee jerk reaction, when we’re feeling sorry for ourselves, and when we’re being blind to people’s feelings. We can remember how it felt physically while we were behaving badly. Get to know those symptoms, and you can stop the behavior. Living life will feel a whole lot safer because you won’t be in danger of shooting yourself in the foot.

9. Take small risks that push your boundaries in every way. The joy of life is packed in learning that matches our skill set. When we stretch just a bit intellectually, physically, emotionally, we grow. Living is growing. Even your cells know that.

10. Value and protect the people and the places you care about. A job isn’t a life. It’s just a part of one. Let the people you care about come first, and let everyone know that you do. Re-read numbers 1 and 2.

These are the top 10 ways to start living life.
It’s not starting your life over. It’s claiming the life you have and living it.
It’s claiming the how to happiness.

We come into life with whatever we’ve got. It’s ours to do with. It took me a while to figure that out — that my life isn’t just what happens to me, that I could take hold of it. I choose to live life saying that …

I have the time of my life.

You’ve already got a life too. Are you living it?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss

Filed Under: Motivation, Successful Blog Tagged With: bestof, get a life, happiness, how to happiness, live life, living life, Liz, Liz-Strauss, start living, start over, starting over, time of my life

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