How can we find digital health at work?
Our wellbeing depends, not just on digital minimalism, but on digital flexibility as well.
David Foster Wallace tells a story in Infinite Jest about a video that proved “lethally entertaining.” If you watched this film a single time, you lost your appetite for any other pleasure in your life: eating chocolate pie, awakening from a delicious nap, driving a convertible towards a setting sun, even that other intense pleasure that comes to mind in lists like this. Watching the video once would addict you to perpetual replay. You would stare at the screen till you died in your drool.
Foster wrote this novel in 1996. Well before TikTok. But also before email, Slack, DMs, and texting had formed the distraction economy that is the modern workplace.
We spend 2080 hours at work every year. Some reports suggest that we waste 759 of those hours on distractions. A third of job time wasted is an exhaustingly infinite jest.
So, let’s talk about it. Let’s discuss a trend, a study, a story, and a shift that, together, point towards digital wellbeing in the workplace.
In contrast with the many voices urging us to simplify, simplify, simplify, I’m going to argue that digital flexibility matters at least as much as digital minimalism.
A Trend
Ever heard of phubbing? The practice entails using your phone to snub someone, sometimes even in a socially acceptable way. “Hey,” you say, in the middle of a meeting, “My kid’s texting me.” Or maybe you say nothing at all. Maybe you just slouch, scroll, and smile vaguely at whatever gets said around the boardroom table.
Sometimes, people phubb during conversations that matter to them, after which everybody usually leaves feeling grossly unsatisfied—not least the person on the other end of that text you tried to send. In a Meijer aisle somewhere, your partner’s staring at their phone trying to decode a garble-garble like, “U makesur mayor get me.”
In response to phubbing, people adopt single-function technology like flip phones. Or they buy Moleskine notebooks for meetings. I envy their calligraphic prowess and their 13 variously colored markers.
These practices of digital minimalism help you seek alignment between your core values and your tools. They also help you not to phubb during a performance review.
But these strategies miss one core problem in the midst of digital exhaustion.
A Study
Much as I respect tech minimalism, my recently published research in Digital Overwhelm urges a different ethic. That book’s research into professional habits and work culture suggests that digital minimalism too often assumes a level of personal autonomy that workers simply don’t have. Our jobs often remind us that we are not as autonomous as our flip-phone resolutions might suggest.
My book examines six ways of coping with digital overwhelm in the workplace. Some of them are maximalist. Some are minimalist. But the main point is, don’t get stuck in any one of them.
Why? Because the strategy I use to cope with digital overwhelm may worsen yours.
Let’s say I’m overwhelmed by repeated texts and DMs about an event I’m helping to plan. My preferred way of coping is to write a very long email to “get everybody on the same page.” But although drafting a dozen paragraphs might make me feel better, the So Much Words of it all just might worsen your exhaustion.
My minimizing move, in other words, turns out to be rather maximalist.
Let’s say you’re overwhelmed by someone’s 1000-word email. So you turn to your favorite coping mechanism: the stop-by visit. Let’s just talk to each other like real people, you think as you stride down the hall and knock on your colleague’s door. But when you step inside, you see that their eyes are red and their desk is littered with wadded tissues. You back away: your simplifying move would only add to their flooded day.
So, instead of recommending minimalism, I counsel digital flexibility. Mode/switching’s all about staying human by staying agile with others.
A Story
This past Saturday afternoon, a Grand Rapids bookstore, Schuler Books, hosted a book-promotional event for me. I was thankful but nervous.
What I most wanted to do was give a speech about the book. That for me is so much easier than a series of one-on-one conversations with whoever comes through the double doors next. Agenda-driven small talk’s hard.
I actually wrote a pleading email to the Schuler folks, asking if I could please just give a short lecture in their little auditorium in the back. Nope. Unavailable.
My marketer gave me some ideas for coping. A day before the event, I used my smartphone to capture a short talk about my book. I uploaded it to YouTube and printed QR codes on bookmarks. I also packed some water-bottle stickers about digiwhelm. I bought a huge sticky note pad and labeled it as “a wall of overwhelm” for people to graffiti their digital stress on.
And thanks to this portfolio of communicational styles, I had a good time at the event.
Looking back, I think that what my anxious self had originally wanted was minimalism. I wanted to do a public talk in the backroom, because a one-way speech to a reasonably compliant audience felt more doable than a series of unpredictable stop-by convos. But the strategy I stumbled into actually multiplied the ways I could engage people. The book event turned into an opportunity for flexible mode-switching.
Does this shopper seem interested but uneasy? Let’s give them a bookmark and tell them to check out the QR code later.
Does this shopper look friendly but busy? Ask them to add to the giant sticky note.
Does this person seem open to talk? Well…(big gulp) let’s actually try to talk.
Does this person seem like they’re ready for digiwhelm therapy? Let’s grab a copy of the book and show them a diagram on page 23.
Does this shopper seem annoyed? Let’s peace them with a water bottle sticker.
A Shift
This week’s mode/switch is from digital minimalism to digital flexibility.
Digital minimalism is indispensable if your biggest problem is the floodedness in your head. But what if the excessive feelings aren’t just in your head but in the room as well? My research suggests that if we treat digital overwhelm as a merely personal problem we miss the social aspects of the experience. Digiwhelm circulates in workspaces like a swirling, contagious mood. This mood may settle on us in different ways: some people start typing emails with their fingers and their toes in a desperate attempt to get ahead of their inbox. Others wander to the restroom dozens of times, looking catatonic. Still others open 461 browser tabs, asking AI how to create folders and subfolders and sub-subfolders for all these websites.
Digital flexibility acknowledges that my problem is actually our problem. Here are some suggestions for how to cope.1
Don’t lament a mastery you don’t have. Don’t imagine that somehow you should be able to find the hack to control the pings. You won’t transcend the overwhelm, and you wouldn’t want to. Floating above it all, like a god of productivity, would mean forgoing the gifts of other people. Digital overwhelm is a shared condition, and it’s a good thing, too. Its imperfections are basic to working community.
Be mindful of your default styles of communication. Do you instinctively schedule Zoom calls to “get everybody on the same page”? Do you turn to social media to rant? Do you send extremely obscure group text messages? It may be important for you to just stop. That’s the wisdom of digital minimalism: your default practice is not getting you where you want to go.
Cultivate a set of four or five different communication modes you can switch among. And that’s the wisdom of digital flexibility. But it will take some planning.
You might need to get a Miro account. A digital whitespace can allow visual thinkers to take the lead in a “silent dialogue.” Read more here.
You might need to schedule a regular stand-up meeting on- or off-line. This allows the high-contact folks some reassuring engagement and some space for chatty ideation. Read more here.
You might need to say strange things like, “Let’s meet in a city park between us and go for a walk.”
Dealing with digital overwhelm can feel like you’re just trying to keep your head above water. But this week, I’ve been suggesting you’re finding balance with others on a big inner-tube on a choppy sea. The goal isn’t personal survival merely. The goal’s for us to stand teeteringly, hilariously, and take a good look at different horizons together.
-craig
I’m adapting these from, and thinking with, the Clariti platform. They tend to be more instrumentalist than I like, but they catalyzed some ideas.