Can I Have Your Attention?

Chapter 11Message Undeliverable

Great strategies for technology use are all about the effective creation and removal of access to technology and each other.

The number one question to ask about technology for your organization is: Does it promote or prevent focus?

Let's look at what focus-wise technology provides to help us preserve attention.

Barriers to Access

Access is good—and addicting. The key is to control it.

Not by branding time on social media as theft or logging bathroom breaks to discourage phone use, something my client sorely regretted. (We'll discuss the wrong ways to control access in Chapter 13.)

Technology purveyors used to be so fixated on access that they paid scant attention to barriers. Programs either didn't offer any, or they made users hunt for them. (How many of your employees know about Do Not Disturb mode on the iPhone?)

Focus-wise technology grants us control—which we then have to control.

The first step in exercising this control is surprisingly simple yet shockingly ignored by most people: Understand the capabilities of the tech we already own and put them to use.

A friend recently demanded a group WhatsApp thread stop sending texts between 11 PM and 7 AM as a claim of common sense manners. Although everyone respected his wish to be off the grid, they didn't respect the way he approached it. The group responded by doubling down on after-hours texts. The reason was simple: WhatsApp offers the ability to mute conversations and turn off push. Asking ...