For some time now I have been seeing more and more seminars on the subject of mindfulness in the age of digitization. But what does that mean and do we need such seminars?

The seminars deal with stress in the context of digitization and mention words such as overstimulation, technostress and resilience. It’s about leading a healthy working life under the influence of digitization.

Overstimulation

Overstimulation is a colloquial metaphor for an assumed state of the body in which it absorbs so many stimuli at the same time through the senses that they can no longer be processed and lead to mental overload in the person concerned. ” (Source Wikipedia ).

One example of digitization is the high number of notifications through apps, emails and the various digital channels. For example, some employees receive emails, calls, Skype messages and much more at the same time. This can lead to overstimulation.

Technostress

Technostress is a reaction of the body to the strong psychological stress that can be caused by the technology. ” (Source: Wikpedia ).

On the one hand it is about the changes through technology and on the other hand the permanent and constant availability through technology, e.g. company cell phones and laptops.

Resilience

Resilience is the ability to cope with crises and to use them as an opportunity for developments through recourse to personal and socially mediated resources. ” (Source Wikipedia ).

In the professional context, I now experience the term somewhat differently. The point is that people are healthy and successful even under difficult conditions such as a stressful project. The majority of the seminars should help to build such resilience and thus to live healthy in the digital age.

Do we need that?

The first thing I asked myself was whether we needed such seminars and I already think that it can be a risk. Digitization demands more than before to focus and hide a lot of information. Everything is also changing a little faster than before and the ability to switch off, put down your mobile phone, turn off your laptop, … is becoming more and more important. I don’t think everyone needs a seminar but we should look into it.

Reading tips :

Agile methods against stress

My recipe is to introduce agile methods into my private life. For example, a personal Kanban board can reduce stress. No matter how many tasks I currently have: all of them are clearly laid out on my Kanban board and I work off one after the other. At this moment, I don’t care whether there are 400 or 30,000 tasks.

In very stressful phases, I also like to use Scrum and plan larger tasks than sprints, for example I’m doing my taxes this week, going to a user group and writing a specialist article. New task packages then simply come in the next week.

There are also so-called ad hoc tasks that come from top management or simply have a high priority. I have a few small tips for this, which I list in note form:

  • If I get a lot of messages, I wait a little and first ask: Is that still relevant?
  • When I’m working on an important task, I ignore everything else
  • I’ll see what I can delegate
  • I ask about the importance and, if possible, arrange the task in the next week
  • No matter how much work there is, I go to a delicious dinner or to sports in the evening to switch off and continue working on it tomorrow
  • I take my vacation very seriously (digital detox)

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Author

I blog about the influence of digitalization on our working world. For this purpose, I provide content from science in a practical way and show helpful tips from my everyday professional life. I am an executive in an SME and I wrote my doctoral thesis at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg at the Chair of IT Management.

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