Michael Douglas once said: “Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.”
Turns out he’s right, at least about Chicago.
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A recent report by Bank of America found that only 4 percent of Chicagoans shut down their mobile phones during vacation — with 33 percent of people accessing them for both work and personal reasons. Nationally, 7 percent shut down their mobile phones during vacation, while 28 percent accessed their phones for both work and personal reasons, based on the company’s research from nine U.S. markets, including Chicago.
Nearly ninety percent of Chicagoans said they check their phones at least a few times a day, with 41 percent checking “constantly,” according to the report, “Bank of America Trends in Consumer Mobility Report.” That compares with 36 percent nationally.
The second annual report was released this summer.
The report added that 48 percent of Chicago residents — more than any other region surveyed — would consider or have already bought wearable technology.
Sharon Pappas, an assistant professor of industrial/organizational and business psychology at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, said the “always on” habit is not a healthy one.
“Constant engagement is detrimental to employee health and engagement,” she said. “We don’t realize how much drain it takes to always be on. This actually leads to employee burnout … and impacts the bottom line of an organization in a negative way.”
Of course, difficulty unplugging extends beyond our hardworking city. Last week, Vox Media Senior Director of Product Justin Glow outlined his unplugging trials in a Verge column, “That Week I Tried to Unplug from Slack.”
“I craved a reset,” he wrote about Slack, a communication platform for businesses. “How critical was Slack to my ability to do my job? Could I still be a productive employee without it? Was the massive amount of time I spent lurking and interacting with fellow co-workers increasing my productivity, or hurting it?”
After self-implementing an “office hours” policy and deleting the desktop and mobile versions of the platform, Glow reported being less distracted during work. He wrote that away messages and vacation settings could be a way to make the platform less invasive for employees.
“With Slack closed, I spent more energy critically thinking, researching, and fully forming my ideas, thoughts, and initiatives. When logged in, it’s easier to share half-baked work for feedback and receive the same warm feeling of gratification when presenting a fully formed thought or completed project,” he wrote.
To rewire a phone-addicted brain, Pappas said to take baby steps.
“Put your cellphone down, walk away for an hour, come back and then just kind of increase the time where you’re away from [it],” she said. “The continuous use of cellphones is a habit, so you have to form a new habit.”
A few weekends ago, I went to a friend’s lake house in a remote part of Wisconsin. After settling in, I realized my phone had zero service. “This could be good,” I thought. “I can live without my phone for 48 hours, right?”
Five minutes later I asked for the Wi-Fi password.
Email: [email protected] * Twitter: @megancgraham
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