It’s ok to be unavailable!

I know this is a hard concept to understand so I'll say it again, but slower:

It's

ok

to

be

unavailable!

Think about this. Have you ever left your house, backed out of the driveway and started down the street only to realized you left your cell phone at the house. What do we do? Find the next driveway, pill in and turn around. Why? Because society has taught us we have to be available 24/7.

Think about this. Twenty years ago (before the invention of the iPhone), same thing happens. You have a cellular device. It's a bit big and clunky. Doesn't fit in your pocket the greatest. So you usually carry it in a briefcase or something similar. You leave home without it and you probably continue about your day without it. Why? Because it was ok to be unavailable. If someone needed to talk to you, they would have to call the office phone. They would have to send an email or wait until they saw you face to face.

All of this has changed, though. Cell phones have become an extension of who we are rather than a luxury. We feel lost if we do not have it on us. And the question is why? Sure there could be true emergencies that come up where people have to get ahold of us. But, for the most part, that's not what has us carrying around these little devices. It isn't the fear of an emergency. It's the fear of missing out. Missing a Snapchat. Missing a sports score. Missing a text message. Not being able to take a picture.

Meanwhile, anxiety is at an all-time high. People are battling mental health issues and stress. How much of it is due to the fact we cannot shut down? We are accessible 24/7 to the world around us. To our friends. Our colleagues. Our family. Social media. News. Sports. Weather. Everything is in the palm of our hands at all times. Think of it like this. The 512GB iPhone has 7 million time more memory than the guidance computer on the Apollo 11, which put people on the moon.

That's a lot of power in the palm of your hand. But it also means a lot of information overload. It means we have access to too much too fast. So what do we do? Because it's only going up from here, right? Cell phones have become an intricate part of society. My current job took away office phones and we are using either Google Voice or our cell phones to do our daily job.

So if it's not going to stop, then what? It's up to us. Hos important is our mental health and well being? How important is not being anxious? Then it's time to start doing something about it. I mentioned a little about what I've been doing here.

There are some other things that we can do, too. Don't feel like you have to carry your phone with you all the time. Go for a walk and leave your phone home. Doing yard work? Leave the phone inside. Turn off notifications. Do you really need to know that aunt Jolene liked your picture on Facebook? If your cousin Madeline likes an Instagram story, do you have to know immediately? I'd say no. 

But let's take it a step further. As I said in that post above do I need to know when I get every single text message? I mean the purpose of text message is this: to communicate with someone on your own time. In other words. I send my mom a text message. She may be able to answer within a few minutes. She may be busy and not answer for several hours. That's ok. Why? Because it's a text message. If I'm busy, I may not be able to respond for several hours. That's how communication through text messages work. If it's important, she will pick up the phone and call me. Or vice versa. 

What does that mean? Do I need to see every single text message come through on my Lock Screen? Not at all. As a matter of fact, I think it means I need to see very few, if any. Then why would i want to see social media notifications on my Lock Screen? I would argue I don't and shouldn't. Of course I would make an argument to remove all social media from the phone.

If you can't do any of that, then perhaps you should try this one last thing: put the phone in DND for a while. If you're unfamiliar with the concept it means "do not disturb". If you're in a meeting or having dinner with someone, put the phone in do not disturb. That way you can't see those notifications  that you're desperately holding on to. Is there anything worse than having a conversation with someone and then all of a sudden they get a notification on their phone. They pick up the phone and start reading the notification. Then start responding. All while you're still sitting there. What that person did was just inform the other person that whatever notification they got on their phone was more important than the conversation they were having. 

So I'm going to say it once again, it's ok to be unavailable.