Could you live without a smartphone? | Anastasia Dedyukhina | TEDxWandsworth

Anastasia Dedyukhina ditched her smartphone, together with her senior international career in digital marketing, when she realized how dependent she had become on the gadget. Today she acts as a business mentor, supporting ethical tech startups, and runs Consciously Digital, helping companies and individuals be more productive and less stressed in an age of digital distraction. In her talk, Anastasia will explain why we feel the uncontrollable urge to check our smartphones all the time and share the valuable lessons she learned and the tips that helped her find the balance between her online and offline life.

Anastasia is a frequent speaker at global Internet conferences on the topics of ethical tech and digital detox, as well as marketing in the age of digital distraction. She blogs for Huffington Post about digital detox and is currently finalizing her first book on the same subject. Anastasia was born in Russia, has lived in six different countries, and has an MBA from SDA Bocconi (Italy) and NYU Stern (USA), and a PhD from Moscow State University.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

This sculpture by Sophie Ryder
in the UK seat of Salisbury

had to be moved

because people busy texting
on their mobile phones

kept bumping their heads into it.

Does it happen to you to text, phone,
check your Facebook timeline

or maybe catch a Pokémon
while you're walking?

And who does that?

(Laughter)

How many of these times
do you actually have to go on line?

Well, we check our devices
about 221 times per day

according to Tecmark,

or about every 4.3 minutes
of the time we don't sleep.

What is going on?

Well, we live in the economy
that is based on distraction.

The more Internet pages
you browse through,

the more advertising
an Internet company can show you,

and so the more money they make.

Their success metrics

are based around how much time
you spent using their app

or you were on their website,

not on how productive or focused you are.

Two years ago,
around the same time of the year,

I decided to give up my smartphone,

and replace it with a very basic
no Internet phone.

At the time,

I was working in a senior position
in digital marketing industry,

which means that I was connected
pretty much 24/7.

I slept with my phone,

and I kept checking it all the time,

and even felt it vibrating in my pockets
when I didn't have any pockets.

Giving up my smartphone

was one of the best decisions
that I have ever made.

And today, I want to share with you

my key learnings from the journey

of taking back control
over my time and my life.

But, before we do that,
I want to give you a little challenge.

Given that we check our devices
about every 4.3 minutes,

this means that you will feel
an urge to check your device

three or four times during my talk.

So, I want to challenge you
to resist this urge

and count how many times
you will succeed in doing that.

So, lesson No. 1.

You are more addicted
to your device than you think.

But you're also much more resourceful.

Now, why can't we go for 5 minutes
without our devices?

A US psychologist, David Greenfield, says
the Internet is like a slot machine:

you never know
what you're going to find inside.

And this variability of the reward
releases dopamine,

the neurohormone of pleasure
and anticipation of the reward.

The problem with dopamine

is that excessive stimulation
of your brain

that is caused by dopamine
creates addiction.

This is exactly how drugs work.

They first make you feel excited,

but then you have to go back
and take a new dose,

to have the same feeling.

Devices use the same principles.

You never know what you're going to expect
in your mailbox or on social media, right?

One day you get a "Like"
and then the next day 50 "Likes".

Bam! Dopamine releases. You feel great!

But then the excitement
fades pretty quickly,

and you need to go back
to your device to feel good again.

Technology is purposefully designed

the way to make you use it
over and over again.

We also feel dependent on our gadgets

because we have outsourced
too many important functions to them.

Has it happened to you
to go to Google maps

or any other kind of online maps,

and look up your way even though
you kind of knew how to get there?

This is exactly what I mean,

we easily get into the habit
of not trusting ourselves.

Well, you know what?

I discovered it's not actually
very easy to get lost in London.

There are maps all around,

and all I needed to do
was to look up my way once

before leaving the house,

and then I could always ask
people in the streets.

I realize that I have
outsourced to technology

too many things that were important to me,
that made me human,

like my sense
of orientation and direction,

my memories of spaces and certain events,

and it felt great to gain them back.

All I wanted, when I was
giving up my smartphone,

was to have a little bit
more clarity in my brain

and not to feel so overwhelmed.

What I unexpectedly gain

is the feeling that I will find
my way no matter what

both physically and metaphorically,

and, of course, a great chat up line
to make new connections.

"Sorry, I don't have a smartphone,
could you please help?"

Lesson No. 2.

If you want to change your digital habits,
do not rely on your willpower.

Instead, create structures around you
to support you in that.

Our brain is very lazy.

So when we repeat a certain action
over and over again,

it starts organizing
our brain cells, neurons,

into particular chains

so that it is easier to pass
the information through those chains.

This makes our behaviour
automatic and unconscious.

And this is exactly what notifications do.

They prompt you to come back
to your device

over and over and over again,

up until your behaviour
becomes automatic and unconscious.

According to Kahuna report,

87% of Android users and 48% of iOS users

opt in for receiving
app notifications on their devices,

or, in other words, all these people

allow their devices
to decide how they will behave.

Once these chains are formed,

it takes quite a long time
and effort to undo them,

and relying on your willpower
doesn't help.

I certainly learned it twice.

The first time,
when it took me five months

from the decision of giving up
my smartphone to actually doing it.

The second time,

when after about a year
of not owning any smartphone

I got one back,

which, I thought, I would only use
as a spare device

in case my laptop breaks down
and I need to talk to clients over Skype.

In no time, I found myself
using it all the time.

The neural path was still there.

Now, it felt incredibly embarrassing,

because at the time I was already
conducting digital detox trainings.

(Laughter)

I obviously was not walking my talk,

but it also gave me great insights
into the real challenges

that people who do not want
to give up their devices altogether face.

So I developed four principles

that help me take back control
over my time and my life,

and I want to share
those principles with you.

These are:

time management, space management,

relationship management

and self-management.

These principles help
reestablish the boundaries

that technology removes
between our work and private life,

or between our public and private lives.

So, let's talk about them.

Time management.

We need to give up on the idea

that we have to be
connected or accessible 24/7.

Now, of course, developers
will try to convince you

that everything is very important.

The truth is very few things are.

Remember what we said before.

It is your attention

that is a real scarcity
in the information age.

It is a little bit like with food.

You can have all the food
you may want to have in your fridge,

but this does not mean
that you need to eat it all, all the time.

So my top tip is to disable
all notifications on your devices,

use delayed email function
to avoid being distracted by emails,

and use blocking apps to make sure
that you're accessing certain websites

only at a certain time

and not being distracted
by them at other times.

This way, you are in charge
of where you're getting information,

as opposed to being
dictated by technology.

To give an example,

Eric Schmidt,

who is Executive Chairman of Alphabet,
the Google company,

switches off both of his smartphones
on most evenings during dinner time.

And, believe me, he's a much
busier guy than most of us.

Also, do not multitask online.

So, do not switch between different tabs
or between different devices.

A Stanford experiment proves

that the more we multitask,
the worse we become at it,

we unlearn our brain to do that.

Well, you will still likely
get distracted,

but you can plan for it.

So incorporate five minutes
of distraction time every now and then

in your work routine,

but only after you're done
with a chunk of work and as a reward only.

Again, this way, you are taking back
control over your time.

Space management

is all about where you want
to have connection,

and where you want to have silence.

Have you ever thought

why the most expensive areas in the city
are usually the quietest ones?

Why is it that,
in airport business lounges,

there is hardly any sound
or music or advertising?

Why is silence valued so highly?

Well, this is because it's only in silence
that our brain gets an opportunity

to process information
that we have been feeding into it.

We cannot take good conscious decisions

or be creative

if we are overwhelmed.

And we are always overwhelmed
when we go online,

because our brain
is not good at multitasking.

So, do not bring the devices

into the areas
where you process information,

where you have rest.

This includes your bedroom,
your bathroom, and your dining table.

Also, if you keep your phone
next to your bed

this puts your brain
into the state of alarm.

as [shown by] research
by Harvard Medical School.

And, of course, you will feel tempted
to check it first thing in the morning.

It's like keeping a chocolate brownie
next to your bed;

of course you will eat it.

So, get an alarm clock.

Your device is just a tool.

it is not part of you.

You can carry around
your saw or your hammer,

you don't take them
to the bedroom - hopefully!

Like any tool, your devices
need their own places.

For example, I try not
to carry around my devices,

and also remove them out of sight
when I'm not using them.

This way I feel less tempted
to check them.

Relationship management.

When I was still working
for an advertising agency,

we had a client who kept sending us
hundreds and hundreds of emails daily

to make sure that we're on track
delivering the project.

In fact, it was his emails
that kept us away from doing the work,

because all we were doing
was just reading and answering them.

So, we built a dashboard

that allowed us to show to the client

the progress we're making in real time
without any involvement.

It took us about an hour to do so,

and, in a week's time,

the email rate dropped so considerably

that we were finally able
to get the work done.

We still don't have a digital etiquette
as to how people can best contact you,

so you can get
an equally important message

via WhatsApp, Skype, email, you name it.

The moral is you need to heavily manage
people's expectations

as to how they can contact you.

For example, before I meet somebody,

I ask them to send me a text message
if anything changes.

Because I don't have Internet
on my phone.

And it works really well.

What do you do, however,
if you work for a company

that expects you to be connected
and on top of everything for 24/7?

Well, first things first,

stop contributing to this mess
by cc'ing everyone.

If you want to receive fewer emails,
send fewer emails.

Second, you might want to mention

a few statistics
to your colleagues and bosses.

For example, a study
by Harvard Business School

that said that consultants,
knowledge workers,

who had predictable time off
throughout the week

performed much better
and were much more productive

than those who didn't.

Or you can quote an example
of a few companies.

For example, one of the UK's
leading multinationals

recently introduced
a two-hour-per-week email ban

for all senior management

in the interest of productivity.

Or a current German car manufacturer
does not allow sending or receiving emails

30 minutes after the employee's
shift has ended.

If this doesn't help,

then you can try moving
to a different country,

like France and Brazil

where they have now
the so-called rights to disconnect laws,

that, among other things, regulate

whether the person has the right
not to read work-related emails

after the working hours.

Self-management is the last cornerstone
of changing your digital behaviour,

and the most tricky part,

because it does not help, it doesn't work,

if you prohibit yourself
from going online.

Because your brain still needs
the excitement of dopamine.

So, instead, you need to be thinking about
where you will take this dopamine from?

What will you do with all this free time

that all of a sudden
you will have available?

And this is where I want to share with you
my last key learning,

and why I think I failed for so long
to give on my smartphone.

I just did not want to deal
with my own problems.

When you don't have
anything that distracts you,

then you will have
to start dealing with the stuff

you have been running away from.

We often go online not because we need to,

but because we have
some internal trigger to do that.

Maybe we want to feel Important,

or maybe we are depressed.

In fact, a study by Missouri University
of Science and Technology

says exactly that,

that people who spent a lot of time online
tend to be depressed.

So, the next time you feel
an urge to check your device,

ask yourself:

What is really triggering me to do that?

Is there is something I'm trying
to avoid feeling or thinking about?

Once you get a life,
and a natural source of dopamine,

you won't need anything
to distract yourselves from yourselves.

Thank you.

(Applause)