3 Expert Strategies to Make Work Screen Time Less Exhausting

Analog January is having a moment as many people try to reduce their screen time and explore offline hobbies and interests instead. And while many workers don't have the ability to digitally disconnect in their jobs, there are some steps they can take to reduce their tech overwhelm at work. "We are inundated with all kinds of data and communications constantly," says Paul Leonardi, who is the department chair and Duca Family professor of technology management at UC Santa Barbara and the author of "Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life." Still, "there's this expectation that we're always right on top of everything" and that we'll have "constant availability" anywhere and anytime because of our devices, he adds. Many people feel overwhelmed as a result and might feel particularly drained at work. Leonardi shares three tips that can help you reduce your digital exhaustion on the job. Match message to medium Slack, email, meetings: We have no shortage of forums for communicating at work. But using one poorly suited to a particular message could lead to misunderstandings and cost people more time in back-and-forth conversations. "What we want to do is make that match between how difficult is the thing we're trying to do and what are the capabilities of the technology, and will it match that level of complexity," Leonardi says. Platforms like Slack are best when you need "immediate responses about very low-stakes issues," he says. When you're giving more context of what you're trying to do and what you need, and your recipient might need a bit more time to process the information, send an email. Huddles and meetings are ideal when you "have to make a decision relatively quickly and there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of uncertainty," Leonardi says. In these cases, real-time communication saves you time on back-and-forth messages and gives you more clarity on others' thoughts through cues like body language and expressions. Don't respond to everything so quickly Yes, Leonardi actually recommends being slower to respond in many cases. A phenomenon called email urgency bias means "we think that other people's requests are much more urgent than they actually are," Leonardi says. "We almost all feel that way in corporate America that it's our responsibility to give people what they need right away." But unless it's truly urgent, don't feel pressured to respond immediately. "That allows us to not interrupt our work to respond, but to plan a more thoughtful response when it fits into the flow of our work in ways that aren't going to demand us to be constantly making switches and to do things in which we're not really well-prepared, both of which lead to exhaustion," he says. When sending an email, people should generally take more time to flesh it out, Leonardi adds. "We often, by slowing down, think through an issue more completely and give more reliable, robust responses," he says. "Maybe it took us initially 20 minutes to write that longer email, but doing that staves off 30 different interactions of somebody coming back to us." Depending on your work, you might consider checking your inbox to address emails during a few dedicated times a day, rather than responding to each message as it arrives. That way, "we know there's a time that I'm focused on clearing out the inbox or dealing with these priority issues, and that allows other time for more deep, uninterrupted work to happen," Leonardi says. Streamline your technology Part of our digital exhaustion stems from how many platforms we have available. Leonardi thinks of organizations that use both Microsoft Teams and Slack for internal messaging, for example. "There's definitely a correlation between the number of tools we have and the level of exhaustion that we feel," Leonardi says. He recommends having a conversation with your team on "what are our priorities and which platforms serve us best" in order to decide on tools to keep and tools to cut. Though it might create some friction at first, "the long-term effects of reducing the tech stack are really beneficial for preventing overwhelm and exhaustion," Leonardi says. For business leaders in particular, Leonardi offers a twist on the old Smokey Bear adage that only you can prevent forest fires. "Sometimes it's 'Only you can prevent digital technology proliferation,'" he says.