In today's technological world, there is definitely an urgency to have all systems up and running 24 hours of the day, seven days a week and 365 days of the year. Downtime is simply not an option ...
But what about your own health and wellbeing in a world that appears to be dictated by smart devices? What about your down-time? As much as I love technology, I fear that we forget that some things are just beyond human control and not even technology would solve the problem!
Just this week, a ship was stuck in the Suez Canal, and an estimated loss of £7bn per day has been estimated as the financial impact to the world economy, but nowhere did I read of the Captain and crew's welfare during this time.
Investigation into whether or not the ship drifted naturally under obscure weather conditions, if it was human error, or even a technical failure will be the next job at hand by launching an inquiry. The Captain and crew will come under much scrutiny over the next few months.
Our lives are consumed by putting monetary values on technical downtime, but rarely do we look at the human cost of not having our own personal down-time. This is time away from the working environment, away with our friends and family to allow our bodies a full recharge, just the same as when we plug in our phones every night to recharge the battery.
We often forget we need nutritional foods to help our bodies maintain the vitamins and minerals required to keep functioning at an optimal level. "It's ok" we muse, "My smartwatch is monitoring everything". But will we listen to it's advice?
But what do we do with all that information processed through our smartwatches, connected to our smartphones, telling us if we have had a peaceful nights' sleep, monitoring our blood pressures and heart rate? We may glance at it, but do we utilise the information in a positive way and take some down-time as it may suggest? Or do we just stress about our systems telling us what we already know?
Do we concentrate on keeping all the other technology up and running to avoid the financial loss that this may cause, in favour of our own health? There really does have to be a balance in life and, as humans, we are trying to shift the non-essential tasks to machines, only to be constantly checking that the device is working correctly, because a human error may have been made in the coding in the first place; by a stressed and tired human being!
We humans are making super smart machines and then worry that they are getting so clever that they may take over completely. It's time to simply reflect on both downtime and down-time. Technology has saved millions of lives, though in the same breath, it has caused millions of lives to be damaged in some way or another, be it physically or mentally.
If you feel overwhelmed by technology and you cannot be without your smartphone, it may be time to seek professional advice and have some much needed down-time away from it.
If you feel inspired to find out more then do call me on 07555 807700 or leave a comment below and I'll be in touch as soon as I can.