“You take the blue pill… the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill… you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” – Morpheus

Dear Shawn –

It’s hard to believe how far we have come with technology in the last couple of decades. Back in our university dorm room, landline phones were a luxury, long distance was prohibitively expensive, we used paper maps to navigate, and we just told our parents when we would be home or our friends when and where to meet us for a night out. To make matters worse, we always carried quarters around to use a pay phone if we needed to make a call. I know, it was incredibly inconvenient, but it worked!

These days just about everyone carries a cell phone loaded with a camera, apps and GPS that allow you to find your way and just about everyone is instantly reachable via text messaging. To top if off you long distance calling is “included” and you can even track your things, your pets and even your friends (with their permission of course).

These innovations bring with them huge convenience but they also bring the challenge or real-time communication and “instantaneous response”. In both the personal and corporate world this can lead to catastrophic consequences. Before I get into some tips on how to manage this let me share a very elementary overview of how our brain works.

The most ancient part of our brains is the Amygdala. While it only makes up a mere 0.3% of our overall brain mass it is our emotional nerve center and is responsible for the “fight or flight” response allows us to make split second decisions allowing us to stay alive and out of harm’s way. While it was critical to our ancestors survival when they were living in caves and outrunning saber-toothed tigers, these days it is critical for avoidance of modern life-or-death situations.

Another key part of the brain is the prefrontal cortex, responsible for logic, reasoning, and judgement with awareness of long-term consequences. Although the prefrontal cortex is the most recent evolutionary addition to the mammalian brain it is crucial in helping us to manage our emotions and building relationships with others throughout our life.

Unfortunately, our brains have been unable to evolve at the pace of technology. At times when we get stressed, or anxious it can trigger our “fight or flight response” forcing an “Amygdala hijack” leading us to take immediate actions without any consideration from our logical prefrontal cortex. Think of all of those times you wish you would have spent a few minutes thinking about a situation before acting on it; that’s an Amygdala hijack.

So here is my advice:

1 – Just because you can respond immediately it does not mean you need to respond immediately: Take time to digest information and give your prefrontal cortex a chance to process a response with logic and reasoning

2 – If you are having a hard day emotionally and feel extremely irritable or on edge based consider taking a day off: disconnecting from technology for a day or two, dealing with pressing personal issues will allow you to be manage your professional and personal life more effectively

3 – Don’t be hard on yourself when life gets in the way and you feel overwhelmed: It happens to all of us and it’s normal. Think about how you can trim your to-do-list and give yourself more time to focus on the important things

4 – Remember that your cell phone has a on/off button and when the phone rings you have the choice to answer it or send it to voicemail: It’s up to you to decide if you are in a good position to answer it or if it would be better to let it go to voicemail and return the call/text later

Technology is fascinating and will continue to accelerate throughout your lifetime. Our brains will evolve but much at a much slower rate. We will all need to learning to find the balance.

I attribute this set of learnings to two folks who helped me understand it a decade ago. Barry M and George K.