684 - Technology is Making Me and My House Dumb

All these advanced technologies are supposed to be saving us time right? I ask you “Is it saving you time?” Our devices, robots, and social media seem to be sucking up a lot of time and cognitive load.  In my observation, it seems to me, I am spending more time on apps, updates, and managing robots and getting frustrated than saving time. I just wanted to have a conversation about what I am seeing and hear from you…you too?

Smart Homes

You all know the struggle I have had with our robot vacuum. I finally had waited out the lease on the last one that never seemed to connect to wifi or be charged. This new one I can get charged. I can get it to connect to the wifi. I was pumped on one of my days during the staycation when all the stars had aligned and I was ready to run her. I opened the app to start her up and got a notification that I needed to update the app…no problem. I had the day off. But now there was a wifi issue. At this point, I could have burned a few calories and had my floors vacuumed but no I was still messing around with the wifi connection. The kicker? I knew once I finally got her working, she can’t even complete the first floor without recharging so I couldn’t even get all the floors vacuumed. I’d have to pick 3 of the 4 zones to get cleaned. Like come on people, this is not saving me any time. 

Recently we replaced our HVAC with a top of the line system. It’s so good, it took 4 service calls to actually get it working correctly. The zones were set wrong so it wasn’t performing correctly. This wasn’t saving me any time. What good is the app at saving me time, if the system isn’t set up right?  And don’t get me started about the washer/dryer combo unit I invested in. I’m getting notified of everything it’s doing whether I care or not.  It’s taking my cognitive load and increasing it. Can I just get some base model machines with start and stop buttons and that’s it? I don’t need all this technology, frustration, and distraction. 

Phones

Then I slowly started to notice my increased phone time. And my kids noticed it of themselves too. Joey in fact asked for a dumb phone. I dont’ know what is it lately but I go to check email and all the sudden I’m scrolling on Instagram and forgot what I got on my phone to do in the first place. We are more entertained than ever but we are also more lonely than ever. When Greg and I went to those small towns, we didn’t see people. Where were all the people? In their homes, on their phones. So I started to think, what did I used to do when I got bored? Now I scroll Instagram or play a game on my phone. BUT I used to like to scrapbook, do puzzles, listen to audio books, and organize. I want to challenge you to make a small list of things you can do off your phone when you have free time. What do you like to do? Ask yourself, Are you in control of your phone or is it in control of you? And is that how you want it to be? Turn off notifications, place your phone face down when not in use, and put your ringer on silent. Create the home environment you want. 

Short Conversations

And it’s great that we have so many sources for information but it’s limiting our conversations. Since it would appear we all the know the same news, I am challenging myself to have deeper conversations with the people in my family and you may want to too. Here are a few questions to have more meaningful conversations. 

How do you feel about that?

What do you think will happen next? 

How did you find out about that?

Yeah, I did hear about that but tell me what did you hear about that?  

I want to have rich relationships with the people in my house not monitoring my robots so I have more time to scroll. I want to be growing and learning in my free time. What do you want?

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