Be a master of your mobile phone (not the other way around!)

Mobile phone etiquettes for home and work

You pick up the mobile, to call someone or send an important message, and suddenly discover there few messages in Whatsapp or you see few face book notifications.

You think you will check the Whatsapp messages first and then make call. Then you go thru many messages and videos. While checking each of these messages, you forget that you picked up the phone to call someone!

If this happened to you at home or office, you are not alone. All of us face this problem.

WhatsApp, Facebook , Instagram and other social media in mobile (anywhere, anytime, on the go!) is distracting and unproductive at large. Distracting at home as well at work.

One of the articles said, if we are going to look at every WhatsApp beep or Facebook post as soon as it pops up, we are like a modern day Pavlovian dog who responds to the beck and call of others through the buzz of your phone. We all face the issue. We need to figure out a solution.

Having mobile phone is convenient. Who doesn’t love the convenience of a cell phone? Our family and friends can reach us at any time, for any reason, no matter where we are…even at work or elsewhere. While that accessibility may be a great way to stay in touch with our loved ones and friends during the day, fixating on our phone can distract us from doing our job, and it may annoy our co-workers, colleagues and our mangers.

At work, since the time we invest is compensated by customers and the organization, we need to make sure our time at office is as productive as possible without distractions and spent on customer centric and organization centric activities. Our time is meant to be spent in creating value for our customers and hence in turn for ourselves and our team.

At work we can try below etiquettes :

•  Avoid checking personal WhatsApp messages, face book post or reading general news during work hours.
• Avoid posting messages to office groups during work hours, rather use email or walk across to team and discuss
• When you post messages to office groups make sure it is work relevant and not general messages or forwards
• If cell phone usage is allowed for you, you can check your phone during lunch break or other breaks to make sure you haven’t missed any critical calls or urgent messages
• During business meetings and discussions, please do not check your phone for text messages or emails , even it is official
• It is inappropriate to answer phone calls during formal meetings; we can go out and attend the calls or call the person after the meeting (missed call facility is available)
•  It is inappropriate to read (write) texts or emails during formal meetings, if we do so, then we consider the information on the phone to be more important than the in the meeting; we view people outside of the meeting to be more important than those sitting right in front of us. This true at work as well as at home
• You must have heard of Phubbing –it is the new word for “ignoring a person in front of you in favor of your smart phone”. This new word was created in Australia and has now spread to all parts of the world. Phubbing is the combination of the words phone and snubbing

 At home, we can try the following:

• Have a fixed time for checking social media. Let others in the family know which is that time
• Never send messages which are gender sensitive or racial which can hurt feeling of others
• As rule of thumb, avoid forwarding messages left, right and center (even if it seems useful at the first instance) 
• Refrain from using social media one hour before going to bed and one hour after getting up. Our minds are in pristine state and should not be disturbed or excited before and after sleep.
• During sleep, better to keep mobile phone in another room (not in the same place where you are sleeping).

Transform from a Consumer to a Creator, in social media

Most of the social media – face book or Whatsapp – we end up consuming loads of information.

If I give you a newspaper and ask you read from first page to last page, all the news, all the content, how will you feel? But same thing we are doing with social media, same amount of information we are consuming, but fed in small and steady doses! This is dangerous and can impact our mind and thought process, if done for a long time

When we are busy reading messages or seeing video or reading news, we consume them. Most of our waking hours are spent in consuming when we are in front of our mobile phones

When we are consuming, someone else is driving you. When you create, you are in the driver seat!

Social media, offers equal and powerful opportunities for creating as well

More than consuming, we should be creating content, our own thoughtful and useful content, in our own areas of work and expertise 

At home our children consciously and unconsciously pick up the habits and way of doing things from parents. Similarly at work, our team members learn from what we do. So we need to be alert, conscious and set examples for family members and colleagues at work place.

Any technology should be used with a balance. It is easy to become slaves and difficult to be masters. But being the master is good for our health, wealth and well-being. We can do it. We can try it for a week starting this Monday as a beginning.