My Personal Digital Transformation Story

Smartphone Addiction, Burnout and Balance

When do we start focusing on the digital transformation that is going on in the lives of each of us, individually? When did any of us make a conscious choice about how we want digital tech to add to our lives? A story about smartphone addiction, maximizing human potential and releasing a new book from a state of near-burnout.

My name is Erwin, and I am addicted to my smartphone.

And I’m climbing out of a state of near-burnout. Let’s figure out what the two have to do with each other exactly, and what that could mean for you. If you're someone who is active in the world of tech, this will be of special relevance to you. At least I think it will.

I have been going through a very personal digital transformation. And I think in a sense we all are. Meanwhile the world is talking about “digital transformation” as something that happens to us, that is driven by tech companies and IT departments. But what about the digital transformation that is going on in the life of every individual human on the planet right now?

Has Tech Been Creeping Up On Us?

Tech seeped into our lives almost like a silent virus over the course of the last four or five decades. And it is changing us. For better or for worse.

I feel as though tech is something that dripped into our lives little by little, as human beings born before around 1990. The tech companies created these awesome functionalities. The nerds, the cool kids, the smart business men — they started using them. Our friends started using them. So we decided we’d give them a try as well.

For those of us born after 1990, using digital tech was the norm pretty much since the day they arrived on the planet. The process of cool kids and nerds using new stuff first is still a thing, mind you. Can you say TikTok?

Governments and major companies started expecting us to be digital. We started to expect each other to be digital.

It became the social norm to be online and connected at all times. It became the social norm to check work email at all times and to share whatever you’re doing or thinking on social networks. It even became a social norm to be almost compulsively catching up with people digitally, ignoring the people you were present with.

But when did any of us make a conscious choice?

A Conscious Choice for Our Use of Our Digital Technology

When did any of us say: “Wow, these new tools and capabilities are really cool. I’m going to try my utmost to use these tools in such a way that I can…”?

I feel very strongly that we never did. I feel that we subconsciously chose to start using email, Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, Spotify, SnapChat, AirBnB, Booking, Uber, Netflix etc. etc. until it got to a point where it’s no exception for a human being to unlock and check their smartphone 150 times a day.

To spend two to three hours of your waking day stroking a glass rectangle.

Do you reach for your lover 150 times a day? Do you reach for your children, your family, your loved ones 150 times a day? Do you reach for your dreams? For the best possible version of you that you could ever hope to be? Do you reach for your maximum potential for happiness 150 times a day?

I know I don’t. I’m addicted. But I’m changing that as we speak.

I’d like to share my story with you.

My Personal Digital Transformation and Near-Burnout

I’m in the middle of a near-burnout. And I think it started when I was in the middle of my five-year run with Motion10, the IT company that I work for as a digital marketing strategist.

You see at that time, I was — obviously — working as many knowledge workers nowadays, behind a screen for large parts of the day. The main skill I use in my line of work is gathering information, analyzing and structuring that information using a thought process that is known to most of us as writing.

I would say that I was probably looking at a screen for at least four to five hours per workday, just to get my basic writing work done.

But then, I’d also write for me. You see I am obsessed with writing, marketing and digital tech — the latter especially in relation to maximizing human potential. I find these all incredibly interesting and loved putting work into them.

So I wrote blogs, or sometimes poems, at times a mean of two or three per week.

And I wrote books. I published a book around two years ago, it was my debut novel, Face Value, and after that I’ve written two more books and have started on another.

Two years ago, while I was writing for my work for about five hours a day, I guess I was probably writing somewhere between two to three hours per day for my own little side projects. And I don’t know how many hours I was reading online.

And then I had social media.

The Tsunami of Social Media

I had my own personal accounts. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, that I was reasonably active on at that time.

But then I was also the so-called social media manager for Motion10, as a natural part of my job. This meant managing a company account for LinkedIn, a LinkedIn group; a few Yammer (by Microsoft) accounts, two Facebook accounts, two Instagram accounts and two Twitter accounts, all for my day job.

And then I published my book, so I was promoting that — you guessed it — on social media.

I was managing all of these social media accounts and campaigns, and at the time I was very active about it so that we wouldn’t miss any interaction on any of these platforms. I was checking my mail pretty much 24/7 in case someone was trying to contact me .

I don’t think I’m very special for checking my mail around the clock, but just to be sure — does anybody else here have the tendency to do that?

Someone from work or a client of Motion10 might be trying to get in touch with me. Anyone could be trying to contact me regarding my book and/or its promotion. I didn’t want to miss anything.

And lastly, I was checking stats. I don’t know if you know any digital marketers but checking web analytics can become like a plague to us, a mental disease that gets you hopped-up on dopamine and adrenaline, and that leaves you distracted and exhausted.

I was not a fun person to be around.

I honestly think that our smartphones or our digital tech arelike a glass mirror, much like “Black Mirror”, that is reflecting or making visible the things that work underneath the surface; the things that drive us. I think digital tech and the way we use it can be a perfect mirror for our personal transformation. It can help us elevate our consciousness.

What I started noticing about myself

It was around this time that I began noticing some things. In random order;

• I was starting to get really, really tired. Where I’d been used to not needing much more than 7,5 hours of sleep and feeling quite energetic, around this time I started having ‘exhaustion’ as a baseline energy level. Was I taking good enough care of myself?
• I was distracted all of the time. I was not present at all, when I was supposedly present with my fiancé, my children, my family or friends. My son who was about 8 or 9 at the time would routinely ask me or sometimes tell me to put the phone down when I was talking to him. Was I getting my priorities in life straight?
• I was unhappy, maybe due to lack of clear focus but definitely also because of lack of rest. I think there might be a limit to how much information a human being can naturally process over the course of a set amount of time. I think I may well have been exceeding my limit.
• I was lonely. Or I felt lonely. I had halfway chosen, consciously, to kind of scale down my social life as I realized working a full-time job, promoting a self-published book and being a husband and father was already probably a pretty heavy load. But my social life took a much more serious hit than I was expecting. What is the link between social connection and addiction?
• I started feeling less and less motivated, focused and concentrated. First at work, then in doing my own projects, and then in pretty much everything I did in life. What do I really need to be happy?Is there Life Beyond the Touch Screen?

It was around this time that I started writing my new book “Is there Life Beyond the Touch Screen?”

Because apart from noticing these things in myself, I started really noticing them in people around me as well. Digital distraction, in my fiancé or my own children; friends — the screen distracts from the conversation we are having right now, doesn’t it? Research indicates it even distracts when it’s just near you, even lying on a table, face down.

I started seeing the true effects of digital tech addiction everywhere. On the train, on the sidewalk, in cars, restaurants, bars, family get-togethers, meetings at work. I remember having conversations with people about it and they wouldn’t understand what I was saying — then check their smartwatch for messages.

My whole working life revolved around the relationship people had with tech at that time, and my own natural curiosity coupled with what I had started to notice in myself, had got me thinking. This is when I started writing the aphorisms, in social post-format;

“Is there Life Beyond The Touch Screen?”

“Work mail can wait.”

“Touch Humans, not Screens.”

This, coupled with some fragments of blog articles and a few poems together were the start of my newest book.

Publishing and promoting a new book from a half-a-burnout

Fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago.

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my fiancé, having coffee the morning after I had taken sick leave due to a splitting head-ache. We got to talking, and she cornered me. In a good way.

Hadn’t I been incredibly tired over the last two years? So much so that I had been saying for about two years now that I should go to the doctor’s for a check-up, to see if there wasn’t anything weird going on physically?

And wasn’t I kind of gloomy, slightly depressed, for a long time already? And wasn’t I also a bit edgy, easily irritated — with her, with the kids? Wasn’t I experiencing a lot of stress due to work and everything I expected myself to do? When was I really taking any rest?

Was it possible that I, eventhough I studied psychology myself (…), and eventhough I wrote so much about focus and digital distraction and maximizing of human potential — was it possible that I was headed towards a burn-out?

The doctor agreed with my fiancé. And so did the psychologist he referred me to. My blood tests all came back perfectly fine. And now I’ve been home for the last three weeks trying to get some rest, and really thinking things over, hard. 

I’ve been working on a framework, a method for maximizing potential in humans, workers, and organizations for the last year and a half. What was missing in my entire framework — although meditation and focused contemplation were key elements — was rest. Funny, right?

Life Beyond the Touch Screen — a book about digital balance

And that’s how it came to be that I am releasing a book from a state of near burn-out. A book about digital distraction, and more so about bringing balance in the way we deal with our digital technologies, and really anything in our lives — our work, our relationships, entertainment, you name it. 

A book meant to help myself and others to keep the balance in order, starting with the mirror of digital technology.

All of this is very much not meant to make you doubt wether you yourself are a “smartphone addict”, or to make you wonder wether you’re heading towards a burnout. Although it can never hurt to check yourself every now and then. I just hope my story can serve as hopefully an early warning to you, or maybe somebody you know.

This is what the core of my new book is:

• When did any of us make a conscious choice for the use of our digital technologies? 
• And if we never really made that choice before, then what do we choose?
• What do you choose?

The only time is now.

I truly hope you take really good care of yourself in this new year and any year after that. In terms of the choices you make, how much you rest and also how you manage your relationship with the people around you and with tech. I hope the same for myself. A better world starts with more self-love.

If you’re interested, check out my website www.lifebeyond.one and get yourself a copy of my book. I’d love to hear your thoughts.