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I think part of this trend has to do with the fact that many people tend to have fear/anxiety issues, when they have nothing to do. We have lost the capability

I think part of this trend has to do with the fact that many people tend to have fear/anxiety issues, when they have nothing to do. We have lost the capability to truly relax, even to bore ourselves. When we are not active, we worry, so we constantly distract ourselves from these feelings of anxiety. Another example - a few years ago there was a huge trend of housewives playing Hidden-image games. It turns out that these games were so simple that people could do them in parallel with other tasks such as being on the phone, but they created a level of 'noise' that kept them from worrying about their lives. It's quasi electronic self-medication.

metl_lord 13y ago
I think that a good deal of that fear/anxiety comes from the fact that people are expected to be more productive. If someone doesn't respond to an email immediately, we think the are not working or are being lazy. I've recently noticed that I will often think about and come up with a solution to an issue at work while driving or eating dinner. I suspect this happens because I'm not being distracted by the problem. It also bothers me a little. If I worked in a factory assembling widgets, I would not be able to take my work home. You can't leave your brain at work if your job is mostly mental work.
- TausAmmer 13y ago
  Usually encountering problem and not solving it almost instantly, I switch to something else, switch off from original problem, come back few minutes later, either fix it instantly or go away again. Stop thinking about thinking, that is one of greatest issues.
- dbecker 13y ago
  I think that a good deal of that fear/anxiety comes from the fact that people are expected to be more productive. If someone doesn't respond to an email immediately, we think the are not working or are being lazy. A quick but possibly meaningless e-mail response doesn't constitute productivity. The expectation you describe is just one of availability (or working), while ignoring productivity or presenting real solutions.
  - koralatov 13y ago
    Absolutely, but unfortunately, in many places of business `availability' is conflated with, or entirely replaces, `productivity'.
    - yaddayadda 13y ago
      Under average circumstances I have to drive about 50 minutes from my house to my office. This past winter we were expecting a bad storm one evening. Being a hardworker, I took home stuff to work on if I got stuck and couldn't make it into the office. Just before I got home that evening one of my tires blew. I called the manager I was working for and explained the situation. I was planning on getting the tire replaced first thing. The tire shop didn't have internet, but I had plenty of paper work that didn't require internet, so I could work at the shop. And of course, I would call him as soon as the tire was fixed. Next morning the storm had settled over our area. I limped to the tire store. It took about 1.5 hours for them to replace the tire (they had to wait on delivery of the tire from their supply house). When they had replaced it I called the manager and let him know I was en route. Unfortunately, a couple of exits down the road a tire related emergency light came on. So, I turned around and headed back to the shop. En route I saw a large accident happen on the road I had just traversed. As soon as I got to the shop, I called the manager. I explained the current situation, and suggested that I just continue to work from the tire shop and when they were done I could work from home. Long story short, this "productivity focused" manager insisted (i.e., I would be fired if I did otherwise) that I drive down to the office. I ended up spending 2.5 hours stuck in winter storm traffic, so that I could sit for an hour at a desk in an office to do paperwork that I could have done at home. Of course, I then had to turn around and drive back (thankfully that only took 2 hours). So instead of 3.5 hours of productivity I got 4.5 of completely wasted drive time for 1 hour of actual work. (Then there's the fact that if I'm on a work roll at home, I tend not to stop, so he would have likely gotten more than just the 3.5 hours of work out of me.) All because his idea of 'work' is that someone in a seat in an office is productive while someone at home can't possible be productive. I'm now much more punctual about working as close to 40 hours/weekly on the dot as I possibly can (I used to average many more hours). I won't do more than cursory email checks from home. And, I don't care how productive I am when I'm actually at the office. Because clearly all that actually matters is that I'm physically there.
- hackula1 13y ago
  > You can't leave your brain at work if your job is mostly mental work. Trust me, you can. I simply ignore emails after 6pm. I will look at them first thing at 8am the next day, but not after 6. If someone presses you on it and they won't take "I have a life" for an answer, just lie and say you didn't see it or that you were at your kid's baseball game. I suspect that the frequency of someone's boss actually getting pissed that they did not respond right away to a 9pm email to be extremely low. In the unlikely occurrence that you actually work in an environment like this, I suggest polishing up the resume, because there are plenty of jobs out there that do not require your brain 24/7.
  - freshhawk 13y ago
    I do the same and while I do get away with it, it's not appreciated at all by those people who sleep with their phone in their hand. I get crap about it all the time and if I was an employee I would be very concerned about that habit affecting my career path. All that said, there's no way in hell I'm changing this. If something is urgent I will get a text or even a phone call. Everything else is always important but not urgent and people just refuse to think about the difference.
zobzu 13y ago
well, you edited most out, but anyway. I often get criticized because i don't answer to stuff on my phone "instantly". Sometimes it takes me a couple of hours because i set it to alert me only on very important stuff (this happens more or less, never). I don't like to check it very often (because it breaks concentration on whatever i'm doing and that annoys me..). So anyway, the point is, i understand that even if you don't like, or don't want to be distracted, the social pressure makes it hard. Direct social pressure "check your phone i sent the msg FIVE minutes ago!!"
- goostavos 13y ago
  >check your phone i sent the msg FIVE minutes ago That's around the point when I explain that the phone is for my convenience, not theirs. Or... That's what I'd like to say anyway.. In reality, I do feel that social pressure to respond -- hell, I even feel guilty if I don't respond at all (which is ridiculous!). The problem is that I sometimes let my "triage" habits from email slip over into my text handling. For instance, I'll receive a text and actually instantly open it, but upon gauging its "importance" in the context of other activities (usually work) I'll mentally file it under "deal with later," and go back to what I'm doing. And, of course, being that text messages don't have anything approaching the organization of email, I usually end up forgetting to ever write people back all together. I sure wish there was a "mark unread" function for texts on Android.. It'd make me seem a lot less of a anti-social dick.
  - sp332 13y ago
    You could use Google Voice. You can read and send texts online, and there's a "mark unread" button.

metl_lord 13y ago

I think that a good deal of that fear/anxiety comes from the fact that people are expected to be more productive. If someone doesn't respond to an email immediately, we think the are not working or are being lazy. I've recently noticed that I will often think about and come up with a solution to an issue at work while driving or eating dinner. I suspect this happens because I'm not being distracted by the problem. It also bothers me a little. If I worked in a factory assembling widgets, I would not be able to take my work home. You can't leave your brain at work if your job is mostly mental work.

TausAmmer 13y ago
Usually encountering problem and not solving it almost instantly, I switch to something else, switch off from original problem, come back few minutes later, either fix it instantly or go away again. Stop thinking about thinking, that is one of greatest issues.
dbecker 13y ago
I think that a good deal of that fear/anxiety comes from the fact that people are expected to be more productive. If someone doesn't respond to an email immediately, we think the are not working or are being lazy. A quick but possibly meaningless e-mail response doesn't constitute productivity. The expectation you describe is just one of availability (or working), while ignoring productivity or presenting real solutions.
- koralatov 13y ago
  Absolutely, but unfortunately, in many places of business `availability' is conflated with, or entirely replaces, `productivity'.
  - yaddayadda 13y ago
    Under average circumstances I have to drive about 50 minutes from my house to my office. This past winter we were expecting a bad storm one evening. Being a hardworker, I took home stuff to work on if I got stuck and couldn't make it into the office. Just before I got home that evening one of my tires blew. I called the manager I was working for and explained the situation. I was planning on getting the tire replaced first thing. The tire shop didn't have internet, but I had plenty of paper work that didn't require internet, so I could work at the shop. And of course, I would call him as soon as the tire was fixed. Next morning the storm had settled over our area. I limped to the tire store. It took about 1.5 hours for them to replace the tire (they had to wait on delivery of the tire from their supply house). When they had replaced it I called the manager and let him know I was en route. Unfortunately, a couple of exits down the road a tire related emergency light came on. So, I turned around and headed back to the shop. En route I saw a large accident happen on the road I had just traversed. As soon as I got to the shop, I called the manager. I explained the current situation, and suggested that I just continue to work from the tire shop and when they were done I could work from home. Long story short, this "productivity focused" manager insisted (i.e., I would be fired if I did otherwise) that I drive down to the office. I ended up spending 2.5 hours stuck in winter storm traffic, so that I could sit for an hour at a desk in an office to do paperwork that I could have done at home. Of course, I then had to turn around and drive back (thankfully that only took 2 hours). So instead of 3.5 hours of productivity I got 4.5 of completely wasted drive time for 1 hour of actual work. (Then there's the fact that if I'm on a work roll at home, I tend not to stop, so he would have likely gotten more than just the 3.5 hours of work out of me.) All because his idea of 'work' is that someone in a seat in an office is productive while someone at home can't possible be productive. I'm now much more punctual about working as close to 40 hours/weekly on the dot as I possibly can (I used to average many more hours). I won't do more than cursory email checks from home. And, I don't care how productive I am when I'm actually at the office. Because clearly all that actually matters is that I'm physically there.
hackula1 13y ago
> You can't leave your brain at work if your job is mostly mental work. Trust me, you can. I simply ignore emails after 6pm. I will look at them first thing at 8am the next day, but not after 6. If someone presses you on it and they won't take "I have a life" for an answer, just lie and say you didn't see it or that you were at your kid's baseball game. I suspect that the frequency of someone's boss actually getting pissed that they did not respond right away to a 9pm email to be extremely low. In the unlikely occurrence that you actually work in an environment like this, I suggest polishing up the resume, because there are plenty of jobs out there that do not require your brain 24/7.
- freshhawk 13y ago
  I do the same and while I do get away with it, it's not appreciated at all by those people who sleep with their phone in their hand. I get crap about it all the time and if I was an employee I would be very concerned about that habit affecting my career path. All that said, there's no way in hell I'm changing this. If something is urgent I will get a text or even a phone call. Everything else is always important but not urgent and people just refuse to think about the difference.

zobzu 13y ago

well, you edited most out, but anyway. I often get criticized because i don't answer to stuff on my phone "instantly". Sometimes it takes me a couple of hours because i set it to alert me only on very important stuff (this happens more or less, never). I don't like to check it very often (because it breaks concentration on whatever i'm doing and that annoys me..). So anyway, the point is, i understand that even if you don't like, or don't want to be distracted, the social pressure makes it hard. Direct social pressure "check your phone i sent the msg FIVE minutes ago!!"

goostavos 13y ago
>check your phone i sent the msg FIVE minutes ago That's around the point when I explain that the phone is for my convenience, not theirs. Or... That's what I'd like to say anyway.. In reality, I do feel that social pressure to respond -- hell, I even feel guilty if I don't respond at all (which is ridiculous!). The problem is that I sometimes let my "triage" habits from email slip over into my text handling. For instance, I'll receive a text and actually instantly open it, but upon gauging its "importance" in the context of other activities (usually work) I'll mentally file it under "deal with later," and go back to what I'm doing. And, of course, being that text messages don't have anything approaching the organization of email, I usually end up forgetting to ever write people back all together. I sure wish there was a "mark unread" function for texts on Android.. It'd make me seem a lot less of a anti-social dick.
- sp332 13y ago
  You could use Google Voice. You can read and send texts online, and there's a "mark unread" button.