Healthy Monday - Week 19

Welcome back to your Healthy Monday wellness program! This week, we’re looking at ways you can unplug to unwind.

Try this week’s practice below and then share your feedback about how you did.

This week we’re looking at strategies for reducing the daily “technostress” caused by your smartphone.

“Technostress” is the inability to cope with new technologies in a healthy manner. It occurs when the rapid development of technology outpaces society’s ability to understand how to responsibly use it.

Enter the smartphone: A device that enables us to be totally accessible at all times.

This is a modern phenomenon, and, to be frank, we don’t really know how to handle this level of constant connectivity. As a result, there’s the expectation that we should always be available: To respond to that text message, reply to that email, pick up that phone call, “like” that Facebook comment. And since many of us carry our inbox, address book, and social media network in our pocket (or on our wrist), we’re never truly “off the clock,” and that means little (or no) time to unwind and decompress.

The ever-present threat of a digital interruption can have side effects paralleling symptoms of depression or other mental illness, such as: chronic fatigue, cynicism, difficulty concentrating, muscle tension, mismanagement of priorities, a sense of ineffectiveness.

Don’t let your smartphone stress you out. Use Destress Monday as a day to disconnect and rethink the role your wearable technology plays in your life.

What else is your hospital doing for Healthy Monday?

For staff at Columbia University Irving Medical Center: Get more resources to support this week’s practice from Columbia Work/Life.

For staff at NewYork-Presbyterian: Get more resources to support this week’s practice from NYPBeHealthy.

Need a quick dose of stress relief? Try our SOS practices: